Editors’ dedicatory note

Abstract

This issue of the journal "Language in Africa" is dedicated to Konstantin Pozdniakov -a well-known specialist in African linguistics, who celebrates his 70 th anniversary on July 24, 2022. The list of the fields in which he has significantly contributed in both African and general linguistics is impressively long: Niger-Congo comparative linguistics (especially Atlantic and Mande), the use of quantitative methods for comparative and typological studies, phonotactic universals, typology of personal markers and numeral systems, general morphology and morpho-phonology, the behavior of units that consist of morphemes' segments (known as "submorhemes"), integration of morphemes into paradigms, the theory of "non-morphemic signs", synchronic functions of diachronic changes by analogy, and finally quite a different problem of deciphering of the Easter Island writing system (Rongorongo) .In fact, the biography and research activity of Konstantin Pozdniakov symbolically realizes the goals of this journal, the main purposes of which are the cooperation between two leading centers of African Linguistics in Russia (Moscow and St . Petersburg) and creating a platform for the international cooperation in the field of African languages .