Linguistics at BU enables students to study human language from various perspectives and consider the relationships between linguistics and other disciplines. Our academic programs offer training in linguistic theory and analysis and include a wide range of courses examining the biological, social, cultural, historical, and cognitive bases of language.
Congrats to PhD student Rebecca Dufie Bonney who presented a paper titled "African Languages and the Expansion of Heritage Phonology Research" this past February in Los Angeles. She co-presented with Matthew Ajibade (Indiana University). You can read a summary of her paper below: This paper examines how African heritage languages, such as Yoruba and Akan, […]
Liza Sulkin and Chloe Guttmann presented at the Literatures & Linguistics Interdisciplinary Conference (LINC) at Florida State University. This year's conference theme was "Beyond Fracture". Both presented at the "Dialogues at a crossroads" panel.
Professor Kate Lindsey will be teaching Phonological Typology at ALT-2026 (16th International Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology) in Lyon. Registration is now open.
Professor Neil Myler @ CRISSP CRISSP (Center for Research in Syntax, Semantics, and Phonology) is happy to announce another installment in the CRISSP Lecture Series: Lecturer: Neil Myler (Boston University) Title: Morphomes, look-ahead, and what to do about them: Illustrations from Romance Date & time: 10–11–13 March 2026, 12.00–15.00 (10 March), 10.00–13.00 (11 March), 13.00–16.00 […]
Professor Elizabeth Coppock @ LangCog (Harvard University) Title: Unifying dependent-indefinite and independent-universal reduplicated numerals in Newar Abstract: Newar (also known as Nepal Bhasa) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in the Kathmandu Valley region of Nepal with a rich classifier system. Classifier-affixed numerals can be reduplicated to produce a distributive reading, in a manner familiar from […]
We are proud to announce the many students and professors in our department who will be participating in the 2026 LSA annual meeting! It takes place this year on January 8-11, 2026 in New Orleans. For the full schedule with times, you can filter through the official program by entering "Boston University".
Congratulations to our PhD candidate Rebecca Wheeler who successfully defended her qualifying paper titled "Effect of Non-native Articulation Rate on English Foreigner-directed Speech Production"!
Dear BU linguistics community, Mark your calendars for a special talk on January 15! LiSLab and tinlab looking forward to welcoming the legendary Janet B. Pierrehumbert (Oxford) for a talk on that day. Although she is world-renowned for her work on phonology, she will be presenting recent work on large language models and their relation […]