THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES OF THE AM

THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES OF THE AMERICAS

Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California, January 8-11, 2009

Call for Papers, Posters, and Organized Sessions

Deadline for abstracts: August 1, 2008

The 2008-2009 annual winter meeting of SSILA will be held jointly with the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in San Francisco, California, at the Hilton San Francisco, January 8-11, 2009. Information about the hotel and location can be found at the LSA website (http://www.lsadc.org). Participants will be able to preregister for the meeting and reserve hotel rooms on-line after July 1.

Call for Papers

SSILA welcomes abstracts for papers, posters, and organized sessions that present original research focusing on the linguistic study of the indigenous languages of the Americas.

The Program Committee will discuss and judge each abstract or proposal on the basis of their collective knowledge and, when appropriate, on reports from consultants. They will arrange each session, assemble the final program, and select session chairs. Members of the Program Committee for the January 2009 meeting are Donna Gerdts (chair, SSILA President), George Aaron Broadwell, Karin Michelson, Doris Payne, and Richard Rhodes (SSILA Vice-President).

Abstract Submission

The deadline for receipt of all abstracts and session proposals is midnight (PST) August 1st.

Abstracts should be submitted electronically via the Easychair website. Here are detailed instructions. Also e-mail or hard-copy submissions will be accepted if arrangements are made in advance with the SSILA Executive Secretary (ivy@ivydoak.com ). Abstracts may be submitted in either English or Spanish.

Abstracts must conform to the guidelines below.

General Requirements

All authors must be members of SSILA. See the SSILA website for information about membership and renewal. The membership requirement may be waived for co-authors, or for participants in organized sessions, who are from disciplines other than those ordinarily represented by SSILA (linguistics and linguistic anthropology). Requests for waivers of membership must be made by a member of the Society to the SSILA Executive Secretary. (Note: Membership in LSA is not required for participation in SSILA sessions.)
Any member may submit one single-author abstract and one multi-author abstract OR two multi-author abstracts.
After an abstract has been accepted, no changes of author, title, or wording of the abstract, other than those due to typographical errors, are permitted.
Papers or posters must be delivered as projected in the abstract or represent bona fide developments of the same research.
Papers must not appear in print before the meeting.
Handouts, if any, are not to be submitted with abstracts but should be available at the meeting for those listening to the presentation.
All presenters of individual papers or posters and all participants in organized sessions must register for the meeting.
Authors who must withdraw from the program should inform the SSILA Executive Secretary as soon as possible.

Format of Long Abstracts

Abstracts should be uploaded as a file, preferably in PDF format, to the abstract submittal form on the Easy Chair website.
The abstract, including a bibliography and examples, if needed, should be no more than 500 words. All words in examples including glosses and numbers in tables, references, abbreviation explanations, and so on are counted in the 500 word limit. Abstracts longer than 500 words will be rejected without being evaluated.
At the top of the abstract, give a title that is not more than one 7-inch typed line and that clearly indicates the topic of the paper.
Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously. Do not include your name on the abstract. If you identify yourself in any way in the abstract (e.g. ...in Smith (1992)...I...), the abstract will be rejected without being evaluated. Of course, it may be necessary to refer to your own work in the third person in order to appropriately situate the research.
Abstracts which do not conform to these format guidelines will not be considered.

Content of Long Abstracts

Papers or posters whose main topic does not focus on the indigenous languages of the Americas will be rejected without further consideration by the Program Committee. The Program Committee requires further that the subject matter be linguistic, that the research presented include new findings or developments not published before the meeting, that the papers not be submitted with malicious or scurrilous intent, and that the abstract be coherent and in accord with these guidelines.

TWO ABSTRACTS ARE REQUIRED:a short abstract, maximum length of 100 words, which will appear in the Meeting Handbook if your paper is accepted, and a long abstract, for review by the program committee.

Abstracts are more often rejected because they omit crucial information than because of errors in what they include. The most important criterion is relevance to the understanding of indigenous languages of the Americas, but other factors are important too. It is important to present results so that they will be of interest to the whole SSILA (and larger) linguistic community, not just to those who work on the same language or language family that you do.

A suggested outline for abstracts is as follows:

State the problem or research question raised by prior work, with specific reference to relevant prior research.
Give a clear indication of the nature and source of your data (primary fieldwork, archival research, secondary sources).
State the main point or argument of the proposed presentation.
Regardless of the subfield, cite sufficient data, and explain why and how they support the main point or argument. For examples in languages other than English, provide word-by-word glosses and underline the portions of the examples which are critical to the argument.
State the relevance of your ideas to past work or to the future development of the field. Describe analyses in as much detail as possible. Avoid saying in effect "a solution to this problem will be presented". If you are taking a stand on a controversial issue, summarize the arguments that led you to your position.
State the contribution to linguistic research made by the analysis.
While citation in the text of the relevant literature is essential, a separate list of references at the end of the abstract is generally unnecessary.

The LSA guidelines for abstract contents may be helpful, and members who are unfamiliar with abstract style may wish to consult the two model abstracts (one good, the other bad) that are posted on the LSA website (http://www.lsadc.org/info/dec02bulletin/model.html ).

Categories of Presentation

Authors are required to indicate the preferred category of their presentation at the time of submitting the abstract. The program committee will try to accommodate this preference as space and time allow.

20-Minute Papers: The bulk of the program will consist of 20-minute papers, with 10 additional minutes for discussion. Guidelines for preparing abstracts for these papers appear above.
Posters: Depending on subject and/or content, it may be more appropriate to submit an abstract to the poster session for visual presentation rather than to a 20-minute paper session. In general, the sorts of papers which are most effective as posters are those in which the major conclusions become evident from the thoughtful examination of charts and graphs, rather than those which require the audience to follow a sustained chain of verbal argumentation. Therefore, authors will want to make points in narrative form as brief as possible. A poster should be able to stand alone - that is, be understandable even if the author is not present. Abstracts for posters should follow the same guidelines as those for papers. SSILA poster sessions share space with LSA posters.
Organized Sessions: SSILA encourages submission of organized session proposals. Organized sessions typically involve more than one scholar and are expected to make a distinctive and creative contribution to the meeting. Proposals for organized sessions are NOT reviewed anonymously. These sessions may be: (1) symposia which include several presentations on a single topic; (2) workshops focused on a specific theme or issue; (3) colloquia which include a major presentation with one or more invited discussants; or (4) sessions of any other kind with a clear, specific, and coherent rationale.

: The organizer(s) of such sessions should notify the program chair (gerdts@sfu.ca ) of their intent to submit a proposal at the earliest possible date, but no later than July 1st, including a general statement of the purpose and structure of the session. A full proposal must be submitted to the program chair by August 1st and must include: (1) a session abstract outlining the purpose, motivation, length (maximum: 3 hours), and justification for the session; (2) names of all participants, including discussants, and titles of papers; and (3) a complete account, including timetable, of what each participant will do. Note that organized sessions, even when structured as symposia, do not have to follow the 20-minute paper + 10-minute discussion format.
: All participants in organized sessions should submit an abstract of their paper following the submission instructions. Should the organized session not be accepted, the abstracts will be considered instead for the general session.