Category: Conferences

Honors Students Present Sociolinguistic Research at UURAF

September 9, 2026

Over the course of the 2025-2026 academic year, Dr. Betsy Sneller and Dr. Suzanne Wagner led an Honors Research Seminar on the MI Diaries project for Honors undergraduate students at Michigan State. During this time, students of the seminar designed and executed original sociolinguistic research projects and presented their findings in poster format at the University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum in April 2026 (read more about UURAF and the linguistics and languages students who presented). Congratulations, Honors Seminar members! Lab member Lin Cabada also presented an independent research project that grew from an Honors Option paper they completed for Dr. Wagner's Language and Gender class in Fall 2025. Here's a list of the presenters and their poster titles: Mary Cavagnetto and Elle Jacobson / How do people talk about accents in Michigan’s Thumb and UP? / Betsy Sneller and Suzanne Wagner Chae Eun Park and Keira Wesley / Social perceptions of uh vs. um / Betsy Sneller and Suzanne Wagner Rachel Ross / “So, uhm, yeah”: A case study of uhm development between 5-9 years old / Betsy Sneller and Suzanne Wagner Lily Kwon and Bai Yang Clemens / Is “low-key” going low-key adverbial? / Suzanne Wagner and Betsy Sneller Connor Mason / A lowkey examination of lowkey in the MI Diaries corpus / Suzanne Wagner and Betsy Sneller (with assistance from Adam Barnhardt) Allison Phillips, Antony Tokrri, Jad Assaf / “Pretty” is pretty cool / Suzanne Wagner and Betsy Sneller (with assistance from Annan Kirk) Lin Cabada / Gender-marked occupational terms at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum / Suzanne Wagner Allison Phillips, Antony Tokrri, and Jad Assaf Bai Yang Clemens and Lily Kwon Mary Cavagnetto and Elle Jacobson Lin Cabada Connor Mason Keira Wesley Rachel Ross

Conferences / Events / Faculty / Graduate Students / Research

Michigan State Presenting at LSA 2026

December 2, 2025

Five MSU linguists (including Sociolinguistics Lab members Mofart Ayiega & Leah Nodar) will be presenting their work at the Linguistics Society of America’s annual conference, taking place this year in New Orleans from January 8th – 11th!

Please find their talk titles below:

Mofart Ayiega (co-authored with Dr. Suzanne Wagner) – Morphological Leveling of Noun Class Agreement in Urban Swahili
Dr. Leah Nodar – Twelve Variables of Africatown English in 1927 and 1979
Jingying Xu (co-authored with Dr. Cristina Schmitt):
- Beyond Truth Conditions: Context Modulates Telicity Interpretation
- Learning Telicity in Context: Developmental Evidence from Mandarin Children
Ellie Xia (co-authored with Dr. Alan Hezao Ke) – Tonal Marking of Telicity in Hakka: An Agree-Based Analysis
John Ryan (co-authored with Yaxuan Wang) – Reference, Aspect, and Event Completion in Mandarin Sentence Judgments

Click ‘Continue Reading’ for abstracts.

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Alumni / Conferences / Events / Faculty / Graduate Students / People / Research / Undergraduates

MSU (socio)linguists reunited at NWAV 53

November 21, 2025

The NWAV 53 conference (November 5-7, 2025) was a big success for MSU linguistics! In addition to presenters, our general crew included alumni of the MSU Linguistics PhD program (Mingzhe Zheng, Monica Nesbitt) and Second Language Studies program (Jie Liu); MSU Linguistics MA (Jack Rechsteiner); and MSU Linguistics BA (Wil Rankinen). In addition to Betsy Sneller and Suzanne Wagner, faculty were represented by Karthik Durvasula (Linguistics, phonetics/phonology) and Rose Fisher (German). We were also delighted to include undergraduates from the Honors Seminar that Betsy and Suzanne are co-teaching 2025-2026 and from the Sociolinguistics Lab, as well as current graduate students. Here's to another great NWAV in 2026 in Montreal!

Read more about the article MSU (socio)linguists reunited at NWAV 53

(l-r back) Jie Liu, Mingzhe Zheng, Anthony Tokrri, Alison Phillips, Wil Rankinen, Connor Bechler, Karthik Durvasula, Jack Rechsteiner, Sophie Motawi, Drake Howard, [unknown], Millie Hacker, Adam Barnhardt. (l-r front) Shuyang Wei, Monica Nesbitt, [unknown], Bai Yang Clemens, Lily Kwon, Rose Fisher, Annan Kirk, Betsy Sneller, Jess Shepherd, Julia Bolash, Connor Mason, Suzanne Evans Wagner, [unknown].

Conferences / Events / Faculty / Graduate Students / Research

MSU Linguists Presenting at NWAV 53

September 23, 2025

This November, Adam Barnhardt, Mofart Ayiega, Rose Fisher, Jess Shepherd, Connor Bechler, Annan Kirk, and Karthik Durvasula will be presenting at NWAV 53 (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor!

Adam will be presenting “Creaky voice: A women-led sub/exurban-centric sound change in white Michigan English“
Mofart will be presenting “Morphological Non-agreement on Animate Nouns in Swahili“
Rose will be presenting “Language Loyalty and Maintenance: The Case of Pennsylvania Dutch“
Jess will be presenting “Paths of sound change in the [mɪɾən]: /tən/ in two varieties of Michigan English”
Connor will be presenting “Modeling and Documenting Variation across Pumi Varieties“
Annan Kirk will be presenting “Really is really frequent: intensifiers and change in Michigan English“
Karthik will be presenting “Near mergers are compatible with categorical representations”

NWAV 53 will run from Nov. 5th – 7th. Register here.

Click ‘Continue Reading’ for abstracts.

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Conferences / Events / People / Research / Undergraduates

Socio Lab students present at UURAF

April 12, 2025

Undergraduate members of the Sociolinguistics Lab and/or the MI Diaries project team demonstrated their research skills at MSU's 2025 University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum (UURAF) on April 11, 2025. Presenters included: Sabrina Ruiz, Who's afraid of the Big Bad C*nt? Changes in offensiveness across generations. Senior thesis project supervised by Dr. Betsy Sneller. Sara Kirkman, Emoji and age: Exploring age-based variations in expressing emotions via emojis Senior thesis project supervised by Dr. Betsy Sneller. Xhanna Travina, A/B testing for engaging users with Knowledge Commons newsletter emails Mentor: Larissa Babak (College of Arts and Letters) Hannah Choi, Interpreting the simple past as the present perfect (with Jaina Kittle, Kay Humpert, Mason Dellot) Mentors: Alan Munn, Cristina Schmitt (Linguistics) - Language Acquisition Lab Ezekiel Brown, Verb agreement with non-DP subjects Mentors: Alan Munn, Louis Konkoly (Linguistics) - Language Acquisition Lab Sabrina Ruiz with her UURAF poster Xhanna Travina with her UURAF poster.