Many graduate students and faculty from the department participated in the 2024 Linguistic Society of America’s Annual Meeting. The meeting was held in person in New York, NY from January 4-7. This year marked the centennial of LSA and as a member of the Centennial Planning Committee Emeritus Professor, Sally Thomason, helped put together a wonderful array of events and happenings to celebrate and reflect on the 100 years of the LSA. As it usually happens, the Annual Meeting was held concurrently with the annual meetings of the American Dialect Society (ADS) and the North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences (NAAHoLS), as well as other special events, which also had participants from our department
Many members of the department traveled to this years meeting where they were joined by many of our PhD alumni including Danielle Burgess, Wilkinson Gonzales, David Medeiros, Joy Peltier, Moira Saltzman, Alicia Stevers, Alicia Wassink, Rachel Weissler, Kelly Wright, and undergraduate alumna Kelly Kendro who gave presentations. Explore the full program from the 2024 LSA Annual Meeting.
Awards
PhD alumna Kelly Wright received a Best Paper in Language Award
Aya Halabi received the inaugural Travel Award from COGEL The Committee on Gender Equity in Linguistics
Professors Marlyse Baptista and Donna Jo Napoli, who were former faculty at UofM Linguistics, also received awards at the meeting.
Paper Presentations
“Implicit beliefs about spoken language contact in American Sign Language (ASL),” Felicia Bisnath
“The MULTI Project: Resources for enhancing multi-faceted Creole representation in the linguistics classroom,” Danielle Burgess, Joy P. G. Peltier, Sophia Eakins, Wilkinson Gonzales, Alicia Stevers, Ariana Bancu, Felicia Bisnath, Moira Saltzman, Marlyse Baptista
"A cross-linguistic investigation on the time course of sentence production," Jeonghwa Cho, Julie Boland
“You switch I switch, Jack: On the role of interaction in Cabo Verdean language mixing,” Sophia Eakins
“Language use in Indigenous-authored television series,” Monika Bednarek, Samantha Bloomstein, Theresa Cerdan, Ashley McDermott, Barbra A Meek, Meredith Randall, Anna B Whitney
“Minding the Gap: Length of precarious employment increasing for tenure-track linguists over time,” Rikker Dockum, Caitlin M. Green, Michaela Richter, Roma Sarathi, Katharine Briggs, Savithry Namboodiripad
“On optimization strategies in Egyptian Arabic/English dominant bilinguals,” Yourdanis Sedarous, Marlyse Baptista
Poster Session Presenters
“Tough-constructions as Complex Constituents,” Aliaksei Akimenka
“Locating Agreement in the Grammar: Are We There Yet?,” Aya Halabi
“MAKING CONTACT: The Importance of Verbal Gestures and Intimate Interaction for Understanding the Conditions of Language Change in West Africa,” Promise McEntire
“Bilingual knowledge of wh-in-situ and Island Violations,” Yourdanis Sedarous, Acrisio Pires
Organized Session Participation
Savithry Namboodiripad co-organized and participated in this session in which she aimed to bring together scholars who have been working to push against essentialist characterizations of language use in their research, and who are interested in thinking about how to bring this research into other spheres of their academic practice, including teaching, reviewing, evaluating, and advocating for language rights.
Teaching Linguistics: A Glimpse into the Future
Just as the field of Linguistics has changed over the past 100 years, so has the teaching of linguistics, and it will continue to change to reflect changes in student populations, technology, higher education, and the field as a whole. Jessi Grieser was a panelist in this symposium that offered a glimpse into current practices and possible future trends in teaching linguistics and makes a case for adaptable teaching strategies that are grounded in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
Ezra Keshet presented Linguistics for Everyone: An introductory Linguistics course for non-majors, centering social justice at this session, discussing how large-format introductory courses traditionally prepare beginner students, say prospective majors, for advanced study in a given field. This was collaborative work by Ezra Keshet, Wyatt Barnes, Kathryn Hendrickson, Lisa Levinson, Elizabeth Levesque, Grace Brown, Alicja Krasowska, Dominique Bouavichith*, and Heather Rypkema (University of Michigan, except *Graduate Employees’ Organization #3550).
First Americans/Nations and the Linguistic Society of America: Past, Present and Future
Barbra A. Meek presented in this session where the goal was to highlight the lived experiences of First Americans/Nations linguists and language scholars as they expand on the notion of “the ways in which linguistics as a field has proven useful and supportive of the enterprise of maintaining, revitalizing, and recovering languages.” (Gerdts 2017:607).
Historical Reflections on Graduate Training in Linguistics: First-hand Accounts from Senior Scholars
Sally Thomason was a part of this session and was one of several marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the LSA. It consisted of a panel discussion by senior scholars reflecting on their own graduate training in linguistics from the 1960s to early 1980s.
