The 76th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America was held at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Hotel, 3-6 January 2002. The American Dialect Society, North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences, Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, and the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas met in conjunction with the LSA. There were 1,000 participants.
The Annual Business Meeting was held 4 January and attended by approximately 100 members. The Secretary-Treasurer reported highlights of actions taken by the Executive Committee on 3 January. At the recommendation of the Executive Committee, the members elected Alfred Bammesberger (Catholic U-Eichstätt), Dai Qingxia (Cntrl U Nationalities, Beijing), and Petr Sgall (Charles U, Prague) for honorary membership. The citations presented read:
Alfred Bammesberger, Catholic University of Eichstätt. Professor of English and Comparative Linguistics at the Catholic University of Eichstätt, Prof. Bammesberger is one of the world's leading Germanicists and Indo-Europeanists. Prior to earning his PhD from the University of Munich in 1965, he received his MA in linguistics from Yale, where he was a student of the late Warren Cowgill. He is almost the only German Indo-Europeanist of his generation to have had first-hand exposure to American linguistics.
Prof. Bammesberger's more than 240 published articles deal mainly with philological problems--above all in Old English, his language of specialization, but also in Celtic, Baltic, and Germanic as a whole. Most of these pieces, as befits their sharply focused subject matter, are in the nature of short notes, but taken together they constitute a superb corpus of scholarship that enormously enriches our understanding of the Northern European branches of the Indo-European family. Prof. Bammesberger's larger-scale conceptions are mostly to be found in his numerous (over a dozen) monograph-length publications--especially Lateinische Sprachwissenschaft (1984), Studien zur Laryngaltheorie (1984), Der Aufbau des Germanischen Verbalsystems (1986), and Die Morphologie des urgermanischen Nomens (1990). The latter two volumes constitute an indispensable handbook of Germanic historical morphology.
Prof. Bammesberger has been no less prolific as an editor than as an author. Eight volumes of essays bear his name as sole or first editor; one of these is the influential collection Die Laryngaltheorie und die Rekonstruktion des indogermanischen Laut- und Formensystems, dedicated to the memory of his teacher Cowgill. He is also General Editor of the oldest, and still one of the finest Indo-European journals in print--Historische Sprachforschung, founded as (Kuhns) Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung in 1851.
Dai Qingxia, Central University for Nationalities, Beijing. Dai Qingxia has been Professor at the Central University for Nationalities (formerly the Central Institute for Nationality Studies) in Beijing for many years and has trained most of the younger generation of Tibeto-Burman (TB) linguists in China. He is especially known for his work on Jingpho (Kachin), which he has studied since the 1950s. Besides a long list of articles on this language (one of the most important in the whole TB family), he has produced both a Jingpho-Chinese and a Chinese-Jingpho dictionary, which are invaluable to specialists. He has also conducted extensive fieldwork on an impressive number of TB languages, including Hani, Achang, Zaiwa (Atsi), Langsu (Maru), Leqi, Bola, Nung, Jinuo, Dulong, Kucong, Kazhuo, Lipo, Xiandao, Karen, and Burmese. For many of these he has devised writing systems and produced elementary educational materials as well as scholarly articles.
Prof. Dai was one of the first to recognize the key role of phonation types (tense vs lax vowels; clear vs breathy vs creaky vowels) in TB tonal systems. He has produced distinguished studies of unstressed syllables, vowel length, voiceless nasals, and 'mutations consonantiques' in a wide spectrum of TB languages. On the grammatical side, he has carried out the most extensive comparative study of causative constructions to have appeared in China and has produced detailed grammatical sketches of a number of languages, including Jingpho, Achang, Langsu, and Dulong. He is one of the leading authorities on the subgrouping of the TB languages of China.
In recent years, Prof. Dai has devoted much of his time to sociolinguistic questions like multilingualism and codeswitching, as well as Chinese government policies toward the minority languages of the country. He is known as one of the foremost advocates of education in minority languages and has often had to struggle against bureaucratic opposition to his enlightened ideas in this area. On the personal level, Prof. Dai is thoroughly delightful, modest, humorous, and hardworking, always ready to give of his time to foreign students in Beijing and his colleagues overseas.
Petr Sgall, Charles University, Prague. Over the course of a lifetime of distinguished work in theoretical, mathematical, and computational linguistics, Prof. Petr Sgall, Professor Emeritus at Charles University, has done more than any other single person to keep the Prague School tradition alive and flourishing. Prof. Sgall is the founder of mathematical and computational linguistics in the Czech Republic and the principal developer of the Praguian theory of functional generative description, which has been applied to Czech, English, and (through typological studies) to other languages. His group has made major contributions to studies of topic-focus structure and its relation to syntax and semantics, to principles of word order and word-order variation across languages, and to the integration of formal and functional perspectives on linguistic structure, information structure, and meaning. His accomplishments have been recognized with honorary doctorates from the Institut National des Langues Orientales in Paris (1995) and from Hamburg University (1998), as well as with a Humboldt Research Award in 1992 and a Silver Medal from the Minister of Education of the Czech Republic in 1993.
