John M. Peterson, Ph.D. (1997) in Linguistics, University of Kiel, is a visiting professor of Linguistics at the University of Leipzig. He has published extensively on South Asian languages of both Munda and Indo-Aryan stock, including "Grammatical Relations in Pāli and the Emergence of Ergativity in Indo-Aryan".

"This volume is not only a welcome addition to serious scholarship focused on indigenous languages of South Asia and the Himalayan region or to Austroasiatic linguistics overall (beyond the strict geographical boundaries of the subcontinent), but a highly laudable exemplar of thorough grammatical description based on meticulous (and respectful) linguistic documentation. In my view, it has also much to offer to practitioners of linguistic analysis who adopt rather more overtly theoretical approaches, by way of the sheer richness and intricacy of the challenges that the Kharia language poses, which the author has so ably captured in this landmark volume." Tista Bagchi, Himalayan Linguistics Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 17-20.