Central Australian Linguistics Circle Meeting
5 April 2018
AND
Friends of the Strehlow Centre Symposium
6–7 April 2018

“Reflecting on the past, making tracks for the future”

The Symposium reflects on the rich and interesting history of Central Australia which is housed in the Strehlow Research Collection. It explores the tracks which could take us into the future in the fields of history, language, religion and culture.

The Symposium will be run over two days. There will be talks and lectures over the two days from many of those experienced in Remote Australian life.

Please send an abstract (c. 200 words) to the organising Committee by 16 February 2018: moored03@bigpond.com

10th Conference of Missionary Linguistics
21-24 March 2018, Rome

The International Conference on Missionary Linguistics focuses on older texts (colonial, postcolonial, mainly from missionaries) with the following objectives: the history of linguistics, linguistic documentation, translation studies and sociocultural analysis. The aim of historical linguistics is to describe older stages of languages as well as (processes of) language change, while the history of linguistics studies early thinking on languages, linguistic typologies and structures. These studies are often interrelated with those of the cultural context in which colonial and postcolonial societies developed. Non-Western languages are our main focus.

Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words to missionarylinguistics2018@gmail.com by 1 December 2017.

For more information, see the conference website.

The Vivien Law Prize is offered annually by the Henry Sweet Society for the best essay in the history of linguistic ideas. The competition is open to all currently registered students, and to scholars who have received their PhD or equivalent qualification within the last five years. Essays can be in English, French or German and up to 8000 words in length. Closing date is 30 September 2017.

Further information is available here: http://www.henrysweet.org/grants-and-prizes/vivien-law-prize/

History of linguistics & its Significance
ICL20, International Congress of Linguists
The Dynamics of Language
2-6 July 2018, Cape Town South Africa

Workshop organiser: Camiel Hamans (hamans@telfort.nl), Adam Mickiewicz University

Please submit abstracts in English by 24 July 2017:
http://www.icl20capetown.com/index.php/2016-06-20-10-33-33/abstracts

The history of linguistics as a separate and well organized discipline is relatively young. There has always been interest in the topic among individual scholars. However, till the mid-1960s linguists and students of linguistics were familiar with relatively few names of important predecessors. The 1967 Short History of Linguistics by Robert H. Robins was very short. With the publication of Cartesian Linguistics, in which Noam Chomsky tried to base his theory of generative grammar on the foundations of an earlier philosophical and linguistic tradition, research into the actual history of linguistics turned out to be not only necessary, but also proved to be a meaningful linguistic discipline in itself. The history of linguistics appeared as worthwhile as any other historical research, as evidenced by the three-volumed Landmarks in Linguistic Thought (Harris, Talbot-Taylor et al) and the also three-volumed History of the Language Sciences (Auroux, Koerner, Niederehe and Versteegh).

Within a few decades several international organizations for the study of the history of linguistics were established in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia. A series of international conferences has followed, together with a few specialized journals and international handbooks. However, until now the history of linguistics never managed to gain a substantive place at ICL, the world congress of linguists. A positive exception was the last ICL (Geneva 2013), where Giorgio Graffi was invited to present a plenary on the history of the relations between linguistics and psychology, and where Frederick Newmeyer organized a workshop on the legacy of de Saussure.

The aim of this workshop at ICL20 is to demonstrate that the history of linguistics is an important sub-discipline in itself and especially how research into the history of linguistics may be fruitful to linguistics as such. Contributors are invited to show how older, lesser known or forgotten linguistic theories may support modern research. In addition, papers which show how certain seemingly modern concepts have been approached and sometimes refuted in the past also are most welcome.

Emphasis in the contributions should be on the importance of the history of linguistics for current linguistic research.

The goal of this conference is to gain a better understanding of transnational exchanges between the German-speaking world and the rest of the world in the fields of linguistics and philology. The period under consideration stretches from the 16th century to the 20th. We welcome proposals dealing with the history of these bi-directional transfers.

The conference will take place in Paris, 25-27 January 2018. There is no registration fee.

Dealine for submission: July 31, 2017.

Acceptance notifications: September 30, 2017.

Papers will be allowed 30 min. (+10 min. for questions).

Abstracts of 300–400 words must be submitted by e-mail as a file attachment in Word to cglp2018@gmail.com

Abstracts should include: name and affiliation, e-mail address, title of paper, abstract (if possible on one side of A4 in a typeface no smaller than 10). In your e-mail, please indicate the following: scheduling restrictions or other special needs for your presentation; audiovisual needs; need for written letter of acceptance (or indicate if an email acceptance is sufficient). Abstracts will be anonymized and submitted to a double-blind review. The languages of the conference are English, French and German. A selection of the papers will be published.

For more information, see the conference website.