Week of Jan 26

PhonLab in Gazette

Harvard Gazette featured Assistant Professor Kathryn Franich and members of the PhonLab, including Xiaotian (Alice) Wang (PhD student), Lexi Williams (’26), Sam Lyczkowski (’26), in an article on language loss and displacement in Cameroon at the end of last semester. The piece highlights their fieldwork documenting how conflict and forced migration are reshaping linguistic landscapes, and the urgent need to support and preserve indigenous languages.

We’re incredibly proud of this meaningful and timely research. Check out the full Gazette story to learn more about the team’s work and the impact they’re making: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/12/at-a-loss-for-words/.

 

Harvard at LSA 2026

Huge congratulations to everyone from Harvard Linguistics who presented at LSA 2026! ✨🎉

We’re so proud of our concentrators, grad students, postdocs, and faculty who shared their work at this year’s LSA Annual Meeting. Your talks and posters represented the department with insight, creativity, and scholarly rigour.

Here are the fantastic contributions from our community:

  • Xiaotian (Alice) Wang (G3), Ankana Saha (G7), and Kate Davidson (faculty): 'Code-switching in Mandarin and English Definite Noun Phrases'
  • Natasha Thalluri (G5): 'Ghosts and shadows- evidential contrafactives in Georgian'
  • Yi-Chi (Yvette) Wu (G6): 'Complementation and clause size in an Austronesian voice language'
  • Anabelle Caso (G4): 'The syntax and prosody of modification in ancient and modern languages'
  • Daria Bikina (G6): 'Bare noun interpretation in Russian requires syntax: Evidence from topicless structures'
  • Jackson Herrera (concentrator): 'Contrasting Accounts of Consonant Gradation in Northern Sámi'
  • Nozomi Tomita (ASL preceptor): 'From Gestural Handshapes MAN & WOMAN to Agreement: Derivational Pathways in Japanese Sign Language'
  • Tory Sampson (M&M postdoc): 'The constructionalization of movement repetition: Explaining noun-verb pairs in sign languages'

Thank you all for showcasing the breadth and depth of research happening in our department. Congratulations on your terrific work! 🙌

 

Harvard at SSILA 

Members of the Alabama Project group gave wonderful presentations at SSILA this year. Ava Silva (concentrator) and Jacob Fernandes (alumnus) gave a talk entitled 'A Stratal OT account of Alabama Agent Agreement'. Tanya Bondarenko (faculty) gave a talk on 'Becoming a strong PCC language: a view from Alabama'. Congratulations!

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