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Dr. Andrew Cowell’s work to build databases for the Arapaho language featured in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

Katlyn Econom — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 15:56:15 +0000

Dr. Andrew Cowell’s work to build databases for the Arapaho language featured in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine Katlyn Econom Mon, 11/03/2025 - 08:56

Dr. Andrew Cowell, a professor of linguistics and faculty director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies (CNAIS), has spent years building databases cataloging the Arapaho language. His work is featured in the Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine. The article, "Building a digital home for Arapaho, one sentence at a time," shares how the databases were built and are currently being used to develop a curriculum to teach Arapaho.

Read the article in A&S Magazine

Dr. Andrew Cowell’s work to build databases for the Arapaho language featured in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

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Dr. Bhuvana Narasimhan is co-editor of newly published, The Oxford Handbook of Dravidian Languages

Katlyn Econom — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 18:48:41 +0000

Dr. Bhuvana Narasimhan is co-editor of newly published, The Oxford Handbook of Dravidian Languages Katlyn Econom Fri, 10/31/2025 - 12:48

The Oxford Handbook of Dravidian Languages, co-edited by Dr. Bhuvana Narasimhan and her colleague, R. Amritavalli, is now available online and will soon be available in print. The Dravidian languages of south India, spoken by approximately 222 million speakers across South Asia, was first recognized as a distinct group in the 19th century. One of the largest language families in the world, it has inspired research from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, offering unique insights into the nature of human language, mind, history, and society. The Oxford Handbook of Dravidian Languages represents some of the field's most influential current scholarship exploring the origins of the Dravidian peoples, their languages, and the history of script in the Indian subcontinent. The volume aims to provide readers with an accessible introduction to this fascinating area of study.

Bhuvana Narasimhan and R.Amritavalli publish co-edited volume, The Oxford Handbook of Dravidian Languages.

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$2.9 Million NIH Grant Awarded to Professor Chase Raymond and Colleagues

Katlyn Econom — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 15:26:56 +0000

$2.9 Million NIH Grant Awarded to Professor Chase Raymond and Colleagues Katlyn Econom Mon, 10/06/2025 - 09:26

Professor Chase Raymond, who shares a secondary appointment with the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado, Anshutz School of Medicine, and his colleagues from Colombia University’s School of Nursing, Dr. Veronica Barcelona and Dr. Maxim Topaz, have been awarded a $2.9 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant.

Funded by the NIH’s Healthcare and Health Disparities Study Section, the study is titled, “Identifying Stigmatizing Language in Hospital Birthing Care: The ID-STIGMA study.” Dr. Raymond and his colleagues will be researching how stigmatizing language impacts the birthing experience. Using natural language processing (NLP), a data science approach, to identify and analyze documentation patterns, the study will be used to influence institutional change and improve patient outcomes.

First, the study will expand and refine an existing NLP system to identify documentation patterns in obstetric clinical notes. The expanded NLP system will then be applied to examine documentation patterns by patient demographic characteristics. Associations between these patterns and morbidity outcomes for pregnant women and newborns will be used to inform various interventions surrounding documentation practices, policies, and trainings.

Congratulations, Dr. Raymond and fellow researchers!

A figure from the study demonstrating how data increases awareness of stigmatizing language.

In collaboration with colleagues from Colombia University’s School of Nursing, Professor Raymond will research how stigmatizing language impacts the birthing experience. Using natural language processing to identify and analyze documentation patterns, the study will be used to influence institutional change and improve patient outcomes.

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Profs. Farrelly and Gutiérrez Lorenzo Featured in Coloradan

Ethan McGinnis — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 20:37:22 +0000

Profs. Farrelly and Gutiérrez Lorenzo Featured in Coloradan Ethan McGinnis Wed, 07/30/2025 - 14:37

The language reclamation and revitalization work of CU Linguistics professors Rai Farrelly and Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo were recently highlighted in the CU's alumni magazine, the Coloradan.

Farrelly and Gutiérrez Lorenzo just wrapped up their second summer conducting community-centered education abroad programs in Teotitlán del Valle, where Prof. Gutiérrez Lorenzo grew up speaking TdV Zapotec. Participating students get hands on experience partnering with community members and heritage speakers of that language, and help create pedagogical materials that will contribute to the intergenerational flourishing of TdV Zapotec.

We are excited to see these efforts of Profs. Farrelly and Gutiérrez Lorenzo continuing to grow, as they help us reimagine what it means to preserve so-called endangered languages!

Photo courtesy of Dr. Rai Farrelly.

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Patrick Das Wins 2025 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship

Ethan McGinnis — Thu, 29 May 2025 14:39:45 +0000

Patrick Das Wins 2025 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship Ethan McGinnis Thu, 05/29/2025 - 08:39

Our own Patrick Das is one of two ��ƷSM��ӰƬ PhD students to be awarded a 2025 Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Dissertation Innovation Fellowship!

Just 45 PhD students from across the country were awarded the prestigious fellowship, in recognition of their innovative approaches to their dissertation research in the humanities or social sciences.

The fellowships, made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation, recognize doctoral students “who show promise of leading their fields in important new directions,” according to the ACLS. “The fellowships are designed to intervene at the formative stage of dissertation development, before writing is advanced, and provide time and support for emerging scholars’ innovative approaches to dissertation research—practical, trans- or interdisciplinary, collaborative, critical or methodological.

Das is researching how geography and multilingualism shape language change in Tikhir, an endangered language of eastern Nagaland, India, near the border with Myanmar. Through spatial analysis, the project maps patterns of interaction between Tikhir and neighboring indigenous languages. Das’ findings offer new insights into how small languages evolve within complex multilingual ecologies.

