Please join the LSA in congratulating the recipients of the Early Career Award, the Kenneth L. Hale Award, the Linguistic Service Award, the Linguistics, Language, and the Public Award, and the inaugural Mentoring Award.  The awards will be presented during a special ceremony at the LSA Annual Meeting on Saturday, January 4, 2020, in New Orleans.  The recipients are:

Early Career Award: Gabriela Pérez Báez (University of Oregon)

The Early Career Award, established in 2010, recognizes scholars early in their career who have made outstanding contributions to the field of linguistics. This award is bestowed for contributions to the documentation of Zapotecan languages, for raising public awareness of language diversity and endangerment, and for leading efforts to train members of speaker communities in North America and Mexico. The breadth of Dr. Gabriela Pérez Báez’s contributions is remarkable, and, as Curator of Linguistics at the Smithsonian Institution, she served for over eight years as a public face of the field within one of the world’s most important cultural institutions. Her leadership has allowed events such as the National Breath of Life Archival Institutes for Indigenous Languages to thrive, and her forthcoming Isthmus Zapotec dictionary will become a landmark publication.

Kenneth L. Hale Award: Patience L. Epps (University of Texas at Austin)

The Kenneth L. Hale Award, established in 2002, recognizes scholars who have done outstanding work on the documentation of a particular language or family of languages that is endangered or no longer spoken. This award is given in recognition of Professor Patience Epps's contributions to Hup, Dâw, and the other fragile and little-studied Nadahup languages of Brazil’s Upper Rio Negro basin. Her work in Nadahup communities, ongoing since 2001, has yielded educational and literary materials in community languages, a major grammar, extensive digital archives, and numerous articles. She exemplifies the spirit of Ken Hale’s work by using language documentation to address broad social, cultural, historical, typological, and theoretical issues that transcend the boundaries of her own fieldwork and by ensuring that her research is always guided by an ongoing commitment to, and collaboration with, her host communities.

Linguistic Service Award:  Pop-Up Mentoring Program (PUMP)

First presented in 2007, this award honors members of the LSA who have performed distinguished service to the Society.  The organizers of PUMP, working in collaboration with COGEL (formerly COSWL) and conference sponsors in linguistics, have provided an invaluable service to linguists seeking short-term mentoring relationships. In just two years, PUMP has served 379 linguists at 15 conferences and Institutes. The volunteer organizers have donated many hours of time and effort to outreach and coordination, including matching mentors with mentees. Their contributions have provided invaluable support for those participating, and greatly helped to advance the LSA’s Mentoring Initiative. The PUMP team is pictured at right, clockwise from top left: Melissa Baese-Berk, Paola Cepeda, Hadas Kotek, Kristen Syrett, Jessica Rett, Ivona Kucerova.

Linguistics, Language, and the Public Award: Jessica Coon (McGill University)

First presented in 1997, the Linguistics, Language, and the Public Award honors an individual or group for work that effectively increases public awareness and understanding of linguistics and language.  This award is bestowed for work with the crew, actors and director of Arrival—featuring a linguist whose task is to communicate with an alien species that has arrived on earth—and for tirelessly promoting the field of Linguistics through dozens of related print and on-camera interviews and invited lectures. Prof. Coon helped make the portrayal of a linguist realistic, and importantly, she seized this opportunity to talk to the public about the scientific study of language and the importance of linguistic diversity. Through her many interviews and appearances she has helped bring Linguistics to a new audience in an authentic and accessible way.

Mentoring Award: Winner: Monica Macaulay (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Instituted in 2019, this award recognizes the work of individuals who, or organizations that, have exhibited a sustained commitment to mentoring linguists.  Throughout her career, Monica Macaulay has embodied the word “mentor.” She has been instrumental in the creation of various resources focused on providing guidance and mentoring for linguists, including the Women in Linguistics Mentoring Alliance (WILMA), the “Surviving Linguistics” guidebook, and professional development sessions at the LSA’s Annual Meetings and Linguistic Institutes.  She has also personally mentored scores of linguists and their allies over the many years she has been active professionally. Dr. Macaulay is the ideal linguist to receive the LSA's very first Mentoring Award.

Congratulations!  More information about all LSA awards can be found here.