The 2024 (Centennial) Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America took place January 4- January 7 in New York City.
The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) was founded in 1924 to advance the scientific study of language and its applications. LSA plays a critical role in supporting and disseminating linguistic scholarship both to professional linguists and to the general public. The LSA Annual Meeting is the premier gathering of linguistics professionals and students from throughout the profession and around the world. It is an unparalleled opportunity to share research, network, and socialize with your colleagues from academia, industry, and government. The Annual Meeting includes a number of activities geared to professional development for linguists at all stages of their careers and contains many programs and events of interest to students, who make up one-third of attendees
The UIUC Linguistics Department was represented at the centennial LSA in a large number of exciting ways:
Awards
Three members of the UIUC community were recognized during the LSA Awards Ceremony on January 6th.
Professor Silvina Montrul ‘s "Native Speakers, Interrupted" (Cambridge University Press, 2023) was selected as the winner of this year’s Leonard Bloomfield Book Award.
Linguistics PhD Student Allison T. Casar received the Committee on Gender Equity in Linguistics Travel Award.
From the UIUC Spanish and Portuguese Department, Luis David Gaytán-Soto received the Ethnic Diversity in Linguistics Committee (CEDL) Travel Grant.
Talks
Several PhD Students in the UIUC Linguistics Department gave talks about their work during the LSA conference.
Joseph F. Beckwith, whose research interests include historical linguistics and morphology, presented his work Spanish Strong Verbs and Morphomic Theory: A corpus-based linguistic analysis.
Allison T. Casar, a researcher in sociolinguistics, presented their work Slur reclamation and metalinguistic discourse among LGBTQ speakers.
Joshua Dees, along with SpanPort PhD Student Katie VanDyne, presented their work with Linguistics PhD Student Anna Romaniuk: The CΔG and Polish causative/anticausative deadjectival verbs. (January 6). These three researchers have varying research interests, including syntax and morphology.
UIUC was represented in other ways at LSA talks this year, including Katie VanDyne, from the Spanish and Portugues Department presenting Relating the size and the specifier: Contrasts in intermediate wh-movement.
Additionally, UIUC Ling PhD Alumna Tatiana Luchkina presented her work completed with UIUC Professor Tania Ionin and UIUC Ling PhD Alumna Maria Goldshtein: Focus identification in a pitch accenting language with flexible constituent order: The case of Russian.
UIUC Ling BA Alumnus M Angel presented his work, The phonology of Emoji: An analysis of the B Button Emoji.
Posters and Organized Sessions
Professor Aida Talić presented her poster You don’t need a definite article to have a DP: A view from Telugu domain of N and A.
Luis David Gaytán-Soto (From UIUC’s Spanish and Portuguese Department), Joshua Dees (UIUC Linguistics PhD Student) presented in an organized session with Miranda McCarvel, Iara Mantenuto, David Bowie, and Tran Truong. This session discussed Identifying, understanding, and supporting diverse first-generation scholars in linguistics.
Additionally, UIUC MATESL alumna, Dr. Alexandra Johnston (with. Dr. Nancy Frishberg, Fishbird Consulting), held an organized session on “Professional careers for linguists outside of academia: The new role of faculty in advising linguistics students”
Overall, the students and faculty of UIUC’s Linguistics Department were very well represented at the Linguistics Society of America this year! Great work to all of our hard-working professors and students!
