Lyle Campbell facts for kids

Lyle Richard Campbell (born October 22, 1942) is an American expert in linguistics. He is famous for studying Native American languages, especially those from Central America. He also specializes in historical linguistics, which is about how languages change over time. Campbell used to be a professor of linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Life and Career

Lyle Campbell grew up in the countryside of Oregon. He went to Brigham Young University. In 1966, he earned a bachelor's degree in archaeology and anthropology.

He then studied linguistics at the University of Washington. He received his master's degree in 1967. Later, he earned his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1971.

Campbell has taught at many universities. These include the University of Missouri and Louisiana State University. He also taught in New Zealand at the University of Canterbury. Later, he worked at the University of Utah. His last teaching role was at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

He has also been a guest professor in many countries. These include Australia, Mexico, Germany, and Finland. He has held different roles in subjects like Linguistics and Latin American Studies.

Campbell's main areas of study are:

• Historical linguistics: How languages change over time.
• American Indian languages: Studying languages spoken by Native Americans.
• Endangered languages: Working to save languages that are disappearing.
• Typology: How languages are different and similar around the world.
• Sociolinguistics: How language is used in society.
• Linguistic anthropology: How language and culture are connected.

Campbell has written 25 books and over 200 articles. Two of his books have won important awards. These are American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America and Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspectives. They both won the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award. This award is for the best book in linguistics.

He also helped start the Catalogue of Endangered Languages. This is a project to list and track languages at risk. He is also part of the team for the Endangered Languages Project.

Published Books

• Campbell, Lyle & Blair, Robert et al. (1971). Cakchiquel Basic Course. Provo: Peace Corps.
• Campbell, Lyle (1977). Quichean Linguistic Prehistory (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 81). Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Campbell, Lyle et al. (1978). Bibliography of Mayan Languages and Linguistics. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, Publication 3. SUNY Albany.
• Campbell, Lyle & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.) (1979). The Languages of Native America: An Historical and Comparative Assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Campbell, Lyle (1980). El Idioma Cacaopera. (Colección Antropología e Historia, 16.) Administración del patrimonio cultural. San Salvador, El Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, Dirección de publicaciones.
• Campbell, Lyle & Justeson, John (Eds.) (1984). Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing. (Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, Pub. 9.) SUNY Albany/University of Texas Press.
• Justeson, John, William Norman, Lyle Campbell & Terrence Kaufman) (1985). The Foreign Impact of Lowland Mayan Languages and Script. (Middle American Research Institute, publication 53.) New Orleans: Tulane University.
• Campbell, Lyle (1985). The Pipil Language of El Salvador. Berlin: Mouton Publishers.
• Campbell, Lyle (1988). The Linguistics of Southeast Chiapas. (Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation, 51.) Provo, Utah.
• Migliazza, Ermnesto & Lyle Campbell (1988). Panorama General de las Lenguas Indígenas en las Amerícas. Historia General de América, tomo 10. Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia. Caracas, Venezuela.
• Harris, Alice C. & Lyle Campbell (1995). Historical syntax in cross-linguistic perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Winner of the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award, 1998.]
• Hill, Jane, P. J. Mistry, & Lyle Campbell (Eds.) (1997). The Life of Language: Papers in Linguistics in Honor of William Bright. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0-19-509427-1. [Winner of the Linguistic Society of America's "Leonard Bloomfield Book Award," 2000, for the best book in linguistics for the previous two years. Named 1998 Outstanding Academic Book by Choice.]
• Campbell, Lyle (Eds.) (2003). Grammaticalization: a critical assessment. (Special issue of Language Sciences, vol. 23, numbers 2–3.)
• Campbell, Lyle et al. (2004). New Zealand English: its Origins and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Campbell, Lyle (2004). Historical Linguistics: an Introduction (2nd edition). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Campbell, Lyle and William J. Poser (2008). Language Classification: History and Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 978-0-521-88005-3.
• Campbell, Lyle and Verónica Grondona (Eds.) (2012). "The Indigenous Languages of South America: A Comprehensive Guide." Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Campbell, Lyle (ed.) (2017). Language Isolates. London: Routledge. ISBN: 978-1-138-82105-7.
• Campbell, Lyle and Anna Belew (eds.) (2018). Cataloguing the World's Endangered Languages. London: Routledge. ISBN: 978-1-138-92208-2.
• Rehg, Kenneth and Lyle Campbell (eds.) (2018) The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978-0-19-061002-9.
• Campbell, Lyle (2020). Historical Linguistics: an Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (4th edition.) [1st edition 1998–1999, 2nd edition 2004, 3rd edition 2013, 4th edition 2020].
• Campbell, Lyle, Luis Díaz & Fernando Ángel (2020). Nivaclé Grammar. Utah: Utah Press. ISBN: 1-60781-775-6
• Campbell, Lyle (2024). The Indigenous Languages of the Americas. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978-0-19-767346-1.

See also

• Classification of indigenous languages of the Americas