Lyle Campbell


Lyle Richard Campbell is an American scholar and linguist known for his studies of indigenous American languages, especially those of Central America, and on historical linguistics in general. Campbell is professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Life and career

Campbell was born on October 22, 1942, and grew up in rural Oregon. He received a B.A. in archaeology and anthropology from Brigham Young University in 1966, then an M.A. in linguistics from the University of Washington in 1967, followed by doctoral studies at UCLA, earning a Ph.D. in 1971.
Campbell has held appointments at the University of Missouri, the State University of New York at Albany,
Louisiana State University, the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand, the University of Utah, and finally the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. He has been a visiting professor at Australian National University, Colegio de México, Memorial University, Ohio State University, University of Hamburg, University of Helsinki, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Universidad del País Vasco, University of Turku, and at three universities in Brazil. He has held joint appointments in Linguistics, Anthropology, Behavioral Research, Latin American Studies, and Spanish.
Campbell's research and teaching specializations include: historical linguistics, American Indian languages, documentation and revitalization of endangered languages, typology, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and Uralic languages.
Campbell is the author of 25 books and 200+ articles; two of his books were awarded the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award by the Linguistic Society of America for the best book in linguistics published two years prior. He is also co-founder of the Catalogue of Endangered Languages, and member of the Governance Council for the Endangered Languages Project.

Published books

  • Campbell, Lyle & Blair, Robert et al.. Cakchiquel Basic Course. Provo: Peace Corps.
  • Campbell, Lyle. Quichean Linguistic Prehistory. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Campbell, Lyle et al.. Bibliography of Mayan Languages and Linguistics. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, Publication 3. SUNY Albany.
  • Campbell, Lyle & Mithun, Marianne . The Languages of Native America: An Historical and Comparative Assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press.
  • Campbell, Lyle. El Idioma Cacaopera. Administración del patrimonio cultural. San Salvador, El Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, Dirección de publicaciones.
  • Campbell, Lyle & Justeson, John . Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing. SUNY Albany/University of Texas Press.
  • Justeson, John, William Norman, Lyle Campbell & Terrence Kaufman). The Foreign Impact of Lowland Mayan Languages and Script. New Orleans: Tulane University.
  • Campbell, Lyle. . Berlin: Mouton Publishers.
  • Campbell, Lyle. The Linguistics of Southeast Chiapas. Provo, Utah.
  • Migliazza, Ermnesto & Lyle Campbell. 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. Historical syntax in cross-linguistic perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Hill, Jane, P. J. Mistry, & Lyle Campbell . The Life of Language: Papers in Linguistics in Honor of William Bright. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Campbell, Lyle. American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press..
  • Campbell, Lyle . Grammaticalization: a critical assessment.
  • Campbell, Lyle et al.. New Zealand English: its Origins and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Campbell, Lyle. Historical Linguistics: an Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Campbell, Lyle and William J. Poser. Language Classification: History and Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press..
  • Campbell, Lyle and Verónica Grondona . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Campbell, Lyle . Language Isolates. London: Routledge..
  • Campbell, Lyle and Anna Belew . Cataloguing the World's Endangered Languages. London: Routledge..
  • Rehg, Kenneth and Lyle Campbell The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press..
  • Campbell, Lyle. Historical Linguistics: an Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. .
  • Campbell, Lyle, Luis Díaz & Fernando Ángel. Nivaclé Grammar. Utah: Utah Press.
  • Campbell, Lyle. The Indigenous Languages of the Americas. New York: Oxford University Press..