Date: 10-11 September 2026
Place: Fribourg (Switzerland)
Organizers: Pierre-Yves Testenoire & Patrick Flack
Information: https://comdial.sdvigpress.org/event-100897

The Prague Linguistic Circle holds a clearly defined place in the historiography of the language sciences: it is recognized as an institutional and localized “hub” (Hoskovec 2011) of programmatic innovation, representing a pivotal moment in the broad transition from 19th-century philological models to the new paradigms of 20th-century linguistics. While the Circle’s European and international influence—particularly the fundamental impact of its contributions to the development of structural phonology—is well known, most of its historians and commentators have focused primarily on its specific context in Prague itself (e.g., Vachek 1966, Viel 1984, Raynaud 1990, Toman 1995, Sériot 2012). In line with a certain cliché that casts the city of Prague as a “golem-like” site of magical encounters (Ripellino 1973, Flusser 1991), the Circle and its theoretical originality are often presented as the product of syncretism, or even as the precipitate of a kind of fusion between different traditions suddenly brought together in the capital of the new Czechoslovak state.

Date: 23-25 March 2026
Place: Montpellier (France)
Submission deadline: 15 October 2025
Information: https://chedil-alhl.sciencesconf.org

Asia is the cradle of important linguistic traditions and lexicography in particular has had a significant history in different Asian countries. Various forms of lexicographic works, such as wordlists, character primers and thesauri, were compiled in the Chinese and Indian linguistic traditions over 2,000 years ago (Hanks, 2013; Bottéro, 2019). These traditions are an essential part of the history of linguistics and world lexicography, and have only recently been recognized as such in global histories of linguistics (see Considine, 2019). These lexicographical traditions have specific genres, patterns and characteristics. Nevertheless, there have been many influences between the lexicographical traditions of different Asian countries. Examples include Chinese lexicographic genres adopted in Japanese and Korean lexicography or Manchu dictionaries and primers in Chinese (Söderblom Saarela, 2019) ; Malay wordlists written in Chinese characters (Van Hal, 2019).

Organized by National Science and Technology Council, R.O.C.; Institute of History, NTHU; Institute of Linguistics, NTHU; Institute of Taiwan Languages and Language Teaching, NTHU; Center for Sustainable Development of Linguistic Diversity in Taiwan (SDLD); Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, NTHU; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, HU Berlin.

Dates: 28-30 March, 2025
Place: Hsinchu (Taiwan) 
Information and program: https://sites.google.com/gapp.nthu.edu.tw/icmlxii/home

The 12th International Conference on Missionary Linguistics will take place in Hsinchu (Taiwan) from March 28 to 30, 2025, organized by the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Center for Sustainable Development of Linguistic Diversity in Taiwan (SDLD) of National Tsinghua University. Situated at the intersections of linguistic historiography, historical linguistics and historical sociolinguistics, research in the field of Missionary Linguistics aims at understanding how and for what purpose Western missionaries documented and analyzed hitherto unknown languages of Asia, Africa and the Americas. Covering the period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, primary sources of interest are grammars, dictionaries, and teaching manuals. 

The aim of the conference is to bring together researchers who study historical language change, the historical development of linguistic terms and concepts, early ideological conceptualizations of language or other relevant topics through the lens of missionary documents. As with the previous conferences in Oslo, São Paulo, Macau/Hong Kong, Valladolid (Spain), Mérida (Mexico), Tokyo, Bremen (Germany), Lima, Manila, Rome, and Santa Rosa (Argentina), the conference aims to cover a broad spectrum of regions and periods.