Bill Baxter and Laurent Sagart have been awarded the Bloomfield Book Award by the Linguistic Society of America for their book Old Chinese: A New Construction (Oxford University Press, 2014). The Bloomfield Award is one the highest honors that the LSA bestows on its members, and is awarded annually to a book "that makes an outstanding contribution of enduring value to our understanding of language and linguistics". The award, named in honor of renowned linguist (and LSA founding member) Leonard Bloomfield, was first awarded in 1992. In receiving this award, Bill and Laurent join a select gourp of linguists, including the likes of William Labov, Keren Rice, Robert Dixon, Marianne Mithun and Lyle Campbell.

In their announcement of the award, the LSA describes the praise for Bill and Laurent's book as follows: "[it] has been highly acclaimed by specialists and non-specialists alike, with one citation noting that this is not only an impressive piece of modern scholarship; it is also a book that will have lasting impact on the study of Chinese linguistic history and of ancient Chinese history and culture more broadly."

Bill is undoubtedly one of the most influential scholars of the historical linguistics of Chinese, and fully deserving of this recognition. Congratulations, Bill!