Linguistics at BU enables students to study human language from various perspectives and consider the relationships between linguistics and other disciplines. Our academic programs offer training in linguistic theory and analysis and include a wide range of courses examining the biological, social, cultural, historical, and cognitive bases of language.
In early March, several BU Linguistics members presented at the 9th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC) in Hawai'i. Pictured here, PhD student Becca Wheeler had a very popular poster talk titled "Inupiaq: a case study in passive standardization in revitalization." Her project was borne out of Prof. O'Connor's course on Language Revitalization. […]
PhD candidate Ousmane Cisse's abstract titled "The Graphemic Variation of /ŋ/ and Its Sociolinguistic Implications in Casamance Mandinka Ajami," was accepted at the 25th Sociolinguistic Symposium (SOSY). His presentation was earlier this month at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Congrats to Ousmane on the great achievement!
Professor Coppock presented with Law Professor Jill Anderson (University of Connecticut) last Friday at a one-day symposium on legal interpretation and data ("SOLID") at Georgetown. https://solid-symposium.github.io/2025/ They presented a talk entitled "'Any' problems: Lexical Vagueness or Structural Ambiguity?".
PhD student Romi Hill was recently published in the Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) conference proceedings. She, along with her colleagues during her master's degree at Konstanz University in Germany, propose a method to integrate gradient language redundancy effects into a formal generative model of grammar. You can read the paper here: https://lfg-proceedings.org/lfg/index.php/main/article/view/60
In February, Aditya Yedetore presented to ANCOR (AI, Neuro, and CogSci Research) at Brown University. His talk was titled "Classical computation in connectionist models" and you can read more about it and watch a recording here: brown-ancor.github.io
Jenna Conklin, one of our visiting assistant professors, recently accepted a post-doc position at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT). She will be working with Martin Krämer to use artificial grammar learning to better map the typology of vowel and consonant harmony. You can learn more about Martin's work on the university's website. Congratulations, Jenna!!
This month, Professor Neil Myler presented at the CRISSP (Center for Research in Syntax, Semantics, and Phonology) seminar on Theme Vowels, Categories, and Categorization. His talk was titled "Romance Conjugation Class Features could be Syntactic (and on certain assumptions must be)" If you couldn't make it, he also did a debrief that you can watch […]
Boston University Linguistics is accepting applications for the MA program until March 15! Learn about the program here: https://www.bu.edu/linguistics/academic-programs/graduate-programs/ma-in-linguistics/ Apply here: https://www.bu.edu/cas/admissions/ma-ms/