- Documentary film The Linguists is screening across the country. More information . . .
- LSA Members: Please complete the LSA's Strategic Planning Survey by October 10th.
- Vote through 8 November for the LSA's Slate of Candidates and for a series of amendments to the LSA Constitution. Log in at the LSA home page to read more and to vote.
Report on the 2007 Linguistic Institute
The 2007 Linguistic Institute, which took place from July 1-27, was hosted by the Department of Linguistics, Stanford University. Its theme was "Empirical Foundations for Theories of Language", reflecting a focus on emergent directions for linguistic research. Courses and activities were chosen to inspire the broadening and clarification of the empirical basis of linguistic study, alongside the development or refinement of theoretical models. The Institute had around 440 students, 80 affiliates, and 100 faculty (many courses had 2 or more instructors). The named professors were: Collitz, Asko Parpola (University of Helsinki); Hale, Marianne Mithun (University of California, Santa Barbara); and Sapir, Joan Bresnan (Stanford University). The director was Peter Sells (Stanford University; now SOAS); the associate directors were Juliette Blevins (MPI-EVA) and Eve V. Clark, Dan Jurafsky, Beth Levin and Ivan A. Sag (Stanford University).
The Institute featured two curricular innovations. First, in addition to 74 regular session courses, each meeting seven times in the period July 5-27, there were 18 "presession" courses, meeting three times July 1-3. The presession courses were designed either to provide specific skills required for regular Institute classes or to provide gentle introductions intended to widen horizons. Second, a large part of the slate of regular session courses were chosen following a call for proposals, which then went through a review and revision process, with the remainder taught by invited or on-site instructors. Both these facets of the Institute were very positively received.
The Institute hosted three Institute lectures given by the named professors, and three Forum lectures. The Forum lecturers were: William Labov (University of Pennsylvania); Elissa Newport (University of Rochester); Harald Baayen (MPI-Nijmegen). In addition, there were about fifteen workshops and conferences running during the Institute, mainly on weekends and during non-class Wednesdays. Finally, there were several well-attended social events, including an Institute-wide barbecue on the Fourth of July and two weekend parties.
Overall, the Institute seems to have been very successful, with a high level of satisfaction from students, affiliates and faculty.
List of Instructors
- Farrell Ackerman (UCSD)
- Artemis Alexiadou (University of Stuttgart)
- Arto Anttila (Stanford University)
- Jennifer E. Arnold (UNC, Chapel Hill)
- Nicholas Asher (UT Austin)
- Ash Asudeh (Carleton University)
- Philip Baldi (Penn State University)
- Marlyse Baptista (University of Georgia)
- David Beaver (UT Austin)
- Emily M. Bender (University of Washington)
- Albert Bickford (SIL)
- Steven Bird (University of Melbourne)
- Betty J. Birner (Northern Illinois University)
- Patrick Blackburn (INRIA)
- Jim Blevins (Cambridge University)
- Juliette Blevins (MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig)
- María Blume (UT El Paso)
- Jürgen Bohnemeyer (University at Buffalo)
- Lera Boroditsky (Stanford University)
- Johan Bos (University of Rome)
- Claire Bowern (Rice University)
- Joan Bresnan (Stanford University)
- Mary Bucholtz (UCSB)
- Kathryn Campbell-Kibler
- Daniel Casasanto (Stanford University)
- Anne Charity (College of William and Mary)
- Yuchin Chien (Cal State, San Bernardino)
- Alexander Clark (Royal Holloway University of London)
- Eve V. Clark (Stanford University)
- Herbert H. Clark (Stanford University)
- Charles Clifton (UMass - Amherst)
- Cleo Condoravdi (PARC/Stanford University)
- Mary Dalrymple (University of Oxford)
- Rory A. DePaolis (James Madison University)
- Hubert Devonish (University of West Indies at Mona)
- Kenneth Drozd (University of Aarhus)
- Cristina Dye (Cornell University)
- Penelope Eckert (Stanford University)
- Robert Englebretson (Rice University)
- Evelina Fedorenko (MIT)
- Hana Filip (University of Florida)
- Charles Fillmore (UC Berkeley)
- Ed Finegan (USC)
- Dan Flickinger (CSLI)
- Suzanne Flynn (MIT)
- Claire Foley (Boston College)
- James A. Fox (Stanford University)
- Susanne Gahl (University of Chicago)
- Richard Gerrig (SUNY Stony Brook)
- Edward Gibson (MIT)
