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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/
SKY presentations in spring 2025
The Linguistic Association of Finland will organize a new presentation series starting in spring 2025, featuring 4-6 presentations per semester. In spring 2025, early-career doctoral researchers in linguistics are invited to present. The presentation dates are set for Thursday, March 27, and Thursday, April 24, at 4 PM, and both events will be held online. The plan is to have two presentations on each day, with each presentation allocated 30 minutes (20 minutes for the presentation + 10 minutes for discussion).
Potential speakers can apply by emailing Chair Arja Hamari (arhama (at) utu.fi) by January 20, 2025. The registration should include the title of the proposed presentation and an abstract of up to 500 words (including references).
The Linguistic Association of Finland Master’s Degree Award Competition 2024
Since 2011, the Linguistic Association of Finland (SKY) has awarded a prize for a particularly meritorious master’s degree thesis in linguistics. Last year, the prize went to Noora Ahola for her thesis in the field of general linguistics, Inalienably possessed lexical items: A microtypological analysis of the languages of New Guinea.
The prize is awarded annually at the association’s annual meeting in February. The prize to be awarded in 2025 applies to works completed between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024. The amount of the prize is decided annually at the association’s board meeting. The winner will also be awarded a year’s membership in SKY, where the winner of the prize also has the opportunity to present their research at the association’s annual meeting in the spring.
Substantiated proposals for the award are requested from the supervisors of master’s degrees. The thesis to be awarded can represent any field of linguistics and subject of language represented at Finnish universities. Theoretical ambition and a perspective that questions or develops prevailing linguistic theories, methods, and paradigms are considered to be of particular merit, but naturally all proposals are equally welcome. We would like to ask you to pay attention to the length of the theses: an excellent master’s thesis does not have to be longer than a thesis that meets the usual dimensions.
Substantiated proposals and an electronic version of the thesis itself must be sent by email to the SKY board of directors at taivo (at) utu.fi by 15.11.2024. (If the thesis is online, a link to it is sufficient.)
Proposals with attachments can also be sent on paper. Proposals submitted by post and two copies of the thesis itself should be addressed to the SKY board and must be received by 15 November 2024 at the latest to the address:
The Linguistic Association of Finland c/o Silja-Maija Spets
Department of Finnish and Finno-Ugric Languages
Arcanuminkuja 1
20500 Turku.
The proposal is free-form, but it must indicate the author of the work, the topic, supervisor(s), and a brief justification on why the proposed work is worthy of the award (e.g. what new information it brings). Statement(s) of the reviewers of the work may be attached. Late proposals will not be taken into account.
The board of the association will select the work to be awarded at its meeting. The award winner and the supervisor who made the proposal will be notified of the award.
For more information, contact the SKY secretary at smespe@utu.fi.