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Laura Michaelis named Charles J. Fillmore Professor at 2025 LSA Linguistic Institute

Laura A Michaelis-Cummings — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 22:36:07 +0000

Laura Michaelis named Charles J. Fillmore Professor at 2025 LSA Linguistic Institute Laura A Michae… Wed, 01/15/2025 - 15:36

Laura A. Michaelis, Professor and Chair of Linguistics, has been named Charles J. Fillmore Professor for the upcoming Linguistic Society of America (LSA) Summer Institute, which will take place at the University of Oregon in July and August 2025. Since its inception in 1928, the LSA Institute has served as a premier biennial event, convening approximately 100 faculty and hundreds of students from around the world for an intensive month of courses, lectures, workshops, and networking opportunities.

The Fillmore Professorship, established in 2015 to honor the late Charles J. Fillmore—a world-renowned UC Berkeley scholar of syntax and semantics—recognizes linguists who advance his legacy of exploring lexical meaning in relation to context, grammar, corpora, and computation. The professorship includes a student fellowship, underscoring its commitment to fostering the next generation of empirical linguists.

Dr. Michaelis, an expert on the use of corpus tools to study syntactic meaning, variation, and change, is the fifth recipient of this title—and the first to have been a doctoral advisee of Charles Fillmore. At the 2025 Linguistic Institute, she will co-teach a course with her frequent collaborator Elaine Francis (Purdue) entitled Constructions and the Grammar of Context.

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Dr. Rai Farrelly partnering with Ukrainian educators through US State Dept appointment

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 19:57:51 +0000

Dr. Rai Farrelly partnering with Ukrainian educators through US State Dept appointment Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/23/2024 - 13:57

CU Linguistics Teaching Associate Professor and TESOL Director, Dr. Rai Farrelly, was profiled in a recent Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine article.

In the piece, she discusses building a virtual collaboration with colleagues in Ukraine through the US Department of State's Access Program, highlighting the pedagogical challenges of teaching large, mixed-level classes - challenges which are severly compounded by the extraordinary circumstances of war facing those educators and their students.

A common thread running through Dr. Farrelly's TESOL work is an understanding of and apprehension for English as an imperial language, and a sensitivity to the importance of mother languages and the specificities of local contexts: "There’s a depth and breadth of proper preparation that goes beyond how to teach a language. It’s about understanding individual differences, personalities, motivations, culture, how your (first language) influences acquisition, classroom management, curriculum design. There’s so much that goes into it that’s beyond simply speaking English.”

You can read further about Dr. Farrelly's life's work in this recent feature in VoyageDenver: https://voyagedenver.com/interview/life-work-with-rai-farrelly-of-golden

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Dr. Rai Farrelly Featured in VoyageDenver

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 22:05:18 +0000

Dr. Rai Farrelly Featured in VoyageDenver Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/12/2024 - 16:05

CU Linguistics faculty member and TESOL director Dr. Rai Farrelly was recently spotlighted in an interview article in Voyage Denver magazine. In the piece, she discusses her work to co-found the educational Tanzania-based non-profit, Project Wezesha, her work here in Boulder in building communicty-based programs, as well as her care and concern for teaching English to individuals whose mother tongues could very well be endangered languages.

To quote Dr. Farrelly discussing how she understands the impact of her work in the face of so much global turmoil, "There’s a lovely Quechuan tale about a hummingbird doing her best to put out a forest fire one drop at a time. When the other animals tell her she’s too small to make a difference, she replies 'I’m doing the best I can.' I channel the hummingbird often!"

You can access the full interview here to learn more about Dr. Farrelly's fascinating journey as a linguist, educator, and community organizer!

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PhD student Kate Arnold-Murray featured in CU Arts & Sciences Magazine

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 17:34:39 +0000

PhD student Kate Arnold-Murray featured in CU Arts & Sciences Magazine Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/11/2024 - 11:34

CU Linguistics PhD student Kate Arnold-Murray was recently featured in Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine, in an interview discussion of her work on the Settle for Biden Instagram campaign during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Drawing from the theoretical/methodological toolkits of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, Kate's analysis drills down into the inter- and subtextuality of memes shared by Settle for Biden (a group unaffiliated with the official Biden campaign), which aimed to produce Biden as an altogether unideal yet obviously preferable candidate in the eyes of progressive voters during the lead up to the United States' 2020 election.