- Adele Goldberg (Princeton University)
- Shelome Gooden (University of Pittsburgh)
- Stefan Gries (UC-Santa Barbara)
- Jeanette K. Gundel (University of Minnesota)
- Gregory Guy (NYU)
- Kira Hall (University of Colorado)
- Kristin Hanson (UC Berkeley)
- Alice Harris (SUNY Stony Brook)
- David Harrison (Swarthmore College)
- Julia Hirschberg (Columbia University)
- Miyako Inoue (Stanford University)
- Keith Johnson (UC Berkeley)
- Dan Jurafsky (Stanford University)
- Elsi Kaiser (USC)
- Paul Kay (UC Berkeley)
- Paul Kiparsky (Stanford University)
- Dan Klein (UC Berkeley)
- Ewan Klein (University of Edinburgh)
- Robert Kluender (UCSD)
- Kevin Knight (USC's Information Sciences Institute)
- Philipp Koehn (University of Edinburgh)
- William Labov (University of Pennyslvania)
- Shalom Lappin (Kings' College, London)
- Beth Levin (Stanford University)
- Roger Levy (UCSD)
- Edward Loper (University of Pennsylvania)
- Barbara Lust (Cornell University)
- Christopher Manning (Stanford University)
- James McCloskey (UCSC)
- Gail McKoon (Ohio State University)
- John McWhorter (Manhattan Institute)
- Norma Mendoza-Denton (University of Arizona)
- Marianne Mithun (UCSB)
- Fermín Moscoso del Prado Martín (CNRS's Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive in Marseilles & Universite de Provence)
- Stefan Müller (University of Bremen)
- Catherine O'Connor (Boston University)
- Stephan Oepen (NTNU, Trondheim/University of Oslo/CSLI)
- John Ohala (UC Berkeley)
- Martha Palmer (University of Colorado)
- Asko Parpola (University of Helsinki)
- Joe Pater (UMass - Amherst)
- Betty S. Phillips (Indiana State University)
- Maria Polinsky (UCSD)
- Christopher Potts (UMass - Amherst)
- Marianne Pouplier (University of Edinburgh)
- James Pustejovsky (Brandeis University)
- Philip Resnik (University of Maryland, College Park)
- John R. Rickford (Stanford University)
- Sarah Roberts
- Ian E. Robertson
- Doug Roland (University at Buffalo)
- Suzanne Romaine (University of Oxford)
- Maribel Romero (University of Pennsylvania)
- Jeffrey T. Runner (University of Rochester)
- Ivan A. Sag (Stanford University)
- Gillian Sankoff (University of Pennsylvania)
- Rebecca Scarborough (Stanford University/University of Colorado, Boulder)
- Chilin Shih (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
- Jeff Siegel (University of New England)
- Hazel Simmons-McDonald (University of West Indies at Cave Hill)
- William Snyder (University of Connecticut)
- Andrew Spencer (University of Essex)
- Richard Sproat (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
- Donca Steriade (MIT)
- Peter Svenonius (CASTL, Trømso, Norway)
- Michael Tanenhaus (University of Rochester)
- Nick Thieberger (University of Melbourne)
- Ida Toivonen (Carleton University)
- Michael Tomasello (MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig)
- John Trueswell (University of Pennsylvania)
- Robert van Rooij (University of Amsterdam)
- Jennifer Venditti (Columbia University)
- Marilyn Vihman (University of York)
- Gregory Ward (Northwestern University)
- Thomas Wasow (Stanford University)
- Alicia Wassink (University of Washington)
- Andy Wedel (University of Arizona)
- Colin Wilson (UCLA)
- Phillip Wolff (Emory University)
- Walt Wolfram (North Carolina State University)
- Annie Zaenen (PARC/Stanford University)
- Kie Zuraw (UCLA)
- Arnold Zwicky (Stanford University)
List of Concurrent Conferences and Workshops
- LSA Survival Skills Workshop (Thursday evenings)
- Workshop on Industry Careers for Linguists (Wednesday evenings)
- Variation, Gradience and Frequency in Phonology (July 6-8)
- Scripts, Non-scripts and (Pseudo)-decipherment (July 11)
- Conversational Games and Strategic Inference (July 11)
- Grammar Engineering Across Frameworks (July 13-15)
- Toward the Interoperability of Language Resources (July 13-15)
- Ethnographic Methods in Sociocultural Linguistics (July 14)
- Applying Cyber-Infrastructure to the Language Sciences: A Case Study for Language Acquisition (July 14)
- New Techniques in Sound Pattern Research (July 14-15)
- Creoles, Acts of Identity, and Education: Celebrating Robert Le Page's Contribution to Sociolinguistics (July 15)
- Alternative Approaches to Language Classification (July 17-19)
- 14th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (July 20-22)
- 2nd Workshop on Computational Approaches to Arabic Script-based Languages (July 21-22)
- Empirical Approaches to Morphological Case (July 25)
- 12th International Lexical-Functional Grammar Conference (July 28-30)
