The 2006 NAAHoLS meeting will again be held in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America, the American Dialect Society, the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, and the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics.  Featured plenary speakers at this year’s meeting include Sandra Thompson, Carlota Smith, Jane Hill, Mary Ann Willie, and Mark Aronoff.

The meeting will take place in Albuquerque, New Mexico between 5-8 January, 2006.  Further details about the meeting are provided in this edition of the newsletter.  We are excited about this year’s schedule of presentations, and we hope to see you in Albuquerque!

This year’s NAAHoLS program will take place in the Laguna Room at the Convention Center (across the street from the Hyatt), all day Friday (6 January).

 The annual NAAHoLS Business Meeting will be held at 4:30 pm on Friday (6 January).  If there are any items you wish to place on the meeting agenda, please let us know in advance.

For further information, contact:  David Boe, Department of English, Northern Michigan University, Marquette, MI  49855; (906) 227-2677; dboe@nmu.edu
 

The 80th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America will take place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 5-8 January 2006.  The American Dialect Society, the American Name Society, the North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences, the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, and the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas will meet concurrently with the LSA.
 

Plenary Presentations

Thursday, 5 January, 7:30 pm  Sandra Thompson (UC-Santa Barbara)

Friday, 6 January, 12:30 pm  Carlota Smith (University of Texas-Austin)

Friday, 6 January, 7:30 pm  Jane Hill (University of Arizona)

Saturday, 7 January, 12:30 pm  Mary Ann Willie (University of Arizona)

Saturday, 7 January, 5:30 pm  Mark Aronoff (SUNY-Stony Brook) (Presidential Address)

The titles of all papers and presentations can be found in the October 2005 LSA Bulletin.  The Bulletin is also available at the LSA website.
 

Other Events

Thursday, 5 January, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm  The Officers and Executive Committee will meet.

Friday, 6 January, 5:30 – 7:00 pm  Annual Business Meeting.  The 8th Bienniel Leonard Bloomfield Award, the 2nd Kenneth L. Hale Award, and the 6th Victoria A. Fromkin Prize will be presented.
 
 
 

The Hyatt Regency Albuquerque and the Double Tree Hotel have reserved a block of rooms for those attending the 2006 meeting.  The special LSA room rates are:

Single/Double/Triple/Quad:  $92 per night

The Hyatt Regency reservation telephone numbers are (505) 842-1234 and (800) 233-1234.  The Double Tree Hotel reservation numbers are (505) 247-3344 and (888) 223-4113.

All reservations are subject to availability if received after 14 December 2005.  Guest check-in time is 3:00 pm, and check-out is 12:00 noon.  To get the special room rates, you must identify yourself as attending the LSA meeting.
 

Everyone attending the meeting is expected to register.  Compliance is important for keeping our fees affordable.  Only those who register will be allowed to present papers, use the Job Placement Service, or attend plenary presentations.

Advance Registration:

Only LSA members may register in advance.  Members planning to attend may preregister when they renew their membership for 2006 or by sending the preregistration form with a check for registration by 5 December 2005.  Preregistrations with credit card payment may be faxed to (202) 835-1717.  The Secretariat strongly encourages you to preregister by 5 December but will, in any case, stop accepting preregistrations on 16 December.  Preregistration fees for the 2006 Annual Meeting are:

Regular Members:  $100.00
Emeritus Members:  $75.00
Student Members:  $40.00
Unemployed Members:  $40.00

Preregistrants may claim their badges and handbooks at the registration desk in the meeting area of the hotel beginning at 11:00 am on 5 January.
 
 

Friday, 6 January
 

Session title:  Linguistic origins and backgrounds

Chair:  Daniel Taylor (Lawrence University)
 

9:00 Margaret Thomas (Boston College):  ‘Bekos’

9:30 Danilo Marcondes (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro):  Is there a pragmatic conception of language in ancient Greek philosophy?

10:00 Break

10:15 Marc Pierce (University of Texas):  Germanic linguistics and the Linguistic Society of America, 1925 and 2005

10:45 W. Keith Percival (University of Kansas):  On the genealogy of linguistic structuralism
 
 

Session title:  Linguists and their activities

Chair:  John Joseph (University of Edinburgh)
 

2:00 Patricia Casey Sutcliffe (Montclair State University):  Louise Pound: University of Heidelberg graduate and important American woman linguist

2:30 David Boe (Northern Michigan University):  G.B. Shaw’s Pygmalion and linguistic historiography

3:00 Break

3:15 Giedrius Subacius (University of Illinois, Chicago):  Upton Sinclair: “A Lithuanian linguist”

3:45  Stuart Davis (Indiana University):  Francis Lieber’s work on Americanisms
 
 

4:30-5:30 Business Meeting, NAAHoLS
 

David Boe (Northern Michigan University)
G.B. Shaw’s Pygmalion and linguistic historiography

The Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw’s (1856-1950) five-act play Pygmalion (1913) is historically relevant on a number of levels.  Most obvious is the connection between the play’s central character Henry Higgins and the British phonetician Henry Sweet.  On another level, Pygmalion can be read as a prototype for research in sociolinguistic dialect variation, an area that wasn’t formally developed until Labov’s work in the 1960s.  Moreover, Shaw was an active advocate for spelling reform, based on his criticisms of the non-phonetic nature of English orthography.  This presentation examines Shaw’s varied contributions to the history of linguistics.
 

Stuart Davis (Indiana University)
Francis Lieber’s work on Americanisms

In 1848 John Bartlett published his Dictionary of Americanisms.  Partially as a response to Bartlett, Francis Lieber, a professor of history and political economy at South Carolina College, compiled a work he entitled "Americanisms, Anglicisms, etc etc".  This unpublished work, located today in the Huntington Library, consists of over 800 entries.  Lieber's entries concern regionalisms, slang, and the speech of slaves.  Not only does Lieber's work constitute an early important source on these topics, but he also lays out an early geographical division of American dialects and is quite aware of language differences based on social class. 
 