Kate's findings were published this year as an open-access article in the journal Language and Society: "Settle for Biden: The scalar production of a normative presidential candidate on Instagram."

Congratulations, Kate!

A meme shared by Settle for Biden, representative of the textual and visual strategies used by the campaign

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CU Linguistics honors 2024 graduates

Anonymous — Sat, 18 May 2024 01:54:46 +0000

CU Linguistics honors 2024 graduates Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/17/2024 - 19:54

On May 8, 2024, the CU Linguistics community gathered in Muenzinger Auditorium to celebrate its graduating class of 2024. Hosted by department chair Laura A. Michaelis, the ceremony recognized the achievements of 42 graduating students (21 BA, 13 MA, 3 MS and 5 PhD). Reflecting the interdisciplinary focus of linguistic study at CU, 80 percent of Linguistics BA graduates combined the Linguistics degree with a double or triple major, or minor in another discipline. Graduates' second-major departments included: Spanish (the most popular), Italian, Japanese, Russian, SLHS, and Anthropology. Minor departments included Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Italian, Russian, International Affairs, Political Science, Geography, Environmental Design and Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences. Eight Linguistics majors graduated with Distinction, obtaining at least a 3.75 cumulative GPA for coursework at CU. Three Linguistics MA graduates wrote MA theses and nine graduated with an interdisciplinary certificate—in Cognitive Science, Culture, Language and Social Practice or Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages. This year marked only the second in which student speakers were invited to address the graduates. Delivering the Undergraduate Address was Gina Pitts, a Linguistics major with TESOL emphasis, who plans to work with immigrant and refugee learners of English. The Graduate Address was given by Linguistics PhD graduate Velda Khoo, who spoke about her upbringing in and PhD research into the linguistic fusion zone of Singapore. Dr. Khoo also received her PhD hood from her advisor, Distinguished Professor Kira Hall, during the ceremony. The ceremony also recognized two outstanding continuing students as recipients of the David S. Rood Scholarship: Tessa Moskov, a Linguistics, Psychology, and Neuroscience triple major, and Rachel Wagner, a Linguistics major with minors in Spanish and Ethnic Studies. In closing the ceremony, Prof. Michaelis urged graduates to use the tools of the discipline to help our societies confront the twin crises of climate change and climate disinformation, saying "The world is an even more troubled place now than it was when you started your degree, but I believe the world needs your contributions now more than ever".

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Tessa Moskoff and Rachel Wagner awarded 2024 David Rood Linguistics Undergraduate Scholarship

Anonymous — Wed, 01 May 2024 16:16:42 +0000

Tessa Moskoff and Rachel Wagner awarded 2024 David Rood Linguistics Undergraduate Scholarship Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/01/2024 - 10:16

CU Linguistics is pleased to announce the 2024 winners of the David Rood Linguistics Undergraduate Scholarship, Tessa Moskoff and Rachel Wagner! Awarded since 2017, the David Rood Award recognizes a continuing student or students for their outstanding academic achievement in our undergraduate program, as well as potential for further success in linguistics. The scholarship of $500 is named in honor of Professor David Rood, who retired in 2016 after 48 years of teaching at CU.

Tessa Moskoff (left) is pursuing a Linguistics, Psychology, and Neuroscience triple major, and is interested in the intersection of the three fields. In the future, she hopes to conduct psycholinguistic research, exploring how cognition is shaped by (and shapes) language, especially relating to embodied cognition, neurodiversity, and the inner narrator. Currently, she is conducting research on child-directed speech alongside Dr. Bhuvana Narasimhan and Dr. Rebecca Scarborough, through the Studio Lab program. The project is questioning the differences between child-directed and adult-directed speech, in addition to whether child-directed speech serves to increase intelligibility for the child. Tessa is also an officer of Linguistics Club, has volunteered through Literacy Practicum’s program Reading Buddies, and helped organize this year’s distinguished speaker event, featuring Sonja Lang.

Rachel Wagner (right) is a Linguistics major with minors in Spanish and Ethnic Studies. Her areas of interest include ethnolinguistics, code switching, and idiolect analysis. She currently volunteers as an interpreter and translator for the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network and works as a tutor at the Herbst Academic Center. Rachel became passionate about linguistics after doing a research project on psycholinguistics in the 6th grade. She is writing an autoethnography about her family and the Chicano movement and beginning research on regional rap phonotactics. Rachel hopes to pursue a PhD in sociolinguistics after completing the BAM curriculum. When she’s not taking care of her puppy, Mavis, she loves to sing and even performed at “Prime’s Got Talent” here on campus.

