Professor Paula Fikkert is awarded the 2024 Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics for her research into phonological change over time, both in language acquisition (first and second) and historical change. The Neil and Saras Medal is awarded annually for lifetime achievement in the scholarly study of linguistics. Fikkert joins an impressive list of laureates including professor Noam Chomsky and professor William Labov. Fikkert: "To be awarded this medal is a huge honour."
Huge honour
Fikkert feels privileged to join the list of laureates of this prestigious award. "It is an incredible honour and privilege to be awarded the 2024 Neil and Saras Smith Medal for lifetime achievement in the scholarly study of linguistics. What makes it especially valuable to me is that the medal is installed by Neil Smith, whose wonderful, detailed and exquisite research on the acquisition of phonology - based on case studies first of his son (1973) and later of his grandson (2010) - has heavily influenced my work. He has inspired me throughout my career, and subsequently, many of my students. Neil Smith was way ahead of his time by studying the interaction between perception and production, and by publishing all data that he used for his research, long before Open Science became standard. Of course, he did much more than that, and whatever he did, he set an example. To be awarded this medal is a huge honour. It is humbling to see the list of previous award winners, who - each in their own right - are great examples of outstanding linguistic research. To be on this list means a lot to me."
Academic career
Fikkert, born 26 February 1965, has been a professor of linguistics, specialising in language acquisition, at the Centre for Language Studies of the Faculty of Arts since 2007. She graduated in Dutch Language and Culture at the University of Groningen and got her PhD at Leiden University (both with the highest degree). Her dissertation ’On the acquisition of prosodic structures’ was awarded the prize for the best dissertation in linguistics in 1995. She had several postdoctoral positions, first in Konstanz, where she extended her domain of research to include historical linguistics, in particular phonology, investigating prosodic phenomena in the Middle Dutch manuscript ’Het leven van Sinte Lutgart’ (the life of St. Lutgart), and into changes in prosodic structure from Old Germanic to the modern languages, and subsequently at Radboud University. She received several prestigious grants from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and Dutch Science Foundation (NWO).
Fikkert uses a variety of methods, from studying old manuscripts to eye tracking and electroencephalogram (EEG) studies to investigate children’s perception of phonological contrasts. She is a principal investigator in the Baby and Child Research Center , where much of her acquisition work is conducted. Furthermore, she co-authored articles and books with researchers from, among others, Oxford, Cambridge, Toronto, Ottawa, Lisbon, São Paolo, Riken Brain Science Institute and Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS, Paris), Austin (Texas), PennState University. She has given keynotes, invited talks and summer school courses in Europe, the USA (Linguistic Institute at MIT), and Brazil. She has been a guest professor at the University of Tromsø (Norway), Macquarie (Sydney, Australia), and Oxford University. She is a member of several editorial boards of international journals (The Linguistic Review, Language Acquisition, Nederlandse Taalkunde (Dutch Linguistics), Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, Linguistics in the Netherlands). Finally, Professor Fikkert was the CLS research director from 2011-2015. She is an elected member of the Royal Dutch Society of Science (KHMW) since 2014. She currently is dean of the Faculty of Arts (since March 2024).
