Category Archives: alumni

Alumni update: Elaine and Alex Francis

A huge congratulation to Elaine J. Francis (Ph.D. 1999), who has recently been promoted to associate professor with tenure at Purdue University in Indiana, where she teaches in the English Department and the graduate Linguistics Program.   For her 1999 dissertation Variation within Lexical Categories, she worked with advisor Salikoko Mufwene and committee members Amy Dahlstrom, Jim McCawley, and Jerry Sadock.  Elaine’s husband, Alex Francis (Ph.D. 1999), yet another Chicago alum, received tenure at Purdue in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences in 2008.  While at Chicago, Alex worked with co-advisors Howard Nusbaum and Karen Landahl. Elaine and Alex live in West Lafayette, Indiana, with their two young sons, William and Robert. A hearty congratulation to both Elaine and Alex for all their successes!

Alumni tidbits

Ilya Yakubovich (PhD 2008) continues to live in Chicago and contribute to scholarship as much as his schedule allows him. In April 2009, his paper “Hittite-Luvian Bilingualism and the Origin of Anatolian Hieroglyphs” was awarded Oliver Gurney Memorial Prize for the best paper in Anatolian Studies written by a junior scholar. In October 2009, he defended his second dissertation “Studies in Sogdian Etymology” (in Russian) at the Russian State University for the Humanities. November 2009 saw the publication of his book “Sociolinguistics of the Luvian Language”, which is based upon his University of Chicago Ph.D. thesis.

Nicholas Kontovas (B.A. 2008) is attending an MA program in Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University as of this fall. Nicholas’s past work has included “Lexical Renegotiation: Language adaptation, loanword attitudes and the composition of the Modern Uyghur lexicon,” part of an ongoing investigation into Uyghur speakers in China. Best of luck!


U. of C. connection in latest Language issue

The September 2009 issue of Language (Vol. 85, No. 3) contains a special section entitled “SIL and the disciplinary culture of linguistics,” comprising an important set of papers about the role of SIL’s linguistic work. Several of the contributors have connections to our department:  Lise Dobrin and Ken Olson are PhDs from our department; Jeff Good earned his B.A. here; and Courtney Handman is a current joint Anthro/Ling PhD candidate.

Thanks to all for your contributions to this issue, and thanks to Amy Dahlstrom for bringing this involvement to our attention!

Chicago alumni goings-on

Chicago linguistics alumnus Aaron Griffith, now a lecturer at the University of Vienna, had his article, “The animacy hierarchy and the distribution of the notae augentes in Old Irish,” published in the December 2008 issue of the journal Ériu. Aaron’s recent conference presentations have included “Raising of *e to *i before *µ in Old Irish” at the Sound of Indo-European conference in Copenhagen this month, and “pro in Old Irish,” presented at the Formal Approaches to Celtic Linguistics conference last month in Arizona.

In addition, alumna Arika Okrent has a book coming out next month on created languages. The book, In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language, is published by the Spiegel & Grau imprint of Random House and is set to be released May 19.