[1] Hale was known as a polyglot who retained the ability to learn new languages with extraordinary rapidity and perfection throughout his life.

Much of his research in the last two decades of the twentieth century was devoted to the development of syntactic models that could explain why these properties cluster.

He argued that any language, whether it has a hundred million native speakers or only ten, is equally likely to yield linguistic insight.

[7] At the society's annual meeting in 1995, Hale delivered a presidential address on universal grammar and the necessity of linguistic diversity.

[9] In May 2003, after Hale's death, the LSA's executive committee established a professorship in field methods in his name for the biennial Linguistic Institutes.

[10] In October 2016, the LSA launched a fellowship in honor of Hale to be awarded to a graduate student attendee of the Linguistic Institute pursuing a course of study in endangered language documentation.

The first Ken Hale student fellowship was awarded at the 2017 Linguistic Institute to Ivan Kapitonov of the University of Melbourne.

[13] At the age of 14 Hale met his future wife Sara (known as Sally) Whitaker on his parents' ranch in Canelo, Arizona, and they both attended the Verde Valley School together for a year.