Larry M. Hyman (born September 26, 1947, in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

) is Distinguished

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. He specializes in

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

and has particular interest in

African languages The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...

Education and career

He received his B.S., M.A, and Ph.D. degrees from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

. His 1972 Ph.D. dissertation, "A Phonological Study of Fe’fe’-

Bamileke The Bamiléké people are an ethnic group of Central Africa that inhabits the Western High Plateau colloquially known as the ''grassfields'' of Cameroon. According to Dr John Feyou de Hapy, Bamiléké means "people of faith". Languages The B ...

," was supervised by

Victoria Fromkin Victoria Alexandra Fromkin (; May 16, 1923 – January 19, 2000) was an American linguistics, linguist who taught at UCLA. She studied slips of the tongue, mishearing, and other speech errors, which she applied to phonology, the study of how the ...

. Hyman taught at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

from 1971 to 1988. There he edited and contributed to many volumes in the ''Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics'' (''SCOPIL'') series. He took up a position in UC-Berkeley's Department of Linguistics in 1988, where he served as chair of the department from 1991 to 2002. He remained at Berkeley until his retirement in 2022. Hyman's widely cited and influential research focuses on phonological theory,

language typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

, and

, particularly

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...

and other Niger-Congo languages. His passion for linguistic research was contagious. This is evident in the last lines of his Linguist of the Day profile on the LinguistList from 2007, sharing with students how he got into the field: “Linguistics is an international field which still provides great opportunities for teaching, research, travel, collegiality, and friendship. I was very lucky to find my field as early in my life as I did and do not take for granted how good linguistics and so many in it have been to me.” He has received numerous grants for his research, mostly from the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

. In addition, he received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

in 1979.

Honors and awards

Hyman was the President of the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

(LSA) in 2017 and delivered his presidential address on "What tone teaches us about language". He is also a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the LSA and served on the LSA Executive Committee from 2003-2005. He received the Victoria A. Fromkin Lifetime Service Award from the LSA in 2021. He became a Chevalier (Knight) of the prestigious

Ordre des Palmes Académiques A suite, in Western classical music, is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral/concert band pieces. It originated in the late 14th century as a pairing of dance tunes; and grew in scope so that by the early 17th century it comprised up to ...

in 2021. This award honors Hyman's longtime commitment to educational exchanges and cooperative academic projects between France and the University of California, notably as Director of the France-Berkeley Fund. In 2004 he was awarded the

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

medal. A

Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

in his honor, ''Revealing Structure'', was published by the

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the university press of the University of Chicago, a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It pu ...

in 2018. He has been chair of the Editorial Board, University of California Publications in Linguistics since 1999. He has been editor or on the editorial board of many linguistic journals, including ''

Linguistic Inquiry ''Linguistic Inquiry'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal in generative linguistics published by the MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambri ...

'', ''Journal of African Languages & Linguistics'', ''

Language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

'', ''

Natural Language and Linguistic Theory ''Natural Language & Linguistic Theory'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering theoretical and generative linguistics. It was established in 1983 and originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers. Since 2004 the journal is pub ...

'', ''Lingua Descriptive Series'', ''

Phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

(Yearbook)'', ''

Linguistic Typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

'' and ''Africana Linguistica'' ( Musée royal de l'Afrique central).

Selected publications

* '' Phonology: Theory and Analysis'' (1975) * "Why describe African languages?" In A. Akinlabi & O. Adesola (eds.) ''Proceedings of the 4th World Congress of African Linguistics'', New Brunswick 2003, 21–42. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2005. * "The word in Luganda". In F.K. Erhard Voeltz (ed.), ''Studies in African linguistic typology'', 171–193. John Benjamins, 2005 (with Francis Katamba). * "Word-prosodic typology". ''

'' 23.225–257, 2006. * "On the representation of tone in Peñoles Mixtec". ''

International Journal of American Linguistics The ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' (''IJAL'') is an academic journal devoted to the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas. ''IJAL'' focuses on the investigation of linguistic data and the presentation of grammatical ...

'' 73.165–208, 2007 (with John P. Daly). * "Where’s phonology in typology?" ''

'' 11.265–271, 2007. * "Niger-Congo verb extensions: Overview and discussion". In Doris L. Payne and Jaime Peña (eds), ''Selected Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference on African Linguistics'', 149–163. Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2007. * "Elicitation as experimental phonology: Thlantlang Lai tonology". In Maria-Josep Solé, Pam Beddor & Manjari Ohala (eds), ''Experimental Approaches to Phonology in Honor of John J. Ohala'', 7–24. Oxford University Press, 2007. * "Directional asymmetries in the morphology and phonology of words, with special reference to Bantu." In ''

'' 46.2 (2008). * "Universals in phonology". In ''The Linguistic Review'', 2008. * "Focus in Aghem". In ''Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Structure'', Potsdam, June 6–8, 2006 (with

Maria Polinsky Maria “Masha” Polinsky is an American linguist specializing in theoretical syntax and study of heritage languages. Career Polinsky was born in Moscow, Russia. She received a B.A. in philology from Moscow University in 1979, and an M.A. in ...

). * Prosodic morphology and tone: the case of Chichewa. In Harry van der Hulst, René Kager & Wim Zonneveld, eds., ''The prosody-morphology interface'', 90-133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. (with Al Mtenje) * ''A theory of phonological weight''. Mouton. 1985.

References

External links

Curriculum Vitae

Larry Hyman on Fieldwork as a state of mind

Échange entre Resulam et le Prof. Larry Hyman: Éminent Phonologue (Phonologist) des langues à tons
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hyman, Larry Phonologists from the United States University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Linguists of Niger–Congo languages 1947 births Living people Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America Linguistic Society of America presidents University of California, Los Angeles alumni University of Southern California faculty