Student Abstract Award Holders

2023


From top: Aron Finholt,

Josh Phillips, 

Caitlin Coons

2022

  • First Prize: Aron Finholt (University of Kansas) for "States and Possession in Mashi: A Novel Argument for Decomposing have"
  • Second Prize: Josh Phillips (Yale University) for "Cyclicity, narrativity and Djambarrpuyŋu tense"
  • Third Prize: Caitlin Coons (University of Texas at Austin) for "Relative Clause Typology Across Signed and Spoken Languages"

2021

  • First Place: Hironori Katsuda (University of California, Los Angeles) and Jeremy Steffman (University of California, Los Angeles):  The role of segment and pitch accent in Japanese spoken word recognition
  • Second Place: Shannon Bryant (Harvard University): Evidence from Oromo on the typology of complementation strategies.
  • Third Place: Maura O'Leary (University of California, Los Angeles) and Richard Stockwell (University of California, Los Angeles): Skills-based grading: a novel approach to teaching formal semantics

2020

  • First Place: Kate Mooney (New York University): Unifying Prosodic and Segmental Repair: Metathesis and Epenthesis in Uab Meto
  • Second Place: Milena Šereikaitė (University of Pennsylvania): Case of Complex Event Nominalizations in Lithuanian
  • Third Place: Anna Bax (University of California, Santa Barbara): Linguist-speech pathologists collaboration as service-in-return to speakers of minority languages

2019

  • First Place: Robert Xu (Stanford University): Placing Social Types Through Prosodic Variation: An Investigation of Spatial Meanings in Mainland China
  • Second Place: Colin P. Davis (MIT): English Possessor Extraction
  • Third Place: Emily Clem (UC Berkeley): The cyclic nature of Agree: Maximal projections as probes

2018

  • First Place: Daniel Duncan (New York University): Changing language and identity during suburbanization
  • Second Place: Milena Šereikaitè (University of Pennsylvania): Active existential voice in Lithuanian: Burzio’s generalization revised
  • Third Place: Carol-Rose Little and Mia Wiegand (Cornell): A compositional morphosemantic analysis of exclusivity in Ch’ol

2017     

  • First Place: Emily Moline (University of California, Davis): "Emergent Adult L1 Literacy: Theorizing Findings from a Case Study"
  • Second Place: Jon Ander Mendia (University of Massachusetts Amherst): "Knowledge about Ignorance: what Superlative Modification teaches us"
  • Third Place: Chantal Gratton (Stanford University): "Non-binary identity construction and intraspeaker variation"

2016    

  • First Place: Nicholas Baier (University of California, Berkeley): "Deriving partial anti-agreement"
  • Second Place: Andrew Lamont (Indiana University): "Implications of a typology of progressive place assimilation"
  • Third Place: Gwynne Mapes (University of Bern): "'Oh, and it's got to be cut into four triangles, never in half': The role of negation in Bon Appetit's 'Editor's Letter'"

2015    

  • First Place: Jason Zentz (Yale University): "The composite derivation of Shona partial wh-movement
  • Second Place: Danielle Barth (University of Oregon): "Reduction in Child Speech, Child-Directed Speech and Inter-Adult Speech“
  • Third Place: Bryan Rosen (University of Wisconsin-Madison):  "Diagnosing Direct Modification in Hocąk"

2014   

  • First place: Patrick Jones (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for “Cyclic evaluation of post-lexical prosodic domains: evidence from Kinande boundary tones”
  • Second place: Matthew Faytak (University of California, Berkeley) for “Chain shifts, strident vowels, and expanded vowel spaces”
  • Third place: Hope E. Morgan (University of California, San Diego) for “The emergence of syntax in Kenyan Sign Language: Constituent order and space.”

2013 

  • First place: John Sylak (University of California, Berkeley) The Phonetic Properties of Voiced Stops Descended from Nasals in Ditidaht
  • Second place: Marc Garellek (University of California, Los Angeles) for Prominence vs. phrase-initial strengthening of voice quality
  • Third place: Josef Fruehwald (University of Pennsylvania) for Differentiating Phonetically and Phonologically Conditioned Sound Change

2012

2011

  • First place: Joshua Jensen (University of Texas at Arlington)
  • Second place: Jason Grafmiller and Stephanie Shih (Stanford)
  • Third place: Hannah Haynie (Berkeley)

About the Student Abstract Award

Instituted in 2010, this award provides $500 for the best abstract submitted by a student for a paper or poster presentation at the next Annual Meeting, and $300 for the submitters of the abstracts rated second and third. Every student who submits an abstract for the Annual Meeting is automatically considered for this award; no nominations are required. All abstracts submitted for the annual meeting are rated, blindly, by external reviewers and the LSA Program Committee. Once abstracts have been accepted, the LSA Staff (who have access to information about abstract submitters) will determine which student abstracts were most highly rated. In case of a tie, the Awards Committee members will read the abstracts and select the winner and the two runners-up. The awardees will be publicly announced as soon as they have been selected, and will be recognized in the Handbook for the Annual Meeting.

Frequency: Annually

Eligibility: every student who submits an abstract for the Annual Meeting is automatically considered for this award; no nominations are required.