| Birth Date: | 1939 |
| Death Date: | 16 November 2023 |
| Spouse: | Saras Smith (1936–2018) |
| Children: | 2, including Ivan Smith |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Dennis Fry |
| Academic Advisors: | Gordon Frederick Arnold |
| Discipline: | Linguistics |
| Sub Discipline: | Applied linguistics |
| Workplaces: | University College London |
| Doctoral Students: | Ianthi-Maria Tsimpli |
Neilson Voyne Smith FBA (born 1939, died 16 November 2023[1]), known as Neil Smith, was Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at University College London.
He wrote his PhD (1964) on the grammar of Nupe, a language of Nigeria. Since then his research has encompassed theoretical syntax, language acquisition, the savant syndrome, and general linguistic theory, particularly the work of Noam Chomsky.
In the 1990s he began working with an autistic man, Christopher, in collaboration with Ianthi-Maria Tsimpli. According to Smith and Tsimpli, Christopher has a non-verbal IQ of between 60 and 70, but his English is comparable to that of normal native speakers, and he has an extraordinary ability to learn new languages.
Smith was Head of the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics at University College London from 1983 to 1990, and headed the Linguistics section from 1972 until his retirement in 2006, when he was presented with a Festschrift Language in Mind: A Tribute to Neil Smith on the Occasion of his Retirement (edited by Robyn Carston, Diane Blakemore and Hans van de Koot).
Smith was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1999.[2] He was made an Honorary Member of the Linguistic Society of America in 2000.
Smith was married to Saras Smith (Saraswati Keskar, 1936–2018).[3] Together they endowed the Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics.[1]