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Reasons to support LINGUIST
NOTE: As a 501(c)3 organization, LINGUIST qualifies for corporate donation-matching programs; and, of course, your donation is tax deductible. See Tax Efficient Giving below.

Why we need your support
  LINGUIST List is provided free to users; we want all our services to be as accessible as possible. Although the moderators - Anthony Aristar and Helen Dry - provide their services without charge, the cost of running a large Internet-based organization is very high.
 
As we have grown over the years, from a small mailing list to the premier Internet resource for linguistics, we have come to rely on an increasing crew of student editors. Currently, there are 18 such editors working for you. So when you donate to LINGUIST, not only are you helping us maintain and improve the services we provide, but you are also supporting deserving students pursuing a Master's degree in linguistics. Previous student editors have gone on to study for their doctorates at top universities or have taken up positions in leading companies.
 
We do not receive any government or public support for our daily operations. We receive help from Supporting Publishers, and Institutions from whom we ask a donation in return for job and software announcements. But for the majority of our running costs, we depend on Individuals like you.
 
Most comparable web sites with membership programs charge upwards of $50 per year to access the same depth, breadth and quality of information that the Linguist List provides for free. If The LINGUIST List had to commercially provide its services, the operating costs would run to several hundred thousand dollars per year - the real commercial costs of The Linguist List would only start with web hosting, web site development, programming, and editorial staff. This alone would raise the cost of a subscription to a significant amount. So far, with the generous support we have received from the linguistic community, we have been able to avoid such subscription charges and keep LINGUIST free.
Convinced? Click Here

The services we provide
  In return for your support, we provide a comprehensive and ever-growing range of services. Here's a list of just some of them:
  • The LINGUIST Mailing List. LINGUIST was started in 1990 as a means for linguists around the world to keep in contact and disseminate information pertinent to linguistics; as Anthony Aristar states in the first issue, the goals of the new list were (and still are) to "provide a forum for the discussion of those issues which interest professional linguists". (LINGUIST Issue 1.0)

    In 1990, there were only seven issues (to be fair the list only started on 13th December). In 1991, the first full year of operation, there were 888 issues in total, a figure that highlights the immediate popularity of the list. Last year (2008), the figure had risen to 3,962 issues covering thirteen categories. In 2002, Media and Dissertations were added, the list of categories now reading: All, Books, Calls, Conferences, Discussion, Dissertations, Software, Support, FYI, Jobs, Media, Queries, Reviews, Summary, and TOCs. Each issue is archived on this web-site, where they can be easily searched and retrieved.

    Currently, the LINGUIST has 25,000 subscribers in 140 countries. SUBSCRIBE HERE.
  • Multi-List Search Engine. Not only do we maintain our own list, we also archive numerous other lists that are useful to linguists, language professionals, and language enthusiasts alike. Some examples are: The Arabic Information List, The Chinook Studies List, Linguistic Exploration List, and World Wide Words. For the full list, click HERE. All these lists can be searched with a single command using the Multi-List Search Engine.
  • Linguistic Subfield and Subject Language. All our resources are categorized by linguistic subfield(s) and subject language(s). Thus we provide a powerful information-retrieval facility that is customized specifically for linguists.

  • Publications Area. Need to find a linguistics- or language-related book? Want details about a journal? Would you like to read reviews about publications you are interested in? The Publications Area is your one-stop solution.

  • People and Organizations Area. Find professional information about linguists, or enter your own information so interested colleagues can find you. Via the People and Organizations Area you can also submit your dissertation abstract, find information on research projects and funding opportunities, and use our Notice Board facility for more general inquiries within the linguistic community.

  • Unicode compliant across the site. Linguists use a variety of atypical characters, such as IPA, as well as scripts other than Latin. For a long time it has been difficult to correctly store and display these characters on the web. The answer lies in Unicode, an encoding standard which potentially allows the unambiguous representation of any character ever used. One of our major aims at LINGUIST is to make this the standard for all linguistic internet sites. We are currently developing a range of internet tools that allow linguists to input information in Unicode. Our database allows us to store and retrieve Unicode characters. For example,

        Traditional Chinese: 語 言 學 家 名 人 錄
        Japanese: リングイストリスト

    IPA is still problematic in that we can store the information but not all browsers can display it. Netscape 6.2, Opera 6.04 and Mozilla 1.0 properly display all Unicode characters. However, the latest version of Internet Explorer while displaying most characters, seems to have difficulties with some of them. For example,

        IPA Characters: ˈlɪŋwɪstˡˌlɪst

    For more information on Unicode, click HERE.

  • Lots, lots more... Use the drop-down menus at the top of this page to navigate around our site and find the many other services that LINGUIST offers for free.
Convinced? Click Here

Tax Efficient Giving
  The LINGUIST List exists under the umbrella of the Eastern Michigan University Foundation, and as such can accept charitable donations because the EMU Foundation is a registered non-profit organization. These donations can be offset against your federal and sometimes your state tax return (U.S. tax payers only). For more information visit the IRS Web-Site, or contact your financial advisor.

Many companies also offer a gift matching scheme, such that they will match any gift you make to a non-profit organization. Normally this entails your contacting your human resources department and sending us a form that the EMU Foundation fills in and returns to your employer. This is generally a simple administrative procedure that doubles the value of your gift to LINGUIST, without costing you an extra penny. Please take a moment to check if your company operates such a scheme.
Page Updated: 20-Nov-2009

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