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The Linguistic Association of Finland’s graduate award 2025 to MA Jimena Jiménez Real

The Linguistic Association of Finland (SKY) has awarded a prize to a particularly meritorious master’s thesis in linguistics since 2011. This year, there were nine high-quality master’s theses from five Finnish universities in various fields of linguistics that participated in the 2025 competition (theses completed between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025). The SKY award committee has decided to award this year’s prize to Jimena Jiménez Real, a graduate of the University of Helsinki’s English language program. Her thesis, Who led the semantic extension of the way-construction? A corpus-based study of variation and change in the way-construction in the 17th–19th centuries, was completed in April 2025.

The study provides a comprehensive and detailed examination of the ‘way’ construction, shedding light on its temporal development and the sociolinguistic factors that have influenced the change. The relevance of the study is justified by pointing out a gap in previous research: the ‘way’ construction has been studied extensively, but its variation and change specifically against a sociolinguistic background has not been examined before. The results of the study show that men and the middle class, in particular, played a key role in the change in the use of the construction. Jiménez Real connects her results to sociolinguistic models and identifies a contradiction with previous findings, according to which women have generally been found to be promoters of language change. This contradiction is explained by the composition of the data types, as the role of women may be overlooked in certain text types.

The research questions of the thesis are ambitious and demonstrate the author’s solid familiarity with the subject. Jiménez Real shows a deep understanding of historical sociolinguistics and theories of construction grammar and applies them convincingly to her own data. Both the qualitative and quantitative analyses presented in the thesis are thorough and insightful, and the use of the new types3 tool is considered methodologically innovative. The processing and analysis of the material follows the principles of open science: the research can be replicated on the basis of the description and the annotated table data published with the thesis. In addition, the author takes a critical approach to their data, highlighting the limitations of the corpus that may affect the results and the conclusions drawn from them. This demonstrates the author’s maturity as a researcher. Jiménez Real also recognizes possible topics for further research that arise directly from the research conducted. This shows that there is a clear demand for research on the topic and that the author has a thorough understanding of both the studied field and her own input.

The award is given at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Association of Finland on February 24th, 2026. The amount of the prize 250€. Jiménez Real has also promised to give a presentation based on her award-winning master’s thesis at the meeting.

The Linguistic Association of Finland’s Master’s Thesis Award 2025

The Linguistic Association of Finland (SKY) has awarded a prize for a meritorious master’s thesis in linguistics since 2011. Last year, the award went to Lauri Hauru, a graduate of the University of Oulu, for his thesis on the zero-person form of the inessive case of the E-infinitive in standard Finnish.

The award is handed out annually at the association’s meeting in February. The award given in 2025 will be for work completed between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025, and it consists of a prize of 250€. The winner will also receive a one-year membership in SKY, and they get the opportunity to present their research at the association’s annual meeting in early spring.

Proposals for recipients of the award, along with justifications, are requested from the supervisors of master’s theses. The award-winning thesis may come from any field of linguistic research and language subject represented at Finnish universities. Theoretical ambition and an approach that questions or develops prevailing linguistic theories, methods, and paradigms are considered particular merits, but all proposals are welcome. We ask you to pay attention to the length of the theses: an excellent master’s thesis does not need to be longer than a thesis of normal length. The proposals should be sent to the board of SKY no later than November 25th, 2025, using the following email address: taivo (a) lists.utu.fi.

SKY Symposium 2025 took place in Tampere in October

The traditional bi-annual symposium of the Linguistic Association of Finland was organised at the University of Tampere on October 2th and 3rd, 2025. The theme of the symposium was ”Meaning in language, machines and humans”. The participants who presented their work came from diverse fields of research, including linguistics and language technology.

The invited speakers were Ulla Vanhatalo from the University of Helsinki, Aarne Ranta from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg and Kasia Jaszczolt from the University of Cambridge.

The Linguistic Association of Finland’s graduate award 2024 awarded to MA Lauri Hauru

The Linguistic Association of Finland (SKY) has awarded a prize to a particularly meritorious master’s degree research topic in linguistics since 2011. The 2024 award goes to Lauri Hauru, who graduated from the University of Oulu with an MA in Finnish. His thesis “E-infinitive inessive in the zero person form in standard Finnish (fin: E-infinitiivin inessiivin nollapersoonamuoto suomen yleiskielessä)” was completed in January 2024. Lauri Hauru’s research represents basic qualitative research in the field of Fennistics. The thesis examines which texts and sentence contexts the zero person form of the infinitive of the E-infinitive (e.g. tehdessä) is used in standard Finnish. The research material has been collected from Finnish scientific journals of the 21st century, using the Korp concordance search program, and the material consists of 501 sentences in wider contexts.

According to the award committee, the thesis’ question formulation is already ambitious, and shows its author’s previous familiarity with the subject. Hauru describes the problems he encountered in the data collection and the possible shortcomings of the data openly and critically, which shows excellent research skills. The material is examined qualitatively, and the findings are commendably reflected in Finnish grammar and language maintenance recommendations. The qualitative analysis is reliable, and the examples for the author’s arguments are informative. The language of the dissertation is also very refined.

The prize is awarded annually in connection with the annual meeting of the Linguistic Association of Finland. Hauru has also promised to give a presentation based on his award-winning master’s thesis at the SKY annual meeting, which will be held on February 26, 2025.

SKY’s Symposium 2025 will be held in Tampere in October

The traditional biennial International Symposium of the Linguistic Association of Finland (SKY) will be held in October 2–3, 2025 at the Tampere University. The theme of this year’s symposium is “Meaning in language, machines and humans”. The symposium invites linguists from different traditions and language technology scholars to give presentations and discuss meaning.

The invited speakers of the symposium are Ulla Vanhatalo from the University of Helsinki, Aarne Ranta from the Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg, and Kasia Jaszczolt from the University of Cambridge.

The Call for Papers is published here. The deadline for submitting proposals for presentations is April 22, 2025.

More information available on the symposium website: https://events.tuni.fi/skysymposium2025/