Registration for SSILA & LSA

Registration for the SSILA 2018 meeting is now open! Registration should be completed through the LSA website by going to the the LSA Annual Meeting page.Meeting registration and hotel reservations will open September 1. Meeting registration will be open through December 15, and hotel reservations through December 13.

Meeting Registration

Preregistration information is available here. One of the benefits of SSILA meeting with the LSA is that SSILA attendees get to register at LSA member rates. They can do this in one of two ways:

  1. If attendees are already LSA members, they can log in to the LSA website and simply register for the meeting using the instructions provided at the link above.
  2. For attendees who are not LSA members but would like to register at member rates, the following coupon codes can be used during checkout.  These codes will allow you to register as a nonmember, while receiving member rates.

Registration Codes

(You must be logged in to view these codes.)[emember_protected]

  • Non-student attendees: SISTER2018REGULAR
  • Student attendees: SISTER2018STUDENT

[/emember_protected]NOTE: If you are already an LSA member, you should login to the LSA website and register as an LSA member – do not use the above coupon codes if you are already an LSA member.

Hotel Reservations

The LSA Annual Meeting page has been updated to include information about local transportation, dining, and nightlife.Hotel reservation information and links are available here. To prevent abuse, the link for the cheaper student reservations has been restricted to LSA student members. If there are student attendees that would like to register for this rate, please email David Robinson at the LSA and he will get them set up.If you have any questions, please contact: 

David RobinsonDirector of Membership and MeetingsLinguistic Society of America522 21st St NW, Suite 120Washington, DC 20006drobinson@lsadc.orgwww.linguisticsociety.org

CFP: Language Contact in the Circumpolar World

Language Contact in the Circumpolar World

Institute of Linguistics RAS, Moscow, Russia

27-29 October, 2017

Extended deadline: August 31

The circumpolar world includes the Arctic as defined by AMAP (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program) with adjacent areas. This vast territory has a number of common features that set it apart from any other part of the world: extremely harsh climate conditions, low population density, large distances between speakers of different languages or even of the same language, seasonal migrations for hundreds of miles, prevalence of hunter-gatherers with absolutely no traditional farming, etc. While language contact has been a popular topic of linguistic research in the last couple of decades, there have been few studies that would concentrate on the circumpolar region and specifics of language contact in the area.The Language contact in the circumpolar world conference will bring together researchers studying language contact in the North, and discussions of any aspect of the topic are welcome. Of particular importance is the question of whether language contact in the circumpolar world is different from that of other areas, and if so, in which particular respects.The conference will feature papers selected by the Organizing committee, invited lectures by leading international experts specializing in the topic, and two extended tutorials on particular parts of the circumpolar world, Language Contact in Arctic Canada & Greenland by Michael Fortesque (University of Copenhagen) and Language Contact in Arctic Europe by Jussi Ylikoski (The Arctic University of Norway & University of Oulu).We welcome abstracts from colleagues working on a variety of topics pertaining to language contact in the circumpolar region that include but are not limited to:

  • language change conditioned by language contact,
  • mixed languages,
  • linguistic areas or Sprachbunds,
  • reconstructing the past through linguistic data,
  • patterns of traditional or modern multilingualism,
  • sociolinguistic details of modern or historic language contact,
  • northern varieties of larger languages that are not restricted to the region (e.g. dialects of Russian, Swedish, English, etc.),
  • cartography of language contact areas,

  • methodology of language contact studies which takes into account specific features of the region.

The conference is organized by a new research group on Language Contact in the Circumpolar World at the Institute of Linguistics RAS, supported by the Russian Science Foundation, see http://iling-ran.ru/main/departments/typol_compar/circumpolar/eng for more details.Confirmed plenary speakers:

  • Michael Fortescue (University of Copenhagen)
  • Lenore Grenoble (University of Chicago)
  • Brigitte Pakendorf (CNRS, Lyon)
  • Nikolai Vakhtin (European University of St. Petersburg)
  • Jussi Ylikoski (The Arctic University of Norway & University of Oulu)

Organizing committee:

