Christian Puma-Ninacuri (UMASS), and Claudia Matachana (UMASS) and Daniela Narváez (UMASS), are the 2021 Helmut Esau Award recipients. Christian’s paper is titled “The Kichwa morpheme -ka in Ecuadorian Andean Spanish: An outcome of language contact”, and Claudia and Daniela’s paper is “Spanish Words you’ve been Saying Wrong: Language Ideologies and Standardization in Spanish in the US”. 

This award is named in honor of Helmut Esau, who was active in the early days of LASSO. Professor Esau died in an automobile accident shortly after he was elected to the LASSO presidency, and his colleagues at the time established the Esau Award to commemorate his contributions to the Linguistic Association of the Southwest and to the profession at large.

Students must first present at the Annual Meeting and then submit a revised, polished version of their paper to the LASSO Vice President. The prize is awarded to the best of all high-quality submissions received. Recipients of this prestigious prize receive a $400 cash award.