In 1959, together with some of his Charles University colleagues, Prof. Sgall founded the Group for Algebraic Linguistics and the Theory of Computerized Translation in the Czech Language Department of the Philosophical Faculty. Shortly afterwards he set up a similar group at the Centre for Numerical Mathematics in the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. The two groups were combined early in 1968 into the Laboratory of Algebraic Linguistics in the Philosophical Faculty. In consequence of the attitudes of Prof. Sgall and his colleagues to the events of August 1968, however, he was removed from his post as head of the Laboratory of Algebraic Linguistics. The laboratory was disbanded, and in 1972 Prof. Sgall was asked to leave the university. Thanks to the support of his colleagues outside the Philosophical Faculty, however, the staff of the laboratory was instead transferred to the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. Here Prof. Sgall's indomitable enthusiasm, scholarly commitment, and organizational skills made it possible not merely to preserve his academic subject but actually to develop it further. Contacts were maintained with foreign colleagues, and younger scholars were trained who today work in Prague and other academic centers in the Czech Republic and abroad.
Prof. Sgall's intellectual and personal leadership played a crucial role in maintaining the vitality of the Prague School during the years of Communist rule. He and his colleagues have shown great intellectual fortitude in upholding their distinctive theoretical approach without becoming insular. One of their great strengths has been, and remains, their ability to maintain strong collaborative ties with colleagues in theoretical and computational linguistics around the globe.
Other reports were presented by the chair of the Program Committee, the director of the 2001 Linguistic Institute, the director-designate of the 2003 Linguistic Institute, the director of the 2002 Summer Linguistic Program in DÙsseldorf, and the Editor of Language.
Walt Wolfram, LSA President, presented the 6th bienniel Leonard Bloomfield Book Award to Marianne Mithun for her book, The languages of Native North America (Cambridge University Press, 1999). The award recognizes the volume which makes the most outstanding contribution to the development of our understanding of language and linguistics. The citation presented read:
Marianne Mithun's The languages of Native North America is a reference work of permanent value, documenting the results of a century of work on the indigenous languages of North America (a topic which, we note, was an important concern for the scholar after whom this award is named). The permanent presence of Native North American languages in the records of human culture has been assured by the work that Mithun surveys and contributes to. Her synthetic work is done expertly, but in addition she contributes new and original observations on the basis of direct personal study and fieldwork on the complex structures of an array of little-studied languages. Her lucidly written book covers the history of the subfield, a survey of structural properties (including a wealth of examples), a catalogue of the language families including in each a sketch of a representative language, carefully prepared maps, and a massive bibliography. The book sets new standards for scholarship in our field and on every page demonstrates to the reader not only Mithun's deep scholary concern but also her love and respect for the languages of this continent.
Kathleen Fenton received the second Victoria A. Fromkin Prize for Distinguished Service. The prize was established in 2000 to recognize extraordinary service to the Society and the discipline. The citation prepared and presented by Mark Aronoff, Editor of Language, read:
I have been asked to put down a few words about the recipient of this year's Vicki Fromkin award for service to the Society, our outgoing proofreader, Kate Fenton. Ms Fenton began working for Language a little over 30 years ago, after a career at the predecessor of the National Security Administration, where she learned both Vietnamese and Indonesian in the early 1950s, and while she was working as Thomas Sebeok's administrative assistant. As she puts it, Bill Bright was looking for a proofreader, gave her a test, and she passed. It is difficult to believe how valuable Ms Fenton has been to Language without seeing her work which has been invisible to all but the editorial staff. She checks everything from the percentages in tables (they often don't add up) to the consistency in citing a given work across issues. She knows every quirk of the prescribed style of every section of Language, some of which has never been written down and exists only as oral tradition, presumably since the time of Sapir. She is always pleasant and completely unflappable. Truly, Kate Fenton has been the soul of Language. It has been a great honor to work with her. The Fromkin award is a small way to recognize formally her immeasurable contribution through more than 30 years of service to the Society.
Ives Goddard (Smithsonian Institution) and Kathleen Bragdon (C Wm & Mary) received the first Kenneth Hale Award. Established in 2001, the award recognizes outstanding linguistic research on a particular endangered language. The citation presented read:
Ives Goddard and Kathleen Bragdon's Native writings in Massachusett (APS, 1988) is, in the words of Ken Hale, a tour de force. Volume 1 contains the rich 17th- and 18th-century documentation of the Massachusett language (also known as Wampanoag or Natick), including the native language writings with translations and the Eliot Bible and documents related to it along with discussion of the process involved in assembling, transcribing, and translating the original documents; Volume 2 is a companion grammar. This outstanding body of linguistic knowledge provides resources for original research on Wampanoag. In addition, this text has been critical for the revitalization of this language that has not been spoken in many years. A citation would be incomplete without mention of the recent efforts by Jessie Fermino to revive the language, work that could never have occurred without the foundation of Goddard and Bragdon.
The Resolutions Committee, (Ivan Sag, chair, Michael Krauss and Sarah Thomason) presented the following resolutions which were unanimously approved:
We, the Resolutions Committee of the Linguistic Society of America, presuming to speak on behalf of the multitude assembled here today and, moreover, as is the custom on occasions such as this, on behalf of the Society at large, offer the following resolutions:
1. In appreciation of the steadfast devotion they have shown to the highest intellectual standards, in recognition of the difficulty of their task--that of evaluating abstracts submitted on any linguistic topic whatsoever and no doubt crafted with highly variable conformity to the Society's published guidelines--we hereby thank the Program Committee, chaired ably by Sharon Inkelas, and including Chris Barker, Stan Dubinsky, William Idsardi, Kathleen Ferrera, Georgia Green, Rosalind Thornton, and John Whitman, all of whom were assisted in their endeavors by their consultants Carolyn Temple Adger, Janet Bing, Paul Bloom, Eve Clark, Karen Emmorey, Susan Garnsey, Chris Kennedy, John Kingston, Philip LeSourd, Ceil Lucas, Alec Marantz, Lesley Milroy, Geoffrey Nathan, Fritz Newmeyer, Robin Queen, Ronnie Wilbur, and Shirai Yasuhiro.
2. In recognition of their tireless efforts in preparing for, and assisting with the smooth day-to-day functioning of this meeting, a task made difficult both by the routine and the unexpected (be it Legionnaires' disease a quarter century ago or the tragic events of 9-11-01), we express heartfelt gratitude to the Local Arrangements Committee, chaired by Larry Hyman, also consisting of Peter Sells, Jorge Hankamer, Patrick Farrell, and a number of hard-working student volunteers, including Laura Buszard-Welcher, Abby Wright, Rainbow Willard, Julie Larson, Belle Matheson, Teresa McFarland, Lisa Whited, Roger Levy, Julia Bernd, Ashwini Deo, Julie Sweetland, Sarah Benor, Lynsey Wolter, James Isaacs, Line Mikkelsen, Patrick Davidson, and Emily Manetta.
3. For their continued role in enriching the intellectual fabric of our Society's meetings, we hereby thank our sister societies and the individuals responsible for the outstanding programs that have played a key role once again in this year's meetings. We proffer the Society's gratitude to Tometro Hopkins of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (SPCL), to Michael Mackert of the North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences (NAAHoLS), to Allan Metcalf of the American Dialect Society (ADS), and to Victor Golla of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA).
4. For their role in organizing the 2001 Linguistic Institute, we express our profound thanks to the members of the Department of Linguistics of the University of California at Santa Barbara and to the Institute's organizer--Charles Li. As the heroes of linguistic institutes often remain unsung, let us take the time here and now to sing the praises of those who gave a year or more of their lives, working day and night, to make this institute the inspiring and highly successful event that it was. The heros of this institute include Paul Barthmaier, the Institute Coordinator (though still a graduate student!) whose contributions spanned academics, personnel, budget, and general administration. Our hats are off to you, Paul, and to two others whose tireless efforts were in evidence throughout: Jeannie Castillo and Jennifer van Vorst. Finally, we thank Marianne Mithun for her role on the organizing committee, Matt Shibatani for his work as Associate Director, Loy Lytle (Director of Summer Sessions), and Rob Mann (Associate Director of Summer Sessions at UCSB).
5. For the direction they have provided to our Society in all its dealings over the course of the last three years, we acknowledge the contributions of those members of the Executive Committee whose terms expire at the end of this meeting. These include Salikoko Mufwene, Keren Rice, and Past President David Perlmutter.
6. For their arduous editorial work and longlasting contributions, we also express the Society's gratitude to Marmo Soemarmo, now completing his term as our first Web Editor, and to Ed Battistella, who is now completing his term as our first Book Review Editor.
7. We note with sorrow that Elizabeth Hogan, longtime employee of the LSA Secretariat, has moved on to a new life and profession. We wish her well in her new endeavors and note that her dedication and wit will be sorely missed.
8. For seven years of toil, for seven years of the most tactful interaction with difficult authors, for seven years of pain, but seven years of brilliant editions of our Society's journal, we offer our extreme gratitude to you--Mark Aronoff, now stepping down from your term as Editor of Language. May you find peace in your own research once again.
9. And last, but in no way least, for her vision and understanding, leadership and guidance, and endless efforts on all our behalf, we express our profound gratitude to the Society's Executive Director, Margaret (Maggie) Reynolds, as well as her hard-working staff, which has included Elizabeth Hogan, Mary Niebuhr, and Sharon Winkler.
Representatives from the NSF, NIMH, and the Endangered Language Fund gave brief reports. The new Officers and Executive Committee members were recognized, and the session was adjourned.