We’ve had an exceptional year for undergraduate research in linguistics. Given that a major goal of our department has to been increase research opportunities for undergraduates in linguistics, we’re extremely proud of the fact that a number of our students are presenting work at major workshops and conferences:

– Jack Duff is presenting work at the CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, a major international conference in the field.

– Anthony Yacovone (2016) is also presenting work at the CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing; this is research that Anthony carried out while he was an undergraduate at UMass last year. 

– Amanda Doucette is presenting work at the Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics conference in Spain

The fact that three (current and recent) undergraduates are presenting research at major professional conferences is quite exceptional. In addition – and no less noteworthy – two of our undergraduates are presenting work at major undergraduate conferences and workshops in linguistics:

– Alicia LeClair is presenting work at both the Cornell Undergraduate Linguistics Colloquium (CULC) and the Great Lakes Expo for Experimental and Formal Undergraduate Linguistics (GLEEFUL), two major national venues for undergraduate research in linguistics.

– Andrew Wang (Computer Science) is presenting work at the Canadian Linguistics Annual Undergraduate Symposium (CLAUS). 

Finally – and again no less noteworthy – three of our undergraduates will be presenting their work at the 23rd Massachusetts Statewide Undergraduate Research Conference, to be held in Amherst on April 28, 2017:

– Vishal Sunil Arvindam will be presenting work on the use of singular “they” in different populations

– Emma Merit will be presenting her work on the role of Mandarin classifiers on the classification of objects.

– Jack Duff will be presenting work on the identification and processing of perspective in so-called ‘free indirect discourse’.

In addition to all this, two of our undergrads will be participating in prestigious linguistics summer programs. Alicia Eclair will be one of the participants in this year’s Guatemala Field School, organized by the University of Maryland, and Jack Duff has been offered a summer internship at the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) Summer Program at Stanford.

We’re extremely proud of the successes of our undergrads, and wish them the best in these presentations and events!