Alum wins first LSA C.L. Baker Award

Jon Sprouse *07 IS first recipient of an LSA award to honor "excellence for scholarship in syntax" by a mid-career researcher, endowed by the family of the late C.L. Baker.

Congratulations to Jon Sprouse *07, first recipient of an LSA award to honor "excellence for scholarship in syntax" by a mid-career researcher, endowed by the family of the late C.L. Baker. The citation accompanying the award, quoted below, notes virtues of Jon's research that were evident already in his student work and dissertation, "A program for experimental syntax," and acknowledges the importance of his fellow 2007 alum and collaborator, Lisa Pearl.

* "Jon Sprouse is an experimental syntactician whose work is characterized by imagination, innovation, care, and respect for the facts. He has made methodological contributions of central importance, enabling syntacticians to base their theoretical work on a much more secure empirical foundation. He has also made contributions of central importance to some of the core issues in syntax and linguistic theory more broadly – concerning the nature of island-hood and (in collaboration with Lisa Pearl the theory of learnability."