In March 2024, we ran a design contest for the cover of The Linguistics Analysis of Word and Sentence Structures. After receiving many excellent contributions, we selected the winning design by Ysabelle Tankeko because of its aesthetic appeal and her incorporation of linguistic elements into the design.

About the artist

Ysabelle Tankeko is a second-year University of Manitoba student, majoring in psychology, with a minor in linguistics and biological science. In the future, Ysabelle hopes to become a speech-language pathologist or an occupational therapist. Though she is still unsure of which career path she wants to pursue, Ysabelle has a passion for helping children. During her free time, Ysabelle enjoys crafting, playing badminton, and hanging out with her dog, Akina. Ysabelle also loves picking up new hobbies and trying new things.

Ysabelle has always had a passion for art and design, and with her newfound interest and appreciation for linguistics, she decided to join the textbook design contest.

Artist’s note on the cover design

Regarding the textbook design, I tried to illustrate things I remember learning from LING 1000 with Dr. Will Oxford. Both morphology and syntax use tree diagrams to show the structure of words and sentences, leading to the creation of the tree. The tree is displayed upside down to reflect the structure of the tree diagram and its branches. The puzzle represents the building of words or sentences. I always thought that figuring out the structure of a tree diagram was similar to completing a puzzle. I’ve also incorporated the abbreviations of phrases found in syntax structure. Following the X-bar template, I tried to position the letters similarly to how a complete diagram would look like.