  • Olesya Khanina (Chair)
  • Andrej Kibrik (Chair)
  • Maria Amelina
  • Mira Bergelson
  • Valentin Gusev
  • Olga Kazakevich
  • Elena Klyachko
  • Yuri Koryakov
  • Natalia Stoynova

The conference will be held in English. Organizers will assist participants in finding accommodation in the vicinity of the conference location.The extended deadline for abstract submission is August 31, 2017. Notifications of acceptance or non-acceptance will be sent via email soon after that date. Please submit an anonymous abstract of no more than 1 page (excluding references) by email to circumpolar.conference2017@gmail.com; include a title, authors, and affiliations in your email.

CoLang 2020 Call for Proposals

The Advisory Circle of CoLang is formally soliciting proposals for hosting the 2020 Institute on Collaborative Language Research (InField/CoLang). Prior to sending a final proposal, please send expressions of interest to the co-conveners by 15 September 2017. Final proposals are due by 15 October 2017.Proposals should take the form of a two-to-three page submission that

  1. presents the qualifications of the proposed Director(s);
  2. outlines any Institute-particular themes or approaches;
  3. presents possible fundraising strategies and sources of internal/institutional support, including participant scholarships (fundraising, evaluating applications and administering);
  4. states the likely available resources for personnel, food and housing (200+ attendees for 2 weeks, 50 attendees for an additional 3 weeks), providing rooms and computer projectors for 6 classes of 40 people plus a meeting space for all 200+ participants.

The Advisory Circle prioritizes proposals that involve both an Indigenous language community(s) and an academic institution and that state what role and voice they will have in the Institute. One additional page can be added to list any already-known funding or in-kind contributions.Proposals should be emailed to both Advisory Circle co-conveners, Ewa Czaykowska-Higgens (eczh@uvic.ca) and Susan Gehr (susangehr@gmail.com).All proposals received by the due dates will be considered by the Advisory Circle. The Advisory Circle may request additional information. Due to the nature of the event, priority is given to a local organizing committee whose members (at least one) have participated substantially in earlier CoLang Institutes. If selected, the Director(s) will head the Local Organizing Committee and will work closely with the Advisory Circle to develop themes, courses, course content, and instructors. CoLang has an established partnership with the Linguistics Society of America, and the Director(s) and Local Organizing Committee will therefore also work with the LSA.The duties of the Local Organizing Committee are outlined in this paragraph from the Charter

A given year’s Institute is organized and run by a Local Organizing Committee. The committee has the primary responsibility for that Institute. These responsibilities include major fundraising, advertising, all Institute administration including faculty and speaker contracts and payments, arranging IRB approval and dealing with issues of informed consent for the practicum (and elsewhere, if required), arranging venues, travel and visas, and accommodations for all participants, as well as volunteer staffing, airport transfers, social events, evaluation, and follow up reporting, and any other routine things as necessary. Programmatic decisions are made with guidance from the Advisory Committee. The local committee consists of a minimum of two members. One or more external members of the organizing committee might also be appointed, at the discretion of the local committee. In addition, the Local Organizing Committee might ask for others to take on particular organizing roles (e.g., talks, organization of evening and weekend activities, coordination of multi-instructor workshops).

The 2018 Institute will be hosted by Aaron Broadwell, James Essegbey, Brent Henderson, Eric Potsdam at the University of Florida; the 2016 Institute was hosted by Siri Tuttle, Alice Taff, Larry Kaplan, Anna Berge, and Gary Holton at the University of Alaska Fairbanks; and the 2014 Institute was hosted by Colleen Fitzgerald at the University of Texas at Arlington. Proposals for hosting these institutes may be available from the co-conveners upon request.We look forward to hearing from those of you interested in hosting in 2020. Please feel free to contact us if you have questions about hosting or the process of applying. Susan Gehr and Ewa Czaykowska-HigginsCo-Conveners CoLang Advisory Circle