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Pui Fong Kan (SLHS), Eliana Colunga (PSYC), and Bhuvana Narasimhan (LING) awarded SSCI divisional grant to support undergraduate research in child language

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 20:34:26 +0000

Pui Fong Kan (SLHS), Eliana Colunga (PSYC), and Bhuvana Narasimhan (LING) awarded SSCI divisional grant to support undergraduate research in child language Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/30/2024 - 14:34

The researchers, from three different CU departments, will launch a new interdisciplinary training program "Diversity in Child Language Acquisition Research". The program, running from Fall '24 to Summer '25, will train a cohort of undergraduate students to investigate language development in children from marginalized and underresourced communities. Students will learn research and professional socialization skills through rotations in the following labs:

Child Language Learning Lab (Dr. Pui Fong Kan),
Developmental and Cognitive Adaptive Systems lab (Dr. Eliana Colunga)
Language, Development, and Cognition Lab (Dr. Bhuvana Narasimhan).

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Chase Raymond and research team receive $2.6 million NIH grant

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 17:05:55 +0000

Chase Raymond and research team receive $2.6 million NIH grant Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/15/2023 - 10:05

Along with a team of healthcare researchers from Columbia University, Prof. Chase Raymond, who shares a secondary appointment with the Department of Family Medicine at CU Anschutz’s School of Medicine, has received an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This four-year, $2.6 million grant is a collaborative project, headed up by colleagues from Columbia University’s School of Nursing, Dr. Maxim Topaz and Dr. Jacquelyn Taylor.

The project, funded specifically by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities within the NIH, is entitled: “Identifying and Reducing Stigmatizing Language in Home Healthcare: The ENGAGE Study”. The overarching aim is to design and pilot-test a technology-driven system, ENGAGE, that will help to identify and reduce the use of stigmatizing language among home healthcare nurses. As part of the project, the team will be collaborating with two large providers of home healthcare services in the US to collect and analyze millions of nursing notes. Natural language processing techniques will then be implemented to automatically detect and flag stigmatizing language in the clinical notes, and provide feedback to the nurses to improve written language referring to patients.

Research of this sort has already proven hugely valuable in other healthcare settings, where stigmatizing language has been shown to negatively affect patient outcomes on a range of fronts, and where efforts to shift such language practices have resulted in demonstrable improvements on these same fronts. The team is thus excited to push into the context of home healthcare, specifically, to see what improvements might be made in that arena.

Congratulations, Prof. Raymond and team!

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CU Linguistics engages new students at Fall 2023 A&S College Day Welcome Fair

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 19:28:28 +0000

CU Linguistics engages new students at Fall 2023 A&S College Day Welcome Fair Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/29/2023 - 13:28

Undergraduates Rain Michael, Jaimie Jettmar, and Jacob Burton (from right to middle in photo) joined faculty members Kira Hall and Kris Stenzel at last week’s A&S College Day Welcome Fair to talk with incoming students about choosing linguistics as a major or minor. The most common question asked: What is linguistics? All three volunteers did a great job answering that question and inspired a lot of passers by to take our courses. Thank you Rain, Jaimie, and Jacob!

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Dr. Martha Palmer receives 2023 ACL Lifetime Achievement Award

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 18:27:15 +0000

Dr. Martha Palmer receives 2023 ACL Lifetime Achievement Award Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/09/2023 - 12:27

CU Professor of Linguistics, Computer Science, and Institute of Cognitive Science Faculty Fellow Martha Palmer was recently recognized by the Association for Computational Linguistics with their 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award. You can read more about Dr. Palmer's 50+ year career and her current projects here. We at CU Linguistics would like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to Dr. Palmer for this incredible honor!

Dr. Palmer delivering her address upon receipt of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the recent ACL conference.

From left to right: Rehan Ahmed, Margaret Perkoff, Elizabeth Spaulding, Skatje Myersm, Assistant Professor Alexis Palmer,
Professor Martha Palmer, Assistant Professor Katharina Kann, Abteen Ebrahimi, and Abhijnan Nath at the 2023 ACL conference.

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