Kenneth L. Hale

Ken Hale
Ken Hale
Born	August 15, 1934; Evanston, Illinois, U.S.
Died	October 8, 2001 (aged 67); Lexington, Massachusetts, U.S.
Academic background
Education	University of Arizona (B.A.); Indiana University Bloomington (M.A., Ph.D.);
Thesis	A Papago Grammar (1959)
Doctoral advisor	Charles F. Voegelin
Academic work
Discipline	Linguist
Institutions	University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (1961–64); University of Alberta (1964); University of Arizona (1964–66); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1967–99);
Doctoral students	Andrew Carnie; C.-T. James Huang; LaVerne Jeanne; Lori Levin; David Nash; Paul Platero; Rudolf de Rijk; Peggy Speas; Richard Sproat;
Website	linguistics.mit.edu/hale

Kenneth Locke Hale (August 15, 1934 – October 8, 2001) was an American linguist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studied a huge variety of previously unstudied and often endangered languages—especially indigenous languages of North America and Australia. Languages investigated by Hale include Navajo, O'odham, Warlpiri, Damin, and Ulwa.

Among his major contributions to linguistic theory was the hypothesis that certain languages were non-configurational, lacking the phrase structure characteristic of such languages as English.