Hyman taught at the University of Southern California from 1971 to 1988. There he edited and contributed to many volumes in the Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics (SCOPIL) series.[4] He took up a position in UC-Berkeley's Department of Linguistics in 1988, where he served as chair of the department from 1991 to 2002.[5][6] He remained at Berkeley until his retirement in 2022.
Hyman's widely cited and influential research focuses on phonological theory, language typology, and African languages, particularly Bantu languages and other Niger-Congo languages.[2] His passion for linguistic research was contagious. This is evident in the last lines of his Linguist of the Day profile on the LinguistList from 2007, sharing with students how he got into the field: “Linguistics is an international field which still provides great opportunities for teaching, research, travel, collegiality, and friendship. I was very lucky to find my field as early in my life as I did and do not take for granted how good linguistics and so many in it have been to me.”[7]
He became a Chevalier (Knight) of the prestigious Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 2021.[17] This award honors Hyman's longtime commitment to educational exchanges and cooperative academic projects between France and the University of California, notably as Director of the France-Berkeley Fund. In 2004 he was awarded the Collège de France medal.[18]
"Why describe African languages?" In A. Akinlabi & O. Adesola (eds.) Proceedings of the 4th World Congress of African Linguistics, New Brunswick 2003, 21–42. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2005.
"The word in Luganda". In F.K. Erhard Voeltz (ed.), Studies in African linguistic typology, 171–193. John Benjamins, 2005 (with Francis Katamba).
"Niger-Congo verb extensions: Overview and discussion". In Doris L. Payne and Jaime Peña (eds), Selected Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 149–163. Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2007.
"Elicitation as experimental phonology: Thlantlang Lai tonology". In Maria-Josep Solé, Pam Beddor & Manjari Ohala (eds), Experimental Approaches to Phonology in Honor of John J. Ohala, 7–24. Oxford University Press, 2007.
"Directional asymmetries in the morphology and phonology of words, with special reference to Bantu." In Linguistics 46.2 (2008).
"Universals in phonology". In The Linguistic Review, 2008.
"Focus in Aghem". In Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Structure, Potsdam, June 6–8, 2006 (with Maria Polinsky).
Prosodic morphology and tone: the case of Chichewa. In Harry van der Hulst, René Kager & Wim Zonneveld, eds., The prosody-morphology interface, 90-133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. (with Al Mtenje)
