Larry M. Hyman

Larry M. Hyman is an American linguist born September 26, 1947, in Los Angeles, California, and distinguished professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he chaired the department from 1991 to 2002 after teaching at the University of Southern California from 1971 to 1988. His research focuses on phonology with particular attention to African languages, especially the Bantu and Niger Congo families, and his 1975 book Phonology: Theory and Analysis remains a widely used contribution to phonological theory and typology. He served as president of the Linguistic Society of America in 2017, received the Victoria A. Fromkin Lifetime Service Award in 2021 and the Chevalier of the Ordre des Palmes Academiques the same year, held a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979, and received a medal from the College de France in 2004; a festschrift titled Revealing Structure honored him in 2018.