During our annual Fund Drive, we like to feature undergraduate and early-career graduate students who have gone above and beyond the classroom to participate in the wider field of linguistics. Selected nominees exemplify a commitment to not only academic performance, but also to the field of linguistics and principles of scientific inquiry.

Since this year’s Fund Drive theme is Mirrors and Reflections, we are especially excited to recognize those Rising Stars whose bright light is sure to reflect onto the field for years to come. Today's Rising Star meets this criterion!

It is my pleasure to announce that today's Rising Star is Olzhas Orazaly, a student at Maqsut Narikbayev University (KAZGUU). Olzhas was nominated by his mentor, Anar Baizhanova, who wrote to us and said:

"I've known the Olzhas since September 2023 when he enrolled my courses of History of the English Language and German as the Second Foreign Language. In addition, I taught him the course of Morphology of the English language. Olzhas managed to reveal his creative and analytical potential by participating in all kinds of in-class and homework assignments. He always demonstrates the unconventional solutions to various tasks he is faced with. He is fluent in three languages (Kazakh, Russian, and English), and has a very good command of German (B2) which gives him an opportunity to compare different linguistic aspects in several languages. It should also be mentioned that the student develops an interest in neurolinguistics and is therefore planning to get his master degree in this field abroad. Olzhas will manage to reach all his aims due to his arduous work and talent."

Olzhas reflects:

"At first, I was not interested in linguistics, or in academia, in general. At the time of graduation, I never thought that I would want to connect my life with academic world. I was interested in biology and medicine, but since chemistry came hard to me, this idea was abandoned. For some reason, I enrolled to my university for Tourism program. But the more time passed, I came to gradual realization that it is not what I want to do. In the end, it was decided that it would be better for me to change my major, and so, I needed to ponder about my new path. What major would be chosen was based on what the best skill I had – English. After establishing that, the next step was to decide what program, offered by my university, I should choose – Translation studies or Applied Linguistics. By that time, I knew nothing about linguistics (even more so about applied one), that’s why I began researching about this field. I found out that Applied Linguistics can be about Computational Linguistics, making machine translations or about Psycho-/Neurolinguistics, researching mind/brain and language, and even more. Seeing this, I immediately decided to take Applied Linguistics and never regretted this decision. With more and more completed courses, I was convinced more and more that this is what I want to do. Knowledge given on courses was not enough for me, I sought even more – articles, books, videos. I wanted to know more not only about Applied Linguistics, but also about Theoretical Linguistics. Honestly, at the beginning, I saw Applied Linguistics as a stepping stone, through which I can step my foot into natural sciences (via Neurolinguistics). But with time passing by, I started getting interested in the field of Linguistics itself – comparativism, language typology, history of linguistics. Right now, my dream is to accomplish what Rodney Hudson and Geoffrey K. Pullum accomplished, but with my native language – to write comprehensive descriptive grammar of Kazakh.

"Linguistics is a broad field, field where various theories, views, ideas flourish. And not only that, it can extend beyond and reach other fields. It gives me great joy finding about (syntactic) theory or idea proposed by some linguist, but it is never enough. I want to not only deepen my knowledge but also widen it, go beyond one field. I want get my hands on philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive sciences – every field that is connected to human cognition. And, Linguistics is a perfect field for that. As it is does not limit itself with one thing."
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The LINGUIST List looks forward to serving the linguistics community, including its up-and-coming Rising Stars, for years to come. But we cannot do it alone. Please help us continue providing our services by making a donation to our Fund Drive at https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate.