35.1370, Rising Star: Olzhas Orazaly

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-35-1370. Fri May 03 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.1370, Rising Star: Olzhas Orazaly

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Date: 04-May-2024
From: Justin Fuller [justin at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Rising Star: Olzhas Orazaly


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 Olzhas
Orazaly, a student at Maqsut Narikbayev University (KAZGUU). Olzhas
was nominated by his mentor, Anar Baizhanova, who wrote to us and
said:

"I've known the Olzhas since September 2023 when he enrolled my
courses of History of the English Language and German as the Second
Foreign Language. In addition, I taught him the course of Morphology
of the English language. Olzhas managed to reveal his creative and
analytical potential by participating in all kinds of in-class and
homework assignments. He always demonstrates the unconventional
solutions to various tasks he is faced with. He is fluent in three
languages (Kazakh, Russian, and English), and has a very good command
of German (B2) which gives him an opportunity to compare different
linguistic aspects in several languages. It should also be mentioned
that the student develops an interest in neurolinguistics and is
therefore planning to get his master degree in this field abroad.
Olzhas will manage to reach all his aims due to his arduous work and
talent."

Olzhas reflects:

"At first, I was not interested in linguistics, or in academia, in
general. At the time of graduation, I never thought that I would want
to connect my life with academic world. I was interested in biology
and medicine, but since chemistry came hard to me, this idea was
abandoned. For some reason, I enrolled to my university for Tourism
program. But the more time passed, I came to gradual realization that
it is not what I want to do. In the end, it was decided that it would
be better for me to change my major, and so, I needed to ponder about
my new path. What major would be chosen was based on what the best
skill I had – English. After establishing that, the next step was to
decide what program, offered by my university, I should choose –
Translation studies or Applied Linguistics. By that time, I knew
nothing about linguistics (even more so about applied one), that’s why
I began researching about this field. I found out that Applied
Linguistics can be about Computational Linguistics, making machine
translations or about Psycho-/Neurolinguistics, researching mind/brain
and language, and even more. Seeing this, I immediately decided to
take Applied Linguistics and never regretted this decision. With more
and more completed courses, I was convinced more and more that this is
what I want to do. Knowledge given on courses was not enough for me, I
sought even more – articles, books, videos. I wanted to know more not
only about Applied Linguistics, but also about Theoretical
Linguistics. Honestly, at the beginning, I saw Applied Linguistics as
a stepping stone, through which I can step my foot into natural
sciences (via Neurolinguistics). But with time passing by, I started
getting interested in the field of Linguistics itself – comparativism,
language typology, history of linguistics. Right now, my dream is to
accomplish what Rodney Hudson and Geoffrey K. Pullum accomplished, but
with my native language – to write comprehensive descriptive grammar
of Kazakh.

"Linguistics is a broad field, field where various theories, views,
ideas flourish. And not only that, it can extend beyond and reach
other fields. It gives me great joy finding about (syntactic) theory
or idea proposed by some linguist, but it is never enough. I want to
not only deepen my knowledge but also widen it, go beyond one field. I
want get my hands on philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive sciences –
every field that is connected to human cognition. And, Linguistics is
a perfect field for that. As it is does not limit itself with one
thing."
________________________________

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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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