Aron Finholt, Linguistics Graduate Student, WON "Outstanding Master's Thesis and Research Project Award"

Aron Finholt, a Ph.D. graduate student in Linguistics won an, "Outstanding Master's Thesis and Research Project Award" from the College. He was advised by Professor John Gluckman. Aron’s project addresses the question of complementizer choice in Swahili through a regression-based analysis of Swahili corpus data. His analysis focuses specifically on the descriptive observation that Swahili uses two distinct complementizers, kwamba and kuwa, interchangeably to introduce an embedded clause under clause-embedding predicates. Ultimately, his analysis demonstrates that the two complementizers are in-fact not in free-variation, but may rather reflect the differences in the speaker’s commitment to the truth of embedded propositions.

Title: Attitude Reports and Relative Belief: A New Perspective on the Swahili Dual Complementizer System