BIOGRAPHY
Madhav Pokharel is the President of the NDRI. He is an Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Tribhuvan University. He is a leading linguist [phonetician] of the country. He has experience of being an expert advisor in National Language Commission. He also remained as a Chief Editor of the जगदम्बा नेपाली साहित्यको बृहत् इतिहास [Jagadamba Comprehensive History of Nepali Literature] (5 volumes). Professor Pokharel is a former Chairman of Mother Tongue Committee, Curriculum Development Centre [CDC], Ministry of Education, former member of the Multilingual Education [MLE] Committee, Curriculum Development Center and Ministry of Education. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of Prajna Nepali-English dictionary & a dictionary of Literary Terms, Nepal Academy. He was a former President of the Linguistic Society of Nepal and the Chief Editor of its journal Nepalese Linguistics.
ACTIVITIES
He was a team member of Kusunda Project and supervisor of the project from Nepal. He has access to 20 hours of recorded speech of Gyani Maiya Sen, one of the two remaining speakers of Kusunda, the language isolate from Nepal. He was also actively involved in teaching linguistics, grammar and literature in Tribhuvan University for more than 37 years. Professor Pokharel has developed orthography in 64 unwritten languages of Nepal. He also worked as Foreign Language Expert in China Radio International, Nepali Language Expert in Central Institute of Indian Languages [CIIL], Mysore, India, as a Guest Professor in the University of North Bengal, India and taught Nepali in Beijing University of Communications. Additionally, he has presented papers in both the national and international conferences as well as published books and papers in both inside and outside the country.
HONORS & AWARDS
Has achieved Japan Foundation Fellowship twice and worked twice in Kobe University Japan as a Visiting Professor
PUBLICATIONS
• 2005. Notes on Kusunda grammar [2005] [in association with David Watters, Yogendra P Yadava and Balaram Prasain]
• 1998. Nepali syntax [in Nepali]
• 2000. Nepali phonetics and the sounds of Nepalese languages
• 1994. Benefactive constructions in Nepali, Kobe papers in linguistics, Kobe University Japan
• 2009. Noun class agreement in Nepali, Kobe papers in linguistics, Kobe University Japan
Research papers funded by the Japan Foundation
• 1995. Comparative Nepali and Japanese syntax [funded by Japan Foundation]
• 2010. Cognitive similarity in the conceptualization of Classifiers in Nepali and Japanese [funded by Japan Foundation]
• 2014. Assessing Nepali in The companion to language assessment [2014]. USA: Wiley Blackwell.
• 2014. Negation and nominalization in Kusunda, Language [the journal of the Linguistic Society of America] [coauthored by Mark Donohue and Bhojraj Gautam]