Alex Elias wins Jan Brouwer Thesis Award
Alex Elias, alumnus of the Research Master Linguistics, has won the prestigious Jan Brouwer Thesis Award for his thesis. Elias, who is currently working as a PhD-student at UC Berkeley, wrote his thesis under supervision of prof. dr. Marian Klamer.
The prizewinning thesis Lio and the Central Flores Languages consists of two interconnected parts. The first section is a description of the phonetics and phonology of Lio, an Austronesian language spoken in Flores, an island in the Lesser Sunda island chain of eastern Indonesia. The second section is a historical analysis of the relations of the Central Flores languages, and a reconstruction of Proto-Central Flores.
Elias collected data for his thesis by carrying out extensive fieldwork in Central Flores, which centered on the Lio language. In addition , he carefully studied manuscripts and other published sources, such as catholic prayer books.
His work resulted in a thesis that is already cited regularly in the scholarly literature on the languages of Eastern Indonesia.
The recipient of the Jan Brouwer Thesis Award receives €2000,-. The award is presented annually by the Koninklijke Hollandse Maatschappij der Wetenschappen.