Larry M. Hyman, Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School, Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of the France-Berkeley Fund, has worked extensively on phonological theory, tone systems, linguistic typology, and the descriptive, comparative and historical study of Bantu and other African languages within the Niger-Congo family. His publications cover both general and African linguistics including several descriptive grammars as well as theoretical, typological, and historical articles in phonology, morphology, and syntax. A past Guggenheim Fellow, Larry Hyman chaired the Berkeley Department of Linguistics from 1991 to 2002, has directed the France-Berkeley Fund since 2010, and served as 2017 president of the Linguistic Society of America.

Charles Li, Professor Emeritus, UCSB, Dean of the Graduate Division (1990-2017). Co-author with Sandra Thompson, Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar, A Reference Grammar of Wappo. Editor of Mechanisms of Syntactic Change, Word Order and Word Order Change, Subject and Topic. Author of The Bitter Sea: Coming of Age in a China before Mao, The Turbulent Sea: Passage to a New World, Lord Guan: Warrior, Hero and God: A Historical Novel (To appear in March 2025). Author and coauthor of scores of linguistic articles in syntax, morpho-syntactic change, language typology, the evolutionary origin of language, and tone acquisition in child language.