Web resource on the Timucua language

Digital Culture of Metropolitan New York (DCMNY), the group which works to make digital resources of New York area libraries available via the internet, has just completed a new digitization project of five rare documents in the Timucua language.Five Timucua Language ImprintsThe 1612 documents are the earliest known texts in a North American indigenous language north of Mexico, and the new digital versions are a vast improvement on the old microfilms and photostats.The New York Historical Society organized the new digitization project, and particular recognition should go to Henry Raine, of NYHS for overseeing the project.-- Aaron Broadwell

John Asher Dunn (1939–2017)

John Asher Dunn, a long-time researcher in the Tsimshian (Sm’algyax) language, died on July 4, 2017 in Oklahoma City.  He was born June 19, 1939.  He earned a BA degree in Philosophy from St. John’s College in Collegeville, MN and received his PhD in Linguistic Anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1969.  He taught at Oregon State University and the University of Northern British Columbia before embarking on a long career at the University of Oklahoma, serving as a professor and eventually Chair of the Department of Anthropology before joining the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Linguistics to found the BA degree in Linguistics.  He retired from OU in 1999, but continued to assist the program by teaching linguistics courses until his health would no longer permit it.

After retirement, John immersed himself in the contemplative life that he had earlier engaged in as a postulant monk at St. Gregory’s Abbey in Shawnee OK and St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville.  He joined the Community of Solitude and took the name Brother Cuthbert, taking his final vows in 2014.

John studied the Tsimshianic languages of British Columbia for decades, spending summers there to work with speakers to create dictionaries, grammars, and pedagogical materials for those communities.  His major scholarly works are A Reference Grammar for the Coast Tsimshian Language (1979) and Sm’algyax:  A Reference Dictionary and Grammar for the Coast Tsimshian Language (1995).  He also developed and published locally a set of six books for native schoolchildren, Teachings of Our Grandfathers.

Beginning in the 1990s and continuing for the rest of his life, John worked on the linguistic justification for his theory that the Tsimshianic languages have shared roots with Proto-Indo-European.  He maintained a website for his research, and published a summary of this work, A Tsimshian Proto-Indo-European Comparative Lexicon in 2017, weeks before his death.  As Brother Cuthbert, he completed his work in his life-long interest in Gregorian chant and plainsong with the publication of Cuthbert’s Little Plainsong Psalter, also in 2017.

John Asher Dunn was a brilliant and beloved teacher: the Linguistics achievement award at OU is named for him. He was a gentle and modest colleague who made unique contributions to American languages.

Submitted by Marcia Haag, Professor of Linguistics, University of Oklahoma

Travel Assistance Award for SSILA 2018

SSILA has accumulated, through earmarked donations, a small fund to assist members in need of financial assistance for travel to the annual meeting. SSILA travel awards are intended to increase participation in SSILA sessions by students and scholars from historically under-represented populations of the Americas.

To apply for a SSILA travel award, email the information requested on the Travel Award Application Instructions to the Executive Secretary by August 1.

Awards will be made on the basis of financial need, which should be explained in a succinct paragraph. In addition, priority will be given to those who:

  • do not have a university or other institutional affiliation
  • are native speakers of indigenous languages
  • are the sole author of a paper or poster, or the joint author of a paper or poster whose co-author(s) will not be in attendance
  • have not received this assistance previously from SSILA

Applications must be submitted at the time abstracts are due: awards will be made only to applicants whose abstracts are accepted.Applications will be reviewed by the Travel Assistance Committee in late August and awardees notified at the same time as the acceptance of their papers. Awards will be in the form of a check that will be given to the recipients at the meeting.Applicants requiring travel visas are urged to apply for them in a timely manner.As a courtesy to all involved, in the event that an awardee is unable to attend the meetings, early notification should be given so that the award may be passed to someone else.

