It's been another busy and productive semester - here are some of the happenings during Spring 2026!
(1/29) OSU hosts NACLO
Every year, the Department of Linguistics hosts a testing site for the North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition (NACLO), a linguistics problem solving competition held all over North America. Four students from our testing site were invited to the Invitational Round, held on 3/18, also hosted by us. The top competitors from the Invitational Round represent the United States in Bucharest, Romania this summer!
(2/5) Laura Siragusa was awarded the Feminist Research, Education and Engagement Center grant
Linguistics Assistant Professor of Teaching Laura Siragusa and collaborators Octavian Robinson and Margaret Price have been awarded a small grant from OSU's Feminist Research, Education and Engagement Center entitled "Care Linguistics Network" to study pedagogical approaches that enhance student training before and after fieldwork through self-reflection, and her panel "The Anthropologist’s Body in the Field: Lessons for Training" has been approved at the Society for Applied Anthropology, partially funded by a grant from OSU's Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures.
(2/5) Charlie Rowe awarded Arts and Humanities Small Grant
Linguistics major Charlie Rowe has been awarded an Arts and Humanities Small Grant, which will be used to fund travel to the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting in New Orleans in January, where they will present a talk based on their BA thesis work: “Reconciling diverging frequency effects in inflectional defectiveness: A study of Peninsular Spanish verbs” (co-authored with thesis advisors Maria Copot and Andrea Sims).
(2/5) Dan Parker wins ASC IIGP Grant
Linguistics Associate Professor Dan Parker has been awarded an ASC Research Instrumentation and Infrastructure Grant Program grant for his proposal "Advancing language science research and training with EEG".
(2/5) Connor Rouillier wins Graduate Student Research Grant
Linguistics graduate student Connor Rouillier has been awarded a Graduate Student Research Grant by the Center for Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at OSU. The award will be put help fund data collection in Saudi Arabia for Connor’s dissertation on individuation as encoded in Najdi Arabic agreement variation.
(2/5) Emily Leach wins Undergraduate Research Scholarship
Linguistics major Emily Leach has been awarded an Undergraduate Research Scholarship for a thesis project “Exploring the Whole-Object Bias in Machine Learning”.
(2/5) Shari Speer granted Emeritus Status
Linguistics Professor Shari Speer has been granted emerita status by the OSU Board of Trustees!
(2/5) Charlie Rowe awarded Undergraduate Research Scholarship
Linguistics major Charlie Rowe has been awarded an Undergraduate Research Scholarship for their thesis project “Missing or mixed up? What judgements to Spanish verbs reveal about defectiveness”.
(3/6) Prospective Student Party
Andrea Sims hosted the department party for the prospective students.
(3/27) Buckeye Language Network Symposium 2026
The symposium was held on March 27th and hosted the invited speaker Adam Aleksic, known as the Etymology Nerd.
(4/3) Department Chair, Professor William Schuler was selected as a College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor
(4/3) The recipients of the 2026 Ilse Lehiste Memorial Fund Graduate Research Award were announced:
Lizzy Feng, Social Meanings of Male Celebrities' Creaky Voice in Mandarin
Yue Yin, Learning Biases in the Asymmetry between Tonal and Segmental Phonological Processes
(4/10) Katherine Howitt will join the department as an Assistant Professor of Syntax + AI in the autumn semester!
(4/28) Linguistics End of Year Celebration
On April 28th, the department hosted an end of year celebration. It was an opportunity to mix and mingle, enjoy sandwiches and sweet treats, as well as congratulating those who are graduating.
(4/28) Linguistics Undergraduate Research Seminar
The department hosted a research seminar for undergraduates. Presenters from the department were Erin Falkenbach, Leena Futoryansky, Umayna Magsi, Dongxu Wu, Nathan Peters, McKinley Roza, Quinn Seitz, and Stefan Ionascu.