Marianne Mithun is a leading scholar of American Indian languages and language typology. She is currently Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Mithun has worked on a wide variety of languages from a wide variety of language families, but specializes in Native American languages. She began her career with extensive fieldwork on Iroquoian languages

Iroquoian languages

The Iroquoian languages are a First Nation and Native American language family.-Family division:*Ruttenber, Edward Manning. 1992 [1872]. History of the Indian tribes of Hudson's River. Hope Farm Press....

, especially Mohawk

Mohawk language

Mohawk is an Iroquoian language spoken by around 2,000 people of the Mohawk nation in the United States and Canada . Mohawk has the largest number of speakers of the Northern Iroquoian languages; today it is the only one with greater than a thousand remaining...

, Cayuga

Cayuga language

Cayuga is a Northern Iroquoian language of the Iroquois Proper subfamily, and is spoken on Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, Ontario, by around 100 Cayuga people.-Dialects:...

, and Tuscarora, She has also worked in California on Central Pomo

Central Pomo language

Central Pomo is one of the seven Pomoan languages spoken in Northern California. It is currently an endangered language, with fewer than 10 speakers...

 and the Chumashan languages

Chumashan languages

Chumashan is a family of languages that were spoken on the southern California coast by Native American Chumash people.From the Coastal plains and valleys of San Luis Obispo to Malibu), neighboring inland and Transverse Ranges valleys and canyons east to bordering the San Joaquin Valley; and on...

, on Central Alaskan Yupik, and on the Austronesian language Kapampangan

Kapampangan language

The Pampangan language, or Kapampangan , is one of the major languages of the Philippines. It is the language spoken in the province of Pampanga, the southern half of the province of Tarlac and the northern portion of the province of Bataan. Kapampangan is also understood in some barangays of...

.

Mithun compiled a comprehensive overview of Native American languages in The Languages of Native North America. A review on the Linguist List

Linguist List

The LINGUIST List is a major online resource for the academic field of linguistics. It was founded by Anthony Aristar in early 1990 at the University of Western Australia, and is used as a reference by the National Science Foundation in the United States...

 describes the work as "an excellent book to have as a reference" and as containing "an incredible amount of information and illustrative data." The work is a bipartite reference organized firstly by grammatical

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

 categories (including categories that are particularly widespread in North America, such as polysynthesis), and secondly by language. In 2002 the volume won the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award

Leonard Bloomfield Book Award

The Leonard Bloomfield Book Award is presented by the Linguistic Society of America to the recently published book "which makes the most outstanding contribution to the development of our understanding of language and linguistics". From its establishment in 1992 through 2008 the award was made...

, which is awarded yearly for the best book in linguistics.

She has taught at many institutions around the world, including Georgetown

Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

, La Trobe

La Trobe University

La Trobe University is a multi-campus university in Victoria, Australia. It was established in 1964 by an Act of Parliament to become the third oldest university in the state of Victoria. The main campus of La Trobe is located in the Melbourne suburb of Bundoora; two other major campuses are...

, Rice

Rice University

William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...

, Stanford

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, SUNY, Amsterdam, Cagliari

University of Cagliari

The University of Cagliari is a university located in Cagliari, Italy. It was founded in 1620 and is organized in 11 Faculties.-History:The Studium Generalis Kalaritanum was founded in 1606 along the lines of the old Spanish Universities of Salamanca, Valladolid and Lérida...

, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, Hamburg

University of Hamburg

The University of Hamburg is a university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by Wilhelm Stern and others. It grew out of the previous Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen and the Kolonialinstitut as well as the Akademisches Gymnasium. There are around 38,000 students as of the start of...

, UIUC, UNM

University of New Mexico

The University of New Mexico at Albuquerque is a public research university located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States. It is the state's flagship research institution...

, Wake Forest

Wake Forest University

Wake Forest University is a private, coeducational university in the U.S. state of North Carolina, founded in 1834. The university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina, the state capital. The Reynolda Campus, the university's main campus, is...

, and Yale

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

.

She was the founding president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology in 1983. From 1999 to 2003 she was president of the Association for Linguistic Typology. She is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway.-History:The University of Oslo was established in 1811. The idea of a learned society in Christiania surfaced for the first time in 1841. The city of Throndhjem had no university, but had a learned...

.