Ph.D. Scholarship at the Language & Culture Research Centre

Applications are invited, from suitably qualified students, to enter the PhD program of the Language and Culture Research Centre at James Cook University Australia. Supervision will be provided by Professors Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon, Dr Michael Wood, Dr Elena Mihas and Dr Simon Overall.Our PhD candidates generally undertake extensive fieldwork on a previously undescribed (or scarcely described) language and write a comprehensive grammar of it for their dissertation. They are expected to work on a language which is still actively spoken, and to establish a field situation within a community in which it is the first language. Their first fieldtrip lasts for six to nine months. After completing a first draft of the grammar, back in Cairns, they undertake a second fieldtrip of two to three months. Fieldwork methodology centres on the collection, transcription and analysis of texts, together with participant observation, and — at a later stage — judicious grammatical elicitation in the language under description (not through the lingua franca of the country). Our main priority areas are the Papuan and Austronesian languages of New Guinea and surrounding areas and the languages of tropical Amazonia. However, we do not exclude applicants who have an established interest in languages from other areas (which need not necessarily lie within the tropics).PhDs in Australian universities generally involve no coursework, just a substantial dissertation. Candidates must thus have had thorough coursework training before embarking on this PhD program. This should have included courses on morphology, syntax, semantics, and phonology/phonetics, taught from a non-formalist perspective. We place emphasis on work that has a sound empirical basis but also shows a firm theoretical orientation (in terms of general typological theory, or what has recently come to be called basic linguistic theory).Distinguished Professor Alexandra (Sasha) Aikhenvald is Australian Laureate Fellow and Research Leader for People and Societies of the Tropics. Together with Professor R. M. W. Dixon, she heads the Language and Culture Research Centre, which includes Research Fellows and a growing number of doctoral students. In addition, senior scholars from across the world opt to spend their sabbatical at the Language and Culture Research Centre.The LCRC has strong links with anthropologists, archaeologists and educationalists, with scholars working on environmental issues, all within James Cook University. Further information is available at http://www.jcu.edu.au/lcrc/The scholarship will be at the standard James Cook University rate, Australian $26.682 pa. Students coming from overseas are liable for a tuition fee; but this may be waived in the case of a student of high merit. A small relocation allowance may be provided on taking up the scholarship. In addition, an adequate allowance will be made to cover fieldwork expenses and conference attendance.The scholarship is for three years (with the possibility of a six month extension). The deadline for application by international students (starting in 2017) is 31 August 2017; the deadline for students with Australian and New Zealand passports is 31 October 2017.Successful applicants would take up their PhD scholarships between January and June 2018. (The academic year in Australia runs from February to November.)Application form and procedures for international students can be found at: https://www.jcu.edu.au/graduate-research-school/candidates/prospective-students. Applications will be open in early July.Prospective applicants are invited, in the first place, to get in touch with Professor Aikhenvald at Alexandra.Aikhenvald@jcu.edu.au, providing details of their background, qualifications and interests (including a curriculum vitae). Applicants are advised to send samples of their written work in linguistics (at least some of this should be in English).

Texts in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas #1: Zoquean Narratives

IJAL vol. 83, Supplement 1, April 2017 Introduction Lynda BoudreaultAyapanec prepared by Daniel SuslakSierra Popoluca (Soteapanec) prepared by Lynda BoudreaultTexistepec Popoluca prepared by Søren Wichmann and Lynda BoudreaultOcotepec prepared by Ernesto Ramírez Muñoz and Román de la Cruz MoralesSan Miguel Chimalapa Zoque prepared by Silviano Jiménez JiménezSanta María Chimalapa Zoque prepared by Silviano Jiménez Jiménez and Roberto Zavala Maldonado This volume is also viewable as animated text online at http://www.americanlinguistics.org/?page_id=2021. The online edition includes an additional text from Jitotoltec Zoque prepared by Roberto Zavala Maldonado.

SSILA 2018 Call for Papers & Posters

Deadline for Abstracts: August 1, 2017

The annual winter meeting of SSILA will be held jointly with the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the Grand America in Salt Lake City, January 4-7, 2018. Information about the hotel and location can be found at the LSA website (www.lsadc.org). Participants will be able to register for the meeting and reserve hotel rooms on-line at the LSA site between 09/01/2017 and 12/13/2017.SSILA welcomes abstracts for papers, posters, and organized sessions that present original research focusing on the linguistic study of the indigenous languages of the Americas.The deadline for receipt of all abstracts is midnight (the end of the day) August 1st.  Abstracts should be submitted electronically, using the electronic submission website EasyChair. Consult the SSILA website for detailed instructions. Also, e-mail or hard-copy submissions will be accepted if arrangements are made in advance with the SSILA Program Committee Administrator, Martin Kohlberger (conferences@ssila.org). Abstracts may be submitted in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.The EasyChair submission page address is https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ssila2018.For complete details on formatting and submitting your abstract to SSILA see our Abstract Guidelines page.

