Marianne Mithun facts for kids

Marianne Mithun is an American linguist. A linguist is a scientist who studies human language. She is an expert in American Indian languages and how languages are classified (called language typology). She works as a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has been teaching there since 1986.

Exploring Languages: Marianne Mithun's Career

Early Research and Education

Marianne Mithun started her career by studying Iroquoian languages. These are languages spoken by Native American groups. She spent a lot of time doing fieldwork on languages like Mohawk, Cayuga, and Tuscarora.

She earned her PhD in Linguistics from Yale in 1974. Her main project for her PhD was a detailed study called "A Grammar of Tuscarora." This work helped explain how the Tuscarora language works.

What Does a Linguist Study?

Professor Mithun's work covers many areas of linguistics. She studies how words are formed (called morphology). She also looks at how sentences are put together (called syntax).

Her research also includes discourse, which is how we use language in conversations. She studies prosody, which is the rhythm and sound patterns of speech. She also looks at how languages change over time and when they come into contact with each other.

Focusing on Native American Languages

While she has worked on many different languages, Professor Mithun is a specialist in Native American languages. Besides the Iroquoian languages, she has also studied:

• Central Pomo and Chumashan languages in California.
• Central Alaskan Yup'ik from Alaska.
• Kapampangan, an Austronesian language from the Philippines.

Important Books and Projects

One of her most famous books is The Languages of Native North America. This book gives a full overview of many Native American languages. People who review books about language say it's a great reference. They also say it has "an incredible amount of information."

The book is organized in two main ways. First, it looks at different parts of grammar. Second, it groups languages by their family.

Professor Mithun and her husband, Wallace Chafe, also a linguist, created a special fund. It's called The Wallace Chafe and Marianne Mithun Fund for Research on Understudied Languages. This fund helps university students pay for their research. It supports projects that document languages that haven't been studied much.

Awards and Recognition

Leadership in Language Organizations

Marianne Mithun has held many important leadership roles in the field of linguistics:

• She was the first president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology from 1983 to 1985.
• She served as president of the Association for Linguistic Typology from 1999 to 2003.
• From 2014 to 2015, she was president of The Societas Linguistica Europaea.
• She is also a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Major Awards and Honors

In 2002, her book The Languages of Native North America won the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award. This award is given every year by the Linguistic Society of America for the best book in linguistics.

In 2008, Professor Mithun became a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America. This is a special honor for linguists. In 2020, she became the 95th President of the LSA.

In 2021, she received the Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics from the British Academy. She earned this award for her important research into Native American and Austronesian languages.

Teaching Around the World

Professor Mithun has taught at many universities all over the world. Some of these include:

• Georgetown
• Stanford
• Amsterdam
• Berkeley
• Yale

Selected Works

• Mithun, Marianne (1999). The languages of native North America.

See also