News

SKY celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2027

The Linguistic Association of Finland was founded in 1977, which was nearly 50 years ago. As part of celebrating the jubilee year, the annual meeting will be held on site in Helsinki at the House of Science and Letters on February 2, 2027 at 12-1 pm. All members of the association are warmly welcome to join the event! If you cannot make it there in person, no worries – remote participation is also possible.

After the annual meeting, SKY is proud to host a solemn seminar on the history of linguistics in Finland. The seminar is open to on-site attendees only.

More information on the event, including the official programme, will be made available later in 2026.

Membership fees can now be paid using MobilePay

SKY has introduced MobilePay as an alternative option for paying membership fees. You can now complete the purchase either via bank transfer or using MobilePay.

MobilePay:

Number: 43665

Message: Name of member + email address

Bank transfer:

Recipient name: Suomen kielitieteellinen yhdistys (NB! The template may propose a different name to match the account number, which is also alright)

Account number: FI76 1745 3000 0712 43 (Nordea)

Reference number in Finland: 20213; Reference number outside Finland: RF7220213

All new members are asked to contact the secretary Jenna Kanerva jmnybl@utu.fi.

A warm thank you to everyone for supporting the association!

The Linguistic Association of Finland’s graduate award 2025 to MA Jimena Jiménez Real

The Linguistic Association of Finland (SKY) has awarded a prize to a particularly meritorious master’s thesis in linguistics since 2011. This year, there were nine high-quality master’s theses from five Finnish universities in various fields of linguistics that participated in the 2025 competition (theses completed between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025). The SKY award committee has decided to award this year’s prize to Jimena Jiménez Real, a graduate of the University of Helsinki’s English language program. Her thesis, Who led the semantic extension of the way-construction? A corpus-based study of variation and change in the way-construction in the 17th–19th centuries, was completed in April 2025.

The study provides a comprehensive and detailed examination of the ‘way’ construction, shedding light on its temporal development and the sociolinguistic factors that have influenced the change. The relevance of the study is justified by pointing out a gap in previous research: the ‘way’ construction has been studied extensively, but its variation and change specifically against a sociolinguistic background has not been examined before. The results of the study show that men and the middle class, in particular, played a key role in the change in the use of the construction. Jiménez Real connects her results to sociolinguistic models and identifies a contradiction with previous findings, according to which women have generally been found to be promoters of language change. This contradiction is explained by the composition of the data types, as the role of women may be overlooked in certain text types.

The research questions of the thesis are ambitious and demonstrate the author’s solid familiarity with the subject. Jiménez Real shows a deep understanding of historical sociolinguistics and theories of construction grammar and applies them convincingly to her own data. Both the qualitative and quantitative analyses presented in the thesis are thorough and insightful, and the use of the new types3 tool is considered methodologically innovative. The processing and analysis of the material follows the principles of open science: the research can be replicated on the basis of the description and the annotated table data published with the thesis. In addition, the author takes a critical approach to their data, highlighting the limitations of the corpus that may affect the results and the conclusions drawn from them. This demonstrates the author’s maturity as a researcher. Jiménez Real also recognizes possible topics for further research that arise directly from the research conducted. This shows that there is a clear demand for research on the topic and that the author has a thorough understanding of both the studied field and her own input.

The award is given at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Association of Finland on February 24th, 2026. The amount of the prize 250€. Jiménez Real has also promised to give a presentation based on her award-winning master’s thesis at the meeting.

The Linguistic Association of Finland’s Master’s Thesis Award 2025

The Linguistic Association of Finland (SKY) has awarded a prize for a meritorious master’s thesis in linguistics since 2011. Last year, the award went to Lauri Hauru, a graduate of the University of Oulu, for his thesis on the zero-person form of the inessive case of the E-infinitive in standard Finnish.

The award is handed out annually at the association’s meeting in February. The award given in 2025 will be for work completed between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025, and it consists of a prize of 250€. The winner will also receive a one-year membership in SKY, and they get the opportunity to present their research at the association’s annual meeting in early spring.

Proposals for recipients of the award, along with justifications, are requested from the supervisors of master’s theses. The award-winning thesis may come from any field of linguistic research and language subject represented at Finnish universities. Theoretical ambition and an approach that questions or develops prevailing linguistic theories, methods, and paradigms are considered particular merits, but all proposals are welcome. We ask you to pay attention to the length of the theses: an excellent master’s thesis does not need to be longer than a thesis of normal length. The proposals should be sent to the board of SKY no later than November 25th, 2025, using the following email address: taivo (a) lists.utu.fi.