35.1128, Rising Star: Sid Bhushan

Tue Apr 2 20:05:02 UTC 2024

LINGUIST List: Vol-35-1128. Tue Apr 02 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.1128, Rising Star: Sid Bhushan

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Date: 03-Apr-2024
From: Justin Fuller [justin at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Rising Star: Sid Bhushan

During our annual Fund Drive, we like to feature undergraduate and
early-career graduate students who have gone above and beyond the
classroom to participate in the wider field of linguistics. Selected
nominees exemplify a commitment to not only academic performance, but
also to the field of linguistics and principles of scientific inquiry.

Since this year’s Fund Drive theme is Mirrors and Reflections, we are
especially excited to recognize those Rising Stars whose bright light
is sure to reflect onto the field for years to come. Today's Rising
Star meets this criterion!

It is my pleasure to announce that today's Rising Star is Sid Bhushan,
an undergraduate student in his senior year at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sid was nominated by his mentors, Joshua
Dees and Dr. Aida Talić. Joshua wrote to us and said:

"It is with great joy that I nominate Sid Bhushan for the ‘Rising
Stars’ series. I instantly knew Sid was a star when he took morphology
with me. Sid demonstrated a deep interest in not only morphosyntax,
but the entire field of linguistics. He is incredibly adept in the
areas of language acquisition, as he serves as an RA on two separate
second language acquisition projects (with Dr. Silvina Montrul and
PhD-candidate Aylin Coşkun Kunduz); morphosyntax, as he has presented
work on Kannada gender and number morphology at conferences (including
the Arizona Linguistics Circle and the Western Conference on
Linguistics) and published a proceedings paper on the topic (through
the Western Conference on Linguistics); and computational linguistics.

"In addition to showing great promise in many areas of linguistic
research, Sid is a passionate leader within our field. He actively
runs the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois’
undergraduate organization (League of Linguists); in which he serves
as the student-faculty liaison, organizes talks from graduate students
and faculty for his peers, runs study sessions where he and his peers
meet and actively help each other with their homework and projects,
and plans parties and other fun linguistics-oriented gatherings. He is
also an active participant in the Linguistics Department’s Syntax and
Semantics reading group, where he has presented his own work and
actively engages in others’ work. He regularly attends the
department’s Linguistics Seminar Series and is never shy to discuss
ideas with guest presenters from around the world.

"Outside of being a wonderful ‘early’ researcher and leader in our
field, Sid is a humble and kind human. Being his mentor and teacher
for the last two years has been an absolute joy. He more than deserves
to be included in the Linguist List’s 'Rising Stars' series.

"Sid's accomplishments are especially impressive considering he is a
senior undergraduate student finishing his degree in Computer Science
and Linguistics a year early (3 years). He will be pursuing a PhD in
Linguistics starting Fall 2024."

Sid reflects:

"Linguistics is the study of language, which is something that seems
to be quintessentially human. Everyone uses language almost constantly
and it’s something that we are exposed to every day of our lives. Yet,
despite the universality of language, it’s also incredibly diverse:
there are thousands of languages in existence across hundreds of
different families and each one contains its own unique elements to
study. Not only are languages diverse with respect to each other,
language also encapsulates so many different aspects of humanity, from
the cognitive processes in our brains to the ways in which we use
language as part of our intricate network of social interactions.

"Personally, one of the key reasons that I find linguistics
interesting to study is that I can relate it with my own experiences
with language. For example, I’m particularly interested in studying
multilingualism, with a specific focus on social and cognitive
processes behind unbalanced multilinguals. This is because of my
personal background being a multilingual heritage speaker and wanting
to investigate how the linguistic structures I use everyday work. I am
sure that many other linguists share the same motivations, although in
different subfields. One of the most amazing things about linguistics
is that there is something in there for everyone, because language is
everywhere, and everyone’s personal linguistic experiences are so
different. In my opinion, this fact is one of things that truly
sustains linguistics as such a ubiquitous and interdisciplinary field
of study.

"As I reach the end of the first step in my linguistics journey, I am
grateful to take this opportunity to reflect on what the field means
to me and so many others. I will be entering a PhD program later this
year to continue learning and working on my research and I look
forward to the opportunity to contribute to expanding our ever-growing
base of knowledge about this wonderful thing that we call language."

________________________________

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including its up-and-coming Rising Stars, for years to come. But we
cannot do it alone. Please help us continue providing our services by
making a donation to our Fund Drive at
https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate.

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LINGUIST List: Vol-35-1128
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