Marianne Mithun (born 1946) is an American linguist specializing in

American Indian languages Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large nu ...

and

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 ...

. She is professor of linguistics at the

University of California at Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

, where she has held an academic position since 1986.

Career

She began her career with extensive fieldwork on

Iroquoian languages The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoian ...

, especially Mohawk,

Cayuga Cayuga often refers to: * Cayuga people, a native tribe to North America, part of the Iroquois Confederacy * Cayuga language, the language of the Cayuga Cayuga may also refer to: Places Canada * Cayuga, Ontario United States * Cayuga, Illinoi ...

, and

Tuscarora Tuscarora may refer to the following: First nations and Native American people and culture * Tuscarora people **'' Federal Power Commission v. Tuscarora Indian Nation'' (1960) * Tuscarora language, an Iroquoian language of the Tuscarora people * ...

, earning her PhD in Linguistics from

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

in 1974 with a dissertation entitled "A Grammar of Tuscarora" (

Floyd Lounsbury Floyd Glenn Lounsbury (April 25, 1914 – May 14, 1998) was an American linguist, anthropologist and Mayanist scholar and epigrapher, best known for his work on linguistic and cultural systems of a variety of North and South American languages. Eq ...

, dissertation supervisor). Her work spans a number of linguistic subfields, including morphology,

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituenc ...

discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...

, prosody,

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...

and

change Change or Changing may refer to: Alteration * Impermanence, a difference in a state of affairs at different points in time * Menopause, also referred to as "the change", the permanent cessation of the menstrual period * Metamorphosis, or change, ...

, typology,

language documentation Language documentation (also: documentary linguistics) is a subfield of linguistics which aims to describe the grammar and use of human languages. It aims to provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given spee ...

, and the interrelations among these subfields. She has worked on a wide variety of languages from a wide variety of language families, but specializes in

Native American languages Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...

. Besides Iroquoian languages, she has also worked in California on Central Pomo and the

Chumashan languages Chumashan was a family of languages that were spoken on the southern California coast by Native American Chumash people, from the Coastal plains and valleys of San Luis Obispo to Malibu, neighboring inland and Transverse Ranges valleys and c ...

, on Central Alaskan Yup'ik, and on the Austronesian language Kapampangan. Mithun compiled a comprehensive overview of Native American languages in ''The Languages of Native North America.'' A review on the

Linguist List The LINGUIST List is a major online resource for the academic field of linguistics. It was founded by Anthony Aristar in early 1990 at the University of Western Australia, and is used as a reference by the National Science Foundation in the Unit ...

describes the work as "an excellent book to have as a reference" and as containing "an incredible amount of information and illustrative data." The work is a bipartite reference organized firstly by

grammatical In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular variety (linguistics), speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the go ...

categories (including categories that are particularly widespread in North America, such as

polysynthesis In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able ...

), and secondly by family. Mithun and her husband, linguist Wallace Chafe, established and directed The Wallace Chafe and Marianne Mithun Fund for Research on Understudied Languages. The fund provides support for graduate students to cover expenses associated with language documentation projects for understudied languages.

Awards and honors

Mithun has taught at many institutions around the world, including Georgetown, La Trobe,

Rice Rice is the seed of the grass species '' Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima'' (African rice). The name wild rice is usually used for species of the genera '' Zizania'' and '' Porteresia'', both wild and domesticat ...

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. S ...

SUNY Albany The State University of New York at Albany, commonly referred to as the University at Albany, UAlbany or SUNY Albany, is a Public university, public research university with campuses in Albany, New York, Albany, Rensselaer, New York, Rensselae ...

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

Cagliari Cagliari (, also , , ; sc, Casteddu ; lat, Caralis) is an Italian municipality and the capital of the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy. Cagliari's Sardinian name ''Casteddu'' means ''castle''. It has about 155,000 inhabitant ...

, Berkeley,

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

UIUC 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 Uni ...

, UNM, Wake Forest, and

. Mithun was the founding president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology from 1983 to 1985. From 1999 to 2003 she was president of the

Association for Linguistic Typology Association may refer to: *Club (organization), an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal * Trade association, an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry * Voluntary associat ...

. From 2014 to 2015 she was president o
The Societas Linguistica Europaea
She is a member of the

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters ( no, Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick Unive ...

. In 2002 ''The Languages of Native North America'' won the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award, awarded annually by 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'' ...

for the best book in linguistics. In 2019, Mithun served as the vice president/president-elect of the

(LSA), and in 2020 she served as the 95th President of the LSA. In 2021, she was awarded the

Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics The British Academy presents 18 awards and medals to recognise achievement in the humanities and social sciences. Overview The British Academy currently awards 18 prizes and medals: General awards: * British Academy Medal (for academic research ...

by the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars s ...

"for her research into Native American and Austronesian languages which represent a significant contribution to theoretical linguistics".

Selected works

* 1984. "The evolution of noun incorporation." ''Language'' 60: 847–894. * 1991. "Active/Agentive case marking and its motivations." ''Language'' 67: 510–546. * 1999. ''The Languages of Native North America.'' Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. * 2001. "Who shapes the record: The speaker and the linguist." ''Linguistic Fieldwork: Essays on the Practice of Empirical Linguistic Research''. Paul Newman and Martha Ratliff, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 34-54.

References

External links