The Leonard Bloomfield Book Award

The Linguistic Society of America solicits nominations for the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award. First presented in 1992, this biennial award recognizes a volume that makes an outstanding contribution to the development of 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 2006 LSA Annual Meeting in Albuquerque.

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 commitee 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 2006 competition, books published after 28 February 2003 and before 1 March 2005 will be considered).

To be considered for the 2006 award, a nomination form and four copies of the books 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 2005.

Download the nomination form here. (pdf)

The Book Award Committee consists of three scholars: a member of the Executive Committee, who usually serves as chair, and two members appointed by the LSA President. This committee will consider all the books submitted and may recommend one title to the Executive Committee who must formally approve the Award Committee's recommendation.

Previous Winners

1992 Keren Rice, A grammar of Slave
1994 Johanna Nichols, Linguistic diversity in space and time
1996 William Labov, Principles of linguistic change: Internal factors
1998 Alice C. Harris and Lyle Campbell, Historical syntax in cross-linguistic perspective
2000 Lyle Campbell, American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America
2002 Marianne Mithun, The languages of Native North America
2004 Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Cambridge grammar of the English language