Two faculty members from the Department of Linguistics—Associate Professor Karlos Arregi and Professor Alan Yu—were named Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA).

Founded in 1924 to advance the scientific study of language, the Linguistic Society of America plays a critical role in supporting and disseminating linguistic scholarship both to professional linguists and to the general public. The LSA annually selects a group of fellows for their "distinguished contributions to the discipline".

Arregi and Yu were honored in part for co-directing the successful 2015 LSA Summer Linguistic Institute at the University of Chicago. The four-week Institute, under the theme of “Linguistic Theory In A World Of Big Data”, highlighted a growing interest within the field of linguistics to test theory with increasingly larger data sets.

“I feel especially humbled to be elected along with such an illustrious cohort of prominent linguists this year,” said Yu. “I can only hope that I can live up to what this honor signifies and continue to contribute to the LSA and to the field of linguistics in general for many more years to come.”

The 2016 class of LSA Fellows was inducted at the LSA Annual Meeting this January in Washington, DC.