The Linguistic Society of America solicits nominations for the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award. First presented in 1992, this biennial award recognizes especially distinguished contributions to our understanding of language and linguistics. The volume so honored will be selected on the basis of such criteria as originality, conceptual significance, empirical import, clarity of presentation, and likely impact on linguistic scholarship. The award is conferred in even-numbered years. A plaque will be presented to both the author and the publisher at the 2004 LSA Annual Meeting in Boston.
We welcome nominations of both specialist and more general books in any subfield of linguistics. In order to recognize the full diversity of the field of linguistics, the selection committee especially welcomes nominations of books in areas not recently represented among the Bloomfield winners. Edited volumes are not eligible for this award although jointly authored books are. Textbooks can be considered, but they are unlikely to meet the criteria for the award (though perhaps Bloomfield's Language might have). In order to be eligible, the author(s) must be member(s) of the Society, and the book must have been published in one of the two years immediately preceding the deadline for the receipt of entries (e.g. for the 2004 competition, books published after 28 February 2001 and before 1 March 2003 will be considered).
Previous Award Winners:
1992
Rice, Keren. A grammar of Slave (Mouton de Gruyter)
1994 Nichols, Johanna. Linguistic diversity in space and time (U Chicago
Press)
1996 Labov, William. Principles of linguistic change: Internal factors
(Blackwell)
1998 Harris, Alice C., and Lyle Campbell. Historical syntax in cross-linguistic
perspective (Cambridge U Press)
2000 Campbell, Lyle. American Indian languages: The historical linguistics
of North America (Oxford U Press)
2002 Mithun, Marianne. The languages of Native North America (Cambridge
U Press)
To be considered for the 2004 award, a nomination
form and four copies of the book should be sent to: Leonard Bloomfield Book
Award Committee, LSA Secretariat, 1325 18th Street, NW, Suite 211, Washington,
DC 20036-6501. All materials must be received by the Secretariat no later than
1 March 2003.