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!

We’ve just receive the wonderful news that our own Rose Underhill, who graduated with a BA in linguistics in 2015, will be joining the Linguistics Department of the University of British Columbia this fall, as a student in their Masters program.

Congratulations, Rose!

The Linguistic Society of America has just recently established a new charitable fund in honor and memory of our own Emmon Bach. This fund, which was initiated through the work of our own Barbara Partee, will support a scholarship for students seeking to attend the biennial Institute for Collaborative Language Research (CoLang; formerly InField), which trains students in collaborative linguistic fieldwork with language communities.

The fund is seeking donations to help them reach a goal of $50,000. Our own Barbara Partee, Lyn Frazier, and Alice Harris are contributing donors. Contributors do not have to be members of the LSA. For more information on this important new fund, please see the official announcement at the link below:

http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/emmon-bach-fund

Please join us in congratulating Barbara Partee for her recent election as the Chair of Linguistics and Language Science at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This is both a great honor, and an exciting opportunity. As stated by AAAS, the section chairs serve to identify broad issues in science of interest to the section and to the association overall, and to comment to the CEO and Board Chair on the priorities of the AAAS, including worthwhile new initiatives deserving of consideration.

Congratulations, Barbara!