Executive Committee Report

The Officers and Executive Committee met in the Washington Board Room of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, Washington, DC, beginning at 8:00 AM on Thursday, 4 January 2001. Those in attendance included David Perlmutter, President; Walt Wolfram,Vice President/President-Elect; Joan Bresnan, Past President; Sally McConnell-Ginet, Secretary-Treasurer; Gunnar Hansson, Bloch Fellow; Mark Aronoff, Editor of Language; Michael Kenstowicz, chair of the Program Committee; Marmo Soemarmo, Web Editor; John Baugh; Sandra Chung; Salikoko Mufwene; Donna Jo Napoli; John Ohala; and Keren Rice. Dennis Preston, Director designate of the 2003 Linguistic Institute; Ellen Prince; and Donna Christian, President of the Center for Applied Linguistics, were present by invitation. The Secretariat was represented by Margaret Reynolds, Elizabeth Hogan, and Mary Niebuhr.

  1. Received reports from the chairs of committees, delegates/liaisons, and the Archivist for 2000. The Committee on Honorary Members recommended the election of Professor Hwang-cherng Gong of the Institute of Linguistics at Academia Sinica, Taiwan; Professor Jean Kellens of the Collège de France, Paris; and Professor Ki-Moon Lee of Seoul National University for honorary membership in the Society. These recommendations were accepted with thanks. [The citations are included in the 2001 Annual Meeting Report]
  2. Accepted with appreciation reports of sister organizations including the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, the Decade of Behavior, the National Museum of Language, the Joint National Committee on Languages, and the Coalition for National Science Funding. In addition, the committee received a report on the Building Blocks Workshop sponsored this fall by the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH) and accepted an invitation from NINCH to officially join this effort.
  3. Learned that a new FAQ on sign language was nearly ready for press and would be available in the winter.
  4. Endorsed 'Principles for Emerging Systems of Scholarly Publishing' in response to a request by the Association of Research Libraries.
  5. Reviewed five proposals from various commercial and university presses to collaborate on the publication of Language. Although final negotiations are not complete, the committee was pleased that all the proposals included provision for making Language available on-line. [See p. 19.]
  6. Accepted with thanks reports from the directors of the 2001 and 2003 Linguistic Institutes and the Director of the 2002 Special Summer Program to be hosted by the DGfS at the University of Duesseldorf. Reserved the summer of 2005 for an Institute to be cosponsored by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  7. Received a report from the chair of the Program Committee and commended the committee on the addition of plenary lectures to the program for this meeting. The four scholars--Stephen Crain, Jane Grimshaw, Ray Jackendoff, and Donca Steriade--who are presenting the lectures this year were warmly thanked for their important contribution to the program. The Executive Committee looks forward to receiving a report on the evaluations which all who attended the 2001 meeting were invited to complete.
  8. Received with great thanks the report and recommendation of the Ad Hoc Search Committee for a new Editor of Language. Abigail Cohn, Patrick Farrell, Susan Steele, Walt Wolfram, and Arnold Zwicky were thanked for their service, and the ad hoc committee was dismissed.
  9. The committee nominated Sally McConnell-Ginet of Cornell University to stand for election as Secretary-Treasurer in 2002 and Brian Joseph of Ohio State University to stand for election as Editor in 2002.

[This report highlights the major actions taken by or reported in the Executive Committee. Full minutes of the meeting are available from the Secretariat.]