New Program Committee Members

Shannon Bischoff & Analía Gutierrez

SSILA is happy to announce that Shannon Bischoff and Analía Gutierrez are our new Program Committee Members!They will be assisting the Keren Rice (Program Committee Chair) in organizing the SSILA meeting in Salt Lake City in 2018.In 2017-2018, Shannon will serve as Junior Co-Chair and Analía will serve as Member.  Next year Shannon will serve as Chair and Analía will serve as Junior Co-Chair.We would like to thank Shannon and Analía for their participation and dedication.

SSILA Call for Organized Session Proposals

The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas

Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, Utah

January 4-7, 2018

Deadline for Organized Session Proposals:

June 1st, 2017

The annual winter meeting of SSILA will be held jointly with the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Salt Lake City, Utah on January 4-7, 2018.

Call for Organized Session Proposals*

SSILA welcomes proposals for organized sessions. This is an opportunity for researchers to organize a series of presentations that revolve around a single typological, methodological or areal theme. The presentations must be based on original research focusing on the linguistic study of the indigenous languages of the Americas.Organized sessions involve more than one scholar and are expected to make a distinctive and creative contribution to the meeting. Proposals for organized sessions are NOT reviewed anonymously. These sessions may be: (1) symposia which include several presentations on a single topic; (2) workshops focused on a specific theme or issue; (3) colloquia which include a major presentation with one or more invited discussants; or (4) sessions of any other kind with a clear, specific, and coherent rationale. Sessions can be 1.5 or 3 hours long.

Abstract Submission

The deadline for the receipt of organized session proposals is midnight (the end of the day) June 1st.All organized session proposals should be submitted electronically by e-mail to SSILA Program Committee Administrator Martin Kohlberger (conferences@ssila.org). Proposals should be submitted in English.The proposal must include: (1) a session abstract outlining the purpose, motivation, length (maximum: 3 hours), and justification for the session; (2) names of all participants, including discussants, titles of papers, and abstracts of a maximum of one page for each presentation; (11pt or 12 pt, single spaced, 1-inch margins); (3) a complete account, including timetable, of what each participant will do. Abstracts following the above guidelines should be submitted for each poster as well, and the session abstract should state clearly whether an abstract is to be considered as a talk or as a poster. Note that SSILA organized sessions, even when structured as symposia, do not have to follow the 20-minute paper + 10-minute discussion format. The entire proposal should be submitted in a single PDF document.* Please note there will be a call for regular papers and posters in the coming weeks. This call is only for organized session proposals.

Uto-Aztecan Conference

Dear Friends of Uto-Aztecan languages,This year, we are pleased to host the annual Friends of Uto-Aztecan Conference (FUAC) in Boise, Idaho, on the Boise State University campus in conjunction with the Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL, see attached flier), October 20-22. FUAC itself will take place on Friday, October 20 (and possibly the morning of October 21, depending upon the level of interest).The deadline for abstracts for FUAC is June 15, 2017. Abstracts can be on any topic in linguistics relating to Uto-Aztecan languages (and their neighbors). Registration fees will cover attendance at both FUAC and WECOL sessions (with the addition of a FUAC-only optional fee for a Friday evening dinner on the Basque Block in beautiful downtown Boise with your fellow FUACers).October is a beautiful time of the year to visit Boise. The weather is still reasonably mild and the trees are still turning. The Boise State campus is located directly across the Boise River from parks, the zoo, museums, and downtown, and so friends, companions, and kids will not be bored! If there is interest, we'll also organize a hike into the Boise foothills that weekend.Thank you, and hope to see you in Boise!Sincerely, Tim ThornesDownload the WECOL flyer here.