Kenneth Locke Hale (August 15, 1934 – October 8, 2001), also known as Ken Hale, was an American
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...
at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...
who studied a huge variety of previously unstudied and often
endangered language
An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead lang ...
s—especially indigenous
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
s of
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...
and
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
. Languages investigated by Hale include
Navajo
The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the Southwestern United States.
With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest fe ...
,
O'odham,
Warlpiri, and
Ulwa.
Among his major contributions to linguistic theory was the hypothesis that certain languages were
non-configurational, lacking the phrase structure characteristic of such languages as English.
Life
Hale was born in
Evanston, Illinois. When he was six his family moved to a ranch near
Canelo in southern
Arizona
Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
. He attended the
Verde Valley School before Hale said he was "thrown out" for being too distracted by his study of languages, before transferring to Tucson High School. As a young man, Hale was an avid bull and
bronc rider. A film clip of Hale being thrown from a bull in the 1952
Tucson Rodeo was used as stock footage and is included in the film ''
Arena
An arena is a large enclosed platform, often circular or oval-shaped, designed to showcase theatre, musical performances, or sporting events. It is composed of a large open space surrounded on most or all sides by tiered seating for spectators ...
''.
He was a student at the
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory.
T ...
from 1952 and obtained his PhD from
Indiana University Bloomington
Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship campus of Indiana University and, with over 40,000 students, its largest ca ...
in 1959 (thesis ''A Papago grammar''). He taught at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...
in 1961-63 and at the University of Arizona,
Tucson
, "(at the) base of the black ill
, nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town"
, image_map =
, mapsize = 260px
, map_caption = Interactive map ...
in 1963-66. From 1967 he held a sequence of appointments at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...
until his retirement in 1999.
Hale was known as a
polyglot
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Eu ...
who retained the ability to learn new languages with extraordinary rapidity and perfection throughout his life. As a child, in addition to
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
he learned both
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
and the
native American language Tohono O'odham. He learned
Jemez and
Hopi from his high school roommates and Navajo from his roommate at the University of Arizona. Hale managed in just one week to write up 750 pages of fieldwork notes on the
Marra language alone in 1959.
He became so fluent in
Warlpiri that he raised his sons Ezra and Caleb to speak Warlpiri after his return from Australia to the United States. Ezra delivered his eulogy for his father in Warlpiri.
Linguistics
Among his major contributions to linguistic theory was the hypothesis that certain languages were
non-configurational, lacking the phrase structure characteristic of such languages as English. Non-configurational languages, according to Hale, display a set of properties that cluster together, including free
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
, unpronounced
pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...
s and the ability to disperse semantically related words across a sentence. Much of his research in the last two decades of the twentieth century was devoted to the development of syntactic models that could explain why these properties cluster. Hale's ideas initiated an important research program, still pursued by many contemporary linguists.
In 1960, Hale's recording of a short text from one of the few remaining native speakers of the
Diyari language
Diyari () or Dieri () is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Diyari people in the far north of South Australia, to the east of Lake Eyre. It was studied by German Lutheran missionaries who translated Christian works into the languag ...
(spoken in northern
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...
) was the first research by a professional linguist into that language.
Hale took care to educate native speakers in linguistics so they could participate in the study of their languages. Among his students are the Tohono O'odham linguist
Ofelia Zepeda, the
Hopi linguist
LaVerne Masayesva Jeanne,
Navajo
The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the Southwestern United States.
With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest fe ...
linguists
Paul Platero,
MaryAnn Willie, and
Ellavina Tsosie Perkins, and
Wampanoag
The Wampanoag , also rendered Wôpanâak, are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands based in southeastern Massachusetts and historically parts of eastern Rhode Island,Salwen, "Indians of Southern New England and Long Island," p. 1 ...
linguist
Jessie Little Doe Baird
Jessie Little Doe Baird (also Jessie Little Doe Fermino, born 18 November 1963) is a linguist known for her efforts to revive the Wampanoag (Wôpanâak) language. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010.
She resides in Mashpee, Massachusetts ...
. Hale taught every summer in the
Navajo Language Academy summer school, even in 2001 during his final illness.
In 1990 he was elected to the
National Academy of Sciences.
Hale championed the importance of under-studied minority languages in linguistic study, stating that a variety of linguistic phenomena would never have been discovered if only the major world languages had been studied. He argued that any language, whether it has a hundred million native speakers or only ten, is equally likely to yield linguistic insight. Hale was also known as a champion of the speakers of minority languages, and not just of their languages, for which his MIT colleague
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
called him "a voice for the voiceless".
[Kenneth L. Hale, linguist and activist on behalf of endangered languages, dies. (2001, October 11). Retrieved July 02, 2020, from http://news.mit.edu/2001/hale]
Linguistic Society of America
In 1994, Hale served as 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'', ...
.
At the society's annual meeting in 1995, Hale delivered a presidential address on universal grammar and the necessity of linguistic diversity.
Hale was also appointed to the LSA's Edward Sapir Professorship in 1995.
In May 2003, after Hale's death, the LSA's executive committee established a professorship in field methods in his name for the biennial Linguistic Institutes. The Ken Hale Professorship was established to address the need for documenting and preserving endangered languages, and to make courses available that prepare linguistics students to investigate poorly documented endangered languages that may not be offered in their home institutions.
In October 2016, the LSA launched a fellowship in honor of Hale to be awarded to a graduate student attendee of the Linguistic Institute pursuing a course of study in endangered language documentation. The first Ken Hale student fellowship was awarded at the 2017 Linguistic Institute to Ivan Kapitonov of the University of Melbourne.
The LSA also has a
Kenneth L. Hale Award, which has been presented occasionally since 2002 to those nominated scholars who have made substantial contributions to documenting endangered or extinct languages or family of languages. The award is in honor of Hale's extensive work on preserving endangered languages.
Family
At the age of 14 Hale met his future wife Sara (known as Sally) Whitaker on his parents' ranch in
Canelo, Arizona
Canelo is a ghost town in eastern Santa Cruz County, Arizona, between the Canelo Hills and the northern end of the Huachuca Mountains. The site lies along Turkey Creek on Arizona State Route 83, between Sonoita and Parker Canyon Lake, which is ...
, and they both attended the Verde Valley School together for a year. They later became reacquainted at the University of Arizona. They had 4 children: Whitaker, Ian (adopted), and the twins Caleb and Ezra.
References
Further reading
* "Bibliography of Ken Hale and Australian languages", by David Nash in Jane Simpson, David Nash, et al., eds, Forty years on: Ken Hale and Australian languages, Pacific Linguistics 2001. ''(contains a complete listing of all Ken Hale’s work relating to Australia)''
Ken Hale Warlpiri Recordings to his sons (1994)* (contains CV)
External Links
Morris Halle and Norvin Richards, "Kenneth Locke Hale", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2007)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hale, Kenneth
1934 births
2001 deaths
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty
University of Arizona alumni
Indiana University alumni
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty
University of Arizona faculty
Linguists from the United States
Syntacticians
People from Evanston, Illinois
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
20th-century linguists
People from Santa Cruz County, Arizona
Linguists of Algic languages
Linguists of Australian Aboriginal languages
Linguists of Pama–Nyungan languages
Linguists of Warlpiri
Linguistic Society of America presidents
Tucson High School alumni