Dear Subscribers,

LINGUIST List strives to connect the community of linguists worldwide. In 1990, when the List started, this was a revolutionary concept that grew with the early internet (http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/about/). These days we’re in contact with people around the world daily. Our Advisory Board too is comprised of enthusiastic LINGUIST List supporters from around the world (http://linguistlist.org/people/advisors.cfm).

As an international service, we depend on support from the international community. One of our advisors, Dr. Barbara Partee, has kindly written a letter encouraging our Russian colleagues to support the 2015 Fund Drive efforts.

We thank her and everyone who has supported us this year.


Dear LINGUIST subscribers!

LINGUIST List is in the early stages of its 2015 Fund Drive (http://funddrive.linguistlist.org), and it needs donations from linguists all over the world. In past years, linguists in Russia have participated in the Fund Drive, and have been very generous!

Thank you all! Now it’s that time again, and your help is needed more than ever this year. In 2013 there was no fund drive because of reorganization going on at LINGUIST List, and that plus the expenses connected with moving LINGUIST List's home from Eastern Michigan University to Indiana University (see http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/about/) has left them even more than usual in need of donations.

With their dynamic new director, Damir Cavar, LINGUIST List has expanded and modernized its operations, and they have many new services, all operating on a shoestring. As a member of the Advisory Board for LINGUIST List, I can attest that LINGUIST List runs as economically as possible, and that all your donations go to help support graduate student assistants who are not covered by any other funding sources, and without whom LINGUIST List could not continue to operate. And many of the students supported by LINGUIST List are international students, for which this is a great opportunity.

I'm glad that the tradition of user financial support for valuable services, familiar in the US but less so in other parts of the world, seems to be catching on in other countries. There's a page “Funding FAQ” (http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/faq/) that helps explain why they need donations and what our donations pay for.

I know that LINGUIST List is of great value for linguists and linguistics students in Russia. There you can get all kinds of information about conferences, job and fellowship opportunities, linguistic software, how to write abstracts, -- and much more. Much of the work at LINGUIST List has always done by international students supported on assistantships funded by donations to LINGUIST List, and those students are happy to be serving an international community -- and dependent on that community for their support.

Their services have continued to increase in exciting ways, including lots of resources for typology and fieldwork; they provide all those services for free – but they depend on our contributions to make it all possible.

Contributing over the internet (http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/) needs a VISA or MasterCard that works in America; everything goes via PayPal, which is very reliable, but you don't need a PayPal account. So here are two suggestions:

(1) If you have a credit card, make a donation to LINGUIST List! They accept credit card donations in any amount of at least $10.

Note: When you make your donation, you will a chance to give ‘credit’ to an educational institution of your choice. So if you happen to be a Russian graduate student now studying abroad, you can choose either your present institution or the Russian university you graduated from – whichever one you want. (There is a friendly competition among institutions – the “Graduate School Challenge” (but it’s not only graduate schools – ABBYY and various Institutes are listed too), and the American ones and Western European ones are pretty well represented, and since 2008 quite a number of Russian institutions have been represented too, though not yet this year!) If your institution isn’t listed, it can be added – write to them or to me.

(2) If you have a credit card, but you have friends who don’t, you can offer to make a donation to LINGUIST List for them. Conversely, if you don’t, but you have a friend who does, see if they will help you – you give them cash, they send the donation to LINGUIST List.

Best wishes to everyone,
Barbara