Michel Launey, now retired, was a professor at the Universit Denis Diderot, Paris and the Institut de Recherches pour le Dveloppement, Cayenne. He was a visiting professor at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico and Yale University, among others. His other books include Introduction la langue et la literature aztques (the French edition of this book, published in 1979), Une grammaire omniprdicative (1994) and Awna Parikwaki: Introduction la langue palikur de Guyane et de lmapa (2003).