You can read more about CU's awardees here: /asmagazine/2025/05/05/cu-boulder-scholars-recognized-innovation-phd-research

Congratulations, Patrick!

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LING Undergraduates Shine at the Studio Lab Poster Extravaganza

reku3206 — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 15:08:58 +0000

LING Undergraduates Shine at the Studio Lab Poster Extravaganza reku3206 Thu, 04/24/2025 - 09:08

This year’s Studio Lab Poster Extravaganza showcased some incredible work from our Linguistics undergraduates!

Chloe Circenis, Abigail Major, Tessa Moskoff, and Chase Hutton presented their poster on "Acoustic Realization of Maternal Child-Directed Speech", supervised by Rebecca Scarborough, Allison Hilger (SLHS), and Bhuvana Narasimhan. Their research explores how caregivers modify their speech when talking to children.
Kate French co-authored a poster on "Breath Control and Ataxic Dysarthria", supervised by Allison Hilger, contributing valuable insights into speech motor control.

We’re so proud of their hard work, creativity, and dedication to linguistics research!

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Laura Michaelis named Charles J. Fillmore Professor at 2025 LSA Linguistic Institute

Laura A Michaelis-Cummings — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 22:36:07 +0000

Laura Michaelis named Charles J. Fillmore Professor at 2025 LSA Linguistic Institute Laura A Michae… Wed, 01/15/2025 - 15:36

Laura A. Michaelis, Professor and Chair of Linguistics, has been named Charles J. Fillmore Professor for the upcoming Linguistic Society of America (LSA) Summer Institute, which will take place at the University of Oregon in July and August 2025. Since its inception in 1928, the LSA Institute has served as a premier biennial event, convening approximately 100 faculty and hundreds of students from around the world for an intensive month of courses, lectures, workshops, and networking opportunities.

The Fillmore Professorship, established in 2015 to honor the late Charles J. Fillmore—a world-renowned UC Berkeley scholar of syntax and semantics—recognizes linguists who advance his legacy of exploring lexical meaning in relation to context, grammar, corpora, and computation. The professorship includes a student fellowship, underscoring its commitment to fostering the next generation of empirical linguists.

Dr. Michaelis, an expert on the use of corpus tools to study syntactic meaning, variation, and change, is the fifth recipient of this title—and the first to have been a doctoral advisee of Charles Fillmore. At the 2025 Linguistic Institute, she will co-teach a course with her frequent collaborator Elaine Francis (Purdue) entitled Constructions and the Grammar of Context.

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Dr. Rai Farrelly partnering with Ukrainian educators through US State Dept appointment

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 19:57:51 +0000

Dr. Rai Farrelly partnering with Ukrainian educators through US State Dept appointment Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/23/2024 - 13:57

CU Linguistics Teaching Associate Professor and TESOL Director, Dr. Rai Farrelly, was profiled in a recent Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine article.

In the piece, she discusses building a virtual collaboration with colleagues in Ukraine through the US Department of State's Access Program, highlighting the pedagogical challenges of teaching large, mixed-level classes - challenges which are severly compounded by the extraordinary circumstances of war facing those educators and their students.

A common thread running through Dr. Farrelly's TESOL work is an understanding of and apprehension for English as an imperial language, and a sensitivity to the importance of mother languages and the specificities of local contexts: "There’s a depth and breadth of proper preparation that goes beyond how to teach a language. It’s about understanding individual differences, personalities, motivations, culture, how your (first language) influences acquisition, classroom management, curriculum design. There’s so much that goes into it that’s beyond simply speaking English.”

You can read further about Dr. Farrelly's life's work in this recent feature in VoyageDenver: https://voyagedenver.com/interview/life-work-with-rai-farrelly-of-golden

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Dr. Rai Farrelly Featured in VoyageDenver

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 22:05:18 +0000

Dr. Rai Farrelly Featured in VoyageDenver Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/12/2024 - 16:05

CU Linguistics faculty member and TESOL director Dr. Rai Farrelly was recently spotlighted in an interview article in Voyage Denver magazine. In the piece, she discusses her work to co-found the educational Tanzania-based non-profit, Project Wezesha, her work here in Boulder in building communicty-based programs, as well as her care and concern for teaching English to individuals whose mother tongues could very well be endangered languages.

To quote Dr. Farrelly discussing how she understands the impact of her work in the face of so much global turmoil, "There’s a lovely Quechuan tale about a hummingbird doing her best to put out a forest fire one drop at a time. When the other animals tell her she’s too small to make a difference, she replies 'I’m doing the best I can.' I channel the hummingbird often!"

You can access the full interview here to learn more about Dr. Farrelly's fascinating journey as a linguist, educator, and community organizer!

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PhD student Kate Arnold-Murray featured in CU Arts & Sciences Magazine

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 17:34:39 +0000

PhD student Kate Arnold-Murray featured in CU Arts & Sciences Magazine Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/11/2024 - 11:34

CU Linguistics PhD student Kate Arnold-Murray was recently featured in Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine, in an interview discussion of her work on the Settle for Biden Instagram campaign during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Drawing from the theoretical/methodological toolkits of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, Kate's analysis drills down into the inter- and subtextuality of memes shared by Settle for Biden (a group unaffiliated with the official Biden campaign), which aimed to produce Biden as an altogether unideal yet obviously preferable candidate in the eyes of progressive voters during the lead up to the United States' 2020 election.

Kate's findings were published this year as an open-access article in the journal Language and Society: "Settle for Biden: The scalar production of a normative presidential candidate on Instagram."

Congratulations, Kate!

A meme shared by Settle for Biden, representative of the textual and visual strategies used by the campaign

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