Giovanni Bennardo

Cecil Brown

Winifred Creamer

Daniel Gebo

Michael Kolb

Sibel Kusimba

Judy Ledgerwood

Mark Mehrer

Andrea Molnar

Susan Montague

Leila Porter

Ronald Provencher

Rob Ridinger

Susan Russell

Kendall Thu

Katharine Wiegele

Ann Wright-Parsons

Cecil H. Brown

Ph.D., Tulane, 1971
Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus

Professor Brown has research and teaching interests in linguistic anthropology, including ethnobiology, language and culture, and historical-comparative linguistics. His recent research has focused on lexical acculturation, language universals, and the comparative study of Mayan languages.  He has undertaken fieldwork among Huastec (Mayan) speakers of northern Veracruz, Mexico, and among Zapotec speakers in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Fall semester 2001, he was a visiting scientist in the linguistics department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Professor Brown is a Distinguished Research Professor of Northern Illinois University. The author of three books, he regularly teaches ANTH 230: The Anthropology of Language.

Selected Publications

Linguistic Ethnobiology: Amerindian Oak Nomenclature. In Ethnobiology at the Millenium, ed., Richard I. Ford, pp. 111-147. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 2001.

What is Houma? International Journal of American Linguistics 66:521-548, 2000 (with Heather K. Hardy).

Lexical Acculturation in Native American Languages. Oxford University Press, 1999.

Spanish Loanwords in Languages of the Southeastern United States. International Journal of American Linguistics 64:148-167, 1998.

Contact Information:

Dr. Cecil H. Brown
Department of Anthropology
Stevens Building 102
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL 60115

Fax: 815-753-7027
Email: chbrown@niu.edu