Anvita Abbi is an Indian linguist and scholar of minority languages, known for her studies on tribal languages and other minority languages of South Asia. The Government of India honoured her, in 2013, by awarding her the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, for her contributions to the field of linguistics. She was born on 9 January 1949 in Delhi, India. Anvita graduated in Economics (BA Hons) from the University of Delhi in 1968. Subsequently, she secured a master's degree (MA) in Linguistics from the same University with first division and first rank in 1970 and continued her studies to obtain a PhD from the Cornell University, Ithaca, USA, in 1975, her major for the doctoral studies being General Linguistics and the minor in South Asian Linguistics.

She has designed and developed the discipline of Field linguistics in JNU and has trained a large number of students in grammar-writing and language documentation since 1977. Prof. Abbi has carried out first-hand field research on all six language families of India extending from the Himalayas to the Andaman Islands. Her outstanding contribution is the use of modern computational methods for preparing multilingual, multiscriptal, user-friendly talking dictionary of the present-day Great Andamanese language (2012) and unearthing unique grammatical structures of the language (2013). Anvita graduated in Economics (BA Hons) from the University of Delhi in 1968. Subsequently, she secured a master's degree (MA) in Linguistics from the same University with first division and first rank in 1970 and continued her studies to obtain a PhD from the Cornell University, Ithaca, USA, in 1975, her major for the doctoral studies being General Linguistics and the minor in South Asian Linguistics.