Curriculum Vitae and Main Publications
Yakov Testelets (Jakov Georgievic Testelets), b. in Moscow 1958, graduated from the Department of the Structural and Applied
Linguistics of the Moscow State University in 1980. Since 1981 he works in the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of
Sciences, since 1998 also in the Institute of Linguistics at theRussian State University for Humanities (Moscow) where he is an
assistant professor and lecturer in typology, grammatical theory and South Caucasian languages. His candidate thesis in the field of
typology addressing the issue of split ergativity on the data of East and South Caucasian, Indo-Iranian and Australian languages, was
defended in 1986.
Most publications are in the field of grammar of Caucasian languages and syntactic typology. Of his more than 70 publications, the
following are noteworthy:
1. A method of ‘given’ vs. ‘new’ delimitation (Ob odnom sposobe razgranichenija ‘dannogo’ i ‘novogo’). In: Narin’jani A.S. (ed.),
Formal’noe opisanie struktury estestvennogo jazyka. Novosibirsk: VCSOAN. 1980, 61-76.
2. Ergative-like constructions in Nakh-Dagestanian languages (Ergativoobraznye pos-troenija v naxsko-dagestanskix jazykax). —
Voprosy jazykoznanija, 1987, no. 2, 109-121.
3. Observations on the semantics of the oppositions ‘noun vs. verb’ and ‘noun vs. ad-jective’ (Nabljudenija nad semantikoj oppozicij
‘imja-glagol’ i ‘sus^cestvitel’noe-prilagatel’noe’). In: Alpatov V.M. (ed.), C^asti rec^i: teorija i tipologija. M.: Nauka.1990, 77-95.
4. On two parameters of transitivity. In: Kulikov L., Vater H. (eds.) Typology of verbal categories. Papers presented to Vladimir Nedjalkov
on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Tuebingen: Max Niemeyer, 1998, 29-45.
5. Word order and constituent structure in some SOV languages of Europe. In: Siew-ierska Anna (ed.), Constituent order in the languages
of Europe. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin–New York. 1998, 649–679.
6. (with K.I. Kazenin) Research of Syntactic Constraints in Generative Grammar (Issledovanie sintaksiceskix ogranicenij v generativnoj
grammatike). In: Kibrik A.A., Kobozeva I.M., Sekerina I.A. (ed.) Fundamental’nye napravlenija sovremennoj amerikanskoj lingvistiki.
Sbornik obzorov. M.: Izd-vo MGU. 1997, 58-109.
7. (with S.Ju. Toldova) Reflexive Pronouns in Dagestanian languages and Typology of Reflexives (Refleksivnye mestoimenija v dagestanskix
jazykax i tipologija refleksiva). - Voprosy jazykoznanija. 1998, no.4, 35-57.
The paper offers a typology of anaphoric elements including local and long-distance reflexives, pronominals, long-distance pronominals, and
pronouns with unrestricted reference which incorporates some revisions of Chomsky’s Binding Theory of 1981 suggested within Generative
Grammar.
8. Russian works on linguistic typology in the 1960–1990s. In: M.Haspelmath, E. Koenig, W. Oesterreicher, W. Raible (eds.), Language
Typology and Language Universals. An International Handbook. Ed. by Vol. 1. Berlin — N.-Y.: Walter de Gruyter. 2001. P. 306–323.
9. Distributive Quantifier Float in Russian and Some Related Constructions. In: Formal Description of Slavic Languages 3 (in print).
In the paper, the construction of the type Mal’ciki prinesli každyj po jabloku ‘The boys brought an apple each’ in Russian is analyzed,
together with some related constructions like nos k nosu ‘nose-to-nose’ and the like, and the problem of asymmetric chains in
Russian is raised.
Y. Testelets is also the author of several syntactic sections in the monograph ‘Elements of Tsakhur in Typological Aspect’ ed. by A.E.
Kibrik (Elementy caxurskogo jazyka v tipologiceskom osvešcenii. M.: Nasledie.1999). The volume represents a typologically oriented
description of an East Caucasian language.
Since about 1992, Y. Testelets’ interests shift gradually to Russian syntax and grammatical theory. His main publication in Slavic
linguistics ‘Introduction to General Syntax’ (Vvedenie v obšcij sintaksis). M.: RGGU, 800 pages, is to be printed in December 2001.
The volume is a textbook based mainly on Russian material which represents the first comprehensive introduction to modern syntax
published in the Russian language. The book’s contents are as follows:
Part I. Syntactic description.
Ch.1. Word and sentence: the structure of dependencies
Ch.2. Constituent structure and phrasal categories
Ch.3 Valencies of a word
Ch.4. Sentence and clause
Ch.5. Invisible categories in syntax
Ch.6. Subject
Ch.7. Expression of syntactic relations (agreement, government,‘primykanie’)
Ch.8. Diathesis, voice, valence-changing derivations
Ch.9. Communicative categories (topic, focus, given, new,
contrastiveness, verification, emphasis etc.)
Part II. Syntactic theories
Ch.10. Explanation in Linguistics, or What is a Grammatical Theory
Ch.11. Generative Grammar: From Rules to Constraints
Ch.12. Theory of Principles and Parameters
Ch.13. Latest versions of the Generative Grammar (Pollock’s
Split-Infl hy-pothesis, Larson’s VP-shell, Minimalism,
Optimality theory, the problem of scrambling and free word order etc.)
Ch.14. Categorial Grammar (written by K.I. Kazenin)
Ch.15. Functional typology and syntax
Ch.16. Syntax in the Meaning-Text model
The first part of the book (Syntactic Description) addresses mostly empirical problems. It includes at least three passages that represent
the author’s own research work: grammatical properties of arguments vs. adjuncts in the Russian syntax (ch.3); properties of PRO and other
empty categories (ch.5), and of the subject in Russian (ch.6).
The second part (Syntactic theories) includes, among others, the first detailed presentation of Chomsky’s Generative Grammar in Russian
since 1972 (chs. 11-13).