Alina Israeli

Associate Professor of Russian
PhD, Yale University
BA, Leningrad State University

Asbury 340
202-885-2387
aisrael@american.edu

Professor Israeli received her PhD in Slavic Linguistics from Yale University. Prior to coming to the United States she received a BA equivalent in Russian Language and Literature from Leningrad State University.

A specialist in both Russian linguistics and literature, Professor Israeli has been teaching Russian to Americans since 1978, first at Yale and the Middlebury College Summer Program, and then at Grinnell College and SUNY-Albany. She has been at American University since 1990.

Her research interests lie primarily in the areas of Russian syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Since 1998 she has been writing a quarterly question-and-answer column entitled "Everything you always wanted to know about Russian grammar, but were afraid to ask," published in the AATSEEL Newsletter.

Her publications include:

Semantics and Pragmatics of the "Reflexive" verbs in Russian. Slavistische Beiträge Series, vol. 349. Munich: Otto Sagner Verlag, 1997.

Rus' Evgeniia Zamiatina. [An analysis of Zamiatin's Rus'.] Russian Literature XXI (1987): 233-242.

"Discourse analysis of Russian aspect: accent on creativity." Journal of Slavic Linguistics 4 (1), 1996: 8-49.

"Leksicheskaja reduplikacija v russkom jazyke [Lexical reduplication in Russian]." Russian Language Journal L. 165-167, 1996: 83-90.

"Russian syntactic reduplication: a cooperative principle device in dialogues." Journal of Pragmatics 27, 1997: 587-609.

"Speaker's attitude, goals, and aspectual choices in wh- questions in Russian." Le Langage et l'Homme XXXIII (1) 1998: 55-77 (special issue devoted to tense, aspect, and modality in Slavic languages).

"The speaker as observer: color verbs in -sja and deixis." Acta Linguistica Hungarica 45 (3-4), 1998: 253-270.

"WOULD and its translation into Russian." Le Langage et l'Homme XXXIV (1) 1999: 45-58 (special issue devoted to comparative linguistics and translation).

"'Same' and 'Different' in Russian." Journal of Slavic Linguistics 7 (2), 1999: 179-218.

"An Imperative Form in Non-Imperative Constructions in Russian." Glossos 1. Spring 2001. http://www.seelrc.org/glossos/current/

"The Choice of Aspect in Verbs of Communication: Pragmatic Contract." Journal of Slavic Linguistics 9 (1), 2001: 49-98.

"Russian verbs of motion: focus, deixis, and viewpoint." Temps et aspect: de la grammaire au lexique. Cahier Chronos 10. Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 2002. 97-118.