Jump to content

Kenneth L. Hale

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by ACW (talk | contribs) at 22:11, 26 January 2005. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Kenneth L. Hale (1934--2001) was a linguist at MIT. He was famous for his ability to learn languages quickly. He was a profound and influential scholar. He studied an extraordinary variety of languages in great detail, including Navaho, Tohono O'odham, Warlpiri, and Ulwa. In each language that he studied, he took care to educate native speakers in linguistic concepts, so that the study of that language could be taken over by native speakers. The Tohono O'odham linguist Ofelia Zepeda was one of his students.

Hale championed the importance of minor languages in linguistic study, stating that a variety of linguistic phenomena would never have been discovered if only major languages had been studied. Any language, whether it has a hundred million native speakers or only ten, is equally likely to yield linguistic insight.

Hale was a beloved teacher who introduced many advanced students to the techniques of fieldwork and linguistic analysis, and who conveyed his love of language to all who met him.

This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kenneth_L._Hale&oldid=9763182"