Lyle Campbell facts for kids

Lyle Richard Campbell, born on October 22, 1942, is an American expert in languages. 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. Mr. Campbell used to be a professor of linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Life and Education

Lyle Campbell was born on October 22, 1942, and grew up in the countryside of Oregon. He went to Brigham Young University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in archaeology and anthropology in 1966.

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

Teaching and Research

Mr. Campbell has taught at many universities around the world. These include the University of Missouri, the State University of New York at Albany, and Louisiana State University. He also taught in New Zealand at the University of Canterbury.

More recently, he was a professor at the University of Utah and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. He has also been a visiting professor in countries like Australia, Mexico, Germany, and Finland.

His main areas of study and teaching include:

• How languages change over time (historical linguistics).
• Languages spoken by Native Americans.
• Helping to save and bring back endangered languages.
• Studying different types of languages (typology).
• How language is used in society (sociolinguistics).
• The connection between language and culture (linguistic anthropology).

Important Works

Lyle Campbell has written 25 books and over 200 articles about languages. Two of his books have won a special award called the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award. This award is given for the best book in linguistics.

One of his award-winning books is American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. The other is Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspectives, which he wrote with Alice C. Harris.

He also helped start the Catalogue of Endangered Languages. This is a project that lists and tracks languages that are at risk of disappearing. He is also part of the team that guides the Endangered Languages Project.

Key Books by Lyle Campbell

Here are some of the important books Lyle Campbell has written or helped to write:

• Cakchiquel Basic Course (1971): A book to help people learn the Cakchiquel language.
• Quichean Linguistic Prehistory (1977): This book explores the history of Quichean languages.
• The Languages of Native America: An Historical and Comparative Assessment (1979): A big book about Native American languages.
• The Pipil Language of El Salvador (1985): This book focuses on the Pipil language spoken in El Salvador.
• Historical syntax in cross-linguistic perspective (1995): This book looks at how sentence structures change in different languages.
• American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America (1997): A detailed study of the history of Native American languages.
• Historical Linguistics: an Introduction (2004, 2020): This book is a guide to historical linguistics and has been updated many times.
• Language Classification: History and Method (2008): This book explains how languages are grouped into families.
• The Indigenous Languages of South America: A Comprehensive Guide (2012): A guide to the native languages of South America.
• Cataloguing the World's Endangered Languages (2018): This book is about how to list and keep track of endangered languages.
• The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages (2018): A large collection of information about endangered languages.
• The Indigenous Languages of the Americas (2024): His most recent book, covering native languages across the Americas.

See also

In Spanish: Lyle Campbell para niños

• Classification of indigenous languages of the Americas