Danilo Marcondes (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro)
Is there a pragmatic conception of language in ancient Greek philosophy?

Contrary to some traditional views, I propose a hypothesis that there is a pragmatic conception of language in Ancient Greece.  Based on Detienne (1967) and Wolff (1983), I shall discuss four conceptions of language: (1) religious, (2) rhetorical, and (3) dialectical, having pragmatic features; and a (4) metaphysical conception, starting with Plato and opposed to the first three.  The prevalence of the metaphysical standpoint hindered the development of a pragmatic view in the philosophy of language.
 

W. Keith Percival (University of Kansas)
On the genealogy of linguistic structuralism

I raise the question of how the term 'structuralism' came to be adopted by linguists in the late 1920s by focusing on texts in which the term first occurred.  I also attempt to examine the connection between the underlying notion of structuralism and the intellectual climate of the time.  Documentary evidence strongly indicates that the concept was first popularized by Roman Jakobson, who had moved from Russia to Prague in 1920 and was active in the early development of the Linguistic Circle of Prague.
 
 

Marc Pierce (University of Texas)
Germanic linguistics and the Linguistic Society of America, 1925 and 2005

When the Linguistic Society of America was founded, Germanic linguistics held a particularly strong position within the Society.  However, the current situation is markedly different.  This paper first reviews the historical background and then examines some possible reasons for this development, including the following.  First, it seems that younger scholars sometimes lose interest in Germanic linguistics because it does not make enough use of modern linguistic theories and methods.  Second, an increased interest in the study of other languages has led to fewer scholars working on Germanic topics. 
 

Giedrius Suba?ius (University of Illinois-Chicago)
Upton Sinclair: “A Lithuanian linguist”

Upton Sinclair included 70 Lithuanian appellatives in The Jungle.  A comparison of Sinclair’s Lithuanian language data with American Lithuanian newspapers and books proved no signs of their influence.  Lithuanian words from the first newspaper edition of The Jungle (1905) were of a more conservative character––they included Lithuanian dialectal and orthographical features, which by that time were no longer in circulation in printed texts.  Evidently, Sinclair took Lithuanian language notes from spoken rather than printed sources, or asked Lithuanians to inscribe certain words and phrases into his notebooks.  If we had to find “a Lithuanian linguist” working in field research conditions in Chicago in 1904—there was Upton Sinclair. 
 

Patricia Casey Sutcliffe (Montclair State University)
Louise Pound: University of Heidelberg graduate and important American woman linguist

Louise Pound (1872-1958) was a foundation member of the LSA and professor of English at the University of Nebraska throughout her career.  This paper will tell Louise Pound’s story, focusing particularly on her graduate education at the University of Heidelberg under Johannes Hoops in 1900, as part of a larger project examining the role of the University of Heidelberg in the education of American women linguists.  The University of Heidelberg allowed Pound to obtain her Ph.D. more quickly, but ultimately deprived her of important American contacts so that she failed to become a key figure in linguistics.
 

Margaret Thomas (Boston College)
‘Bekos’

Herodotus tells that the pharaoh Psammetichus (664–610 BCE) isolated two infants, cared for by a goat-herd who never spoke.  When the children’s first word was bekos, Phrygian for ‘bread,’ Psammetichus conceded that Phrygians were the oldest people.  This story has been re-told ever since in western reflection on the origin of language, the nature of child language learning, and the arbitrary / natural distinction.  Many have savored its ‘delicious naïveté’ (Farrar 1865), or treated it as evidence for precociously scientific inquiry.  This presentation analyzes how linguists as diverse as Müller, Bloomfield, and Gleitman have employed the story of bekos. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

28-30 June 2006, Leiden University (Leiden, The Netherlands)
 

Historiography of Linguistics in the 21st Century:
Challenges and Perspectives

Call for Papers

The XVIIIth International Colloquium of the 'Studienkreis Geschichte der Sprach-wissenschaft (SGdS)' will take place at the University of Leiden from 28 to 30 June 2006 and will be organized by Els Elffers (Amsterdam), Jan Noordegraaf (Am-ster-dam), Peter Schmitter (Seoul / Muenster), and Marijke van der Wal (Leiden).
Papers on "Historiography of Linguistics in the 21st Century: Challenges and Per-spectives", the main subject of our conference, are particulary welcome, but con-tributions focusing on other topics within the framework of the history of linguistics are also much appreciated.
Presentations will last 30 minutes, followed by 15 minutes of discussion. The con-ference languages are English and German. The conference fee will be 30 Euro, payable during the conference.
Participants who would like to give a paper are kindly asked to submit an abstract of 250-350 words by 15 January 2006 as a Word- or rtf-file to the local organizer Dr Marijke van der Wal (m.j.van.der.wal@let.leidenuniv.nl) as well as to professor Dr Peter Schmitter, coordinator of the SGdS (schmipe@ uni-muenster.de).
 

Yearly Membership: $20 (US)

Lifetime Membership: $250 (US)

(Note: As NAAHoLS has increased the dues amounts, current lifetime members are invited to contribute $50 to our organization.)

Please make your check out to "NAAHoLS" and send it to:  Talbot Taylor, Department of English, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795.

Members from outside the United States:  Our treasurer regrets that we are no longer able to accept checks written in currencies other than US Dollars.  The cost of bank exchange is more than the cost of membership.  We ask that those members send a check written on a US bank or pay their dues by some other means that arrives in US Dollars.  We regret any inconvenience this may cause.
 

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