Ellen Contini-Morava is an anthropological linguist, interested in the meanings of linguistic forms, discourse analysis, functional linguistics and (noun) classification; in particular, in the relationship between lexicon and grammar. She specializes in Bantu languages in general, and Swahili in particular.
Contini-Morava received her PhD from Columbia University in 1983[1] under William Diver and Erica Garcia. She is a professor emerita at the University of Virginia.[2]
Contini-Morava is the author of the book Discourse Pragmatics and Semantic Categorization: The Case of Negation and Tense-Aspect with Special Reference to Swahili (Mouton de Gruyter, 1989).[3]
Her edited volumes include Between Grammar and Lexicon (edited with Yishai Tobin, John Benjamins, 2000)[4] and Cognitive and Communicative Approaches to Linguistic Analysis (edited with Robert S. Kirsner and Betsy Rodríguez-Bachiller, John Benjamins, 2004).[5]
