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

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

) is Distinguished

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

Linguistics 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. Linguis ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He specializes in

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

and has particular interest in

African languages The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families: * Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Souther ...

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 land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

. His 1972 Ph.D. dissertation was supervised by

Victoria Fromkin Victoria Alexandra Fromkin (; May 16, 1923 – January 19, 2000) was an American 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 sounds of a l ...

and entitled, "A Phonological Study of Fe’fe’-

Bamileke The Bamileke are a Central African people who inhabit the Western High Plateau of Cameroon. Languages The Bamileke languages belong to the Grassfields branch of the Niger-Congo language family, which is sometimes labeled as a " Bantuoid lang ...

." 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 C ...

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: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The t ...

and other Niger-Congo languages. He has received numerous grants for his research, mostly from the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

. He also received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

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 concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

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 and jazz, 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 to comprise up to five dances, sometimes with ...

in 2021. 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 largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...

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 a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Un ...

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

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 met ...

'', ''

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 p ...

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

Phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

(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 Alfred (“Al”) D. Mtenje (born 17 September 1953 in Ntcheu district, Malawi) is a professor of Linguistics at the University of Malawi. He is known for his work on the prosody of Malawian Bantu languages, as well as for his work in support of l ...

) * ''A theory of phonological weight''. Mouton. 1985.

References

External links

Curriculum Vitae

Larry Hyman on Fieldwork as a state of mind
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hyman, Larry American phonologists University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Linguists from the United States Linguists of Niger–Congo languages 1947 births Living people Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America Linguistic Society of America presidents