The following is a list of linguists.
- Adele Goldberg
- Anthony Burgess (1917 - 1993) British
- August Schleicher (1821 - 1868) German
- Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897 - 1941) American
- Carl Meinhof (1857 - 1944) German
- Carl Richard Lepsius (1810 - 1884) German
- Charles F. Hockett (1914 - 2000) American
- Clement Martyn Doke (1893 - 1980) South African
- Deborah Tannen American
- Diedrich Westermann (1875 - 1956) German
- Dwight Bolinger (1907 - 1992) American
- Edward Sapir (1884 - 1939) American
- Ernst Oswald Johannes Westphal (1919 - 1990)
- Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913) Swiss
- Fran Ramovš (1890 - 1952) Slovene
- Franz Boas (1858 - 1942) American
- Franz Bopp (1791 - 1867) German
- Franc Miklošič (1813 - 1891) Slovene
- Fred Lukoff (1920 - 2000) American (Korean language)
- George Lakoff American
- Holger Pedersen (1867 - 1953) Danish
- Jakob Grimm (1785 - 1863) German
- Jean-François Champollion (1790 - 1832) French
- Joseph H. Greenberg (1914 - 2001) American
- Jože Toporišič (born 1926) Slovene
- Karel Oštir (1888 - 1973) Slovene
- Karl Verner (1846 - 1896) Danish
- Kenneth L. Hale (Ken) (1934 - 2001) American
- Kenneth L. Pike (1912 - 2000) American
- L. L. Zamenhof (1859 - 1917) Polish (creator of the constructed language Esperanto)
- Leonard Bloomfield (1887 - 1949) American
- Michael Halliday (1925 - ) Australian
- Michael Ventris (1922 - 1956) British
- Morris Halle (1923 - ) American (phonologist)
- Noam Chomsky (1928 - ) American
- Otto Jespersen (1860 - 1943) Danish
- Panini (sometime during 7th - 4th centuries BCE) - the man who started it all with his analysis of Sanskrit in ancient India
- Roman Jakobson (1896 - 1982) Russian
- Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (1906 - 1992) American
- Sidney M. Lamb (born 1929) American
- Umberto Eco (1932 - ) Italian
- Victor Yngve (1920 - ) American
- Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787 - 1864) Serb
- Sir William Jones (1746 - 1794) British
- William Labov (1927 - ) American (founder of sociolinguistics)
- William Safire (1929 - ) American (editor of a New York Times column on language and linguistics)
- Zellig Harris (1909 - 1992) American