Subject: LAGB Autumn Meeting 2001
From: David Willis <dwew2@cam.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 13:42:37 +0100

LAGB Autumn Meeting 2001: University of Reading

First Circular and Call for Papers

The 2001 Autumn Meeting of the Linguistic Association of Great Britain will be held at the University of Reading, from 4 to 6 September 2001. The local organisers are Eric Haeberli (e.haeberli@reading.ac.uk) and Spyridoula Varlokosta (s.varlokosta@reading.ac.uk).

Lying in the heart of the Thames valley, just 40 miles west of London, Reading offers the best of town life with the peace of some of England's finest countryside. Whilst it boasts the remains of one of England's largest and richest abbeys, the burial place of Henry I, and a heritage dating back to Roman times, it accommodates its modernity with ease. Set in the middle of England's 'Silicon Valley', Reading has become one of the fastest growing centres for business, shopping, transport and leisure. There is also beautiful scenery nearby in the Chiltern Hills and the Berkshire Downs, and both Oxford and London are less than 30 minutes away by train.

The conference venue is the Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences Building on the Whiteknights campus. Whiteknights is a 300-acre country park campus with beautifully maintained grounds and a lake.

Accommodation: Whiteknights Hall, located near the Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences Building, offers comfortable single rooms with bathroom facilities, as well as single rooms with washbasins and shared bathroom facilities.

Travel: Reading is within easy reach of both London Heathrow and Gatwick airports. There is a frequent Railair coach service from London Heathrow airport. The service picks up from all four terminals and drops off at Reading Station. The journey time is about 40 minutes. There is also a direct rail connection with London Gatwick airport with an hourly service and a journey time of 90 minutes. There are direct rail links to all of the major cities on the West Coast. There is a regular high-speed rail link to Central London (Paddington) as well as stopping trains to Clapham and Waterloo. Reading Station is about a half an hour's walk from the Whiteknights campus but there are many direct buses to the University as well as a taxi rank at the station. The M4 motorway provides ready access to London, Wales and the South West, and there is an express coach service to London which also stops outside the main gate of the University.

Events: The Henry Sweet Lecture 2001 will be delivered by Professor Larry Horn (Yale).

There will also be a Workshop on Pragmatics and Anaphora, organised by Yan Huang (University of Reading).

The Language Tutorial will be on Chamorro and is to be given by Thomas Klein (University of Manchester).

Because this LAGB Meeting overlaps with the 34th Annual BAAL meeting ('Unity and Diversity in Language Use', 6-8 September 2001), which is also being held on the Whiteknights campus, there will be a special event on Saturday 6 September, designed for members of both the LAGB and BAAL. Details of this session will be made available in the Second Circular.

Enquiries about the LAGB Autumn Meeting 2001 should be sent to the Meetings Secretary (address below). Full details of the programme will be included in the Second Circular, to be sent out in July.

Call for Papers:

Members are invited to offer papers for the Meeting; abstracts are also accepted from non-members. The LAGB welcomes submissions on any topic in the field of linguistics; papers are selected on their (perceived) merits, and not according to their subject matter or assumed theoretical framework.

How and when to submit an abstract

Abstracts must be submitted on paper (not by email or by fax). FIVE anonymous copies of the abstract, plus ONE with name and affiliation, i.e. CAMERA-READY, should be submitted, and should be sent in the format outlined below to the President (address below). You must write your address for correspondence (e-mail or surface) on the BACK of the camera-ready copy. (Even if several authors are named on the front, there should be only one name and address for correspondence.)

Papers for the programme are selected anonymously - only the President knows the name of the authors. Where possible, authors should supply an email address to which the committee's decision may be sent.

Abstracts must arrive by 1 June 2001. Abstracts may also be submitted now for the meeting after the next one, but must be clearly marked as such. (In general the abstract deadlines for the autumn and spring meetings are soon after 1st June and 1st January respectively, so an abstract sent to reach the President by that date will always be in time.)

Format of abstracts

Abstracts must be presented as follows: The complete abstract (i.e. the one containing your title and your name) must be no longer than ONE A4 page (21cm x 29.5cm) with margins of at least 2.5cm on all sides. You may use single spacing but type must be no smaller than 12 point. If the paper is accepted the abstract will be photocopied and inserted directly into the collection of abstracts sent out to participants, so the presentation should be clear and clean. The following layout should be considered as standard:

(title) Optimality and the Klingon vowel shift (speaker) Clark Kent (clark@astro.mars.ac.mars) (institution) Department of Astrology, Eastern Mars University

The normal length for papers delivered at LAGB meetings is 25 minutes (plus 15 minutes discussion). At the AGM in Leeds (April 2001) it was decided that 40-minute papers would no longer be available in regular sessions. However, members (and non-members) are invited to submit proposals for 'panels', i.e. themed sessions typically occupying a twohour slot. It would then be up to the organiser of the panel and the contributors to determine the length of individual papers.

The committee will plan the programme as soon as it has selected the successful abstracts, so please indicate on the anonymous abstracts if you cannot present your paper on one of the conference days. It is very difficult to reschedule papers after the programme has been planned.

Content of abstracts

The following guidelines may be useful: You should clearly describe the paper's general topic. (The topic may be a problem of theory or analysis or set of data which have not previously been analysed.) You should describe your treatment of the topic, and how it relates to previous work on the same topic. (When referring to previous work, it is enough to quote "Author (Date)" without giving full bibliographical details.) It is not acceptable simply to promise a solution'. You should explain how you will justify your treatment, and quote crucial evidence - you must trust the committee (and other conference attendees) not to steal your ideas before you have presented them. If you are taking a stand on a controversial issue, summarise the arguments which lead you to take up this position.

Conference Bursaries

Up to 10 bursaries are available for unsalaried members of the Association (e.g. PhD students) with preference given to those who are presenting a paper. Applications should be sent to the President, and must be received by the deadline for abstracts. Please state on your application: (a) date of joining the LAGB (applicants must have been a member at least since the date of the previous meeting); (b) whether or not you are a student; (c) if a student, whether you receive a normal grant; (d) if not a student, your employment situation. STUDENTS WHO ARE SUBMITTING AN ABSTRACT and who wish to apply for funding should include all the above details WITH THEIR ABSTRACT. The bursary normally covers a significant proportion of the conference expenses and of travel within the UK.

Communication with the membership

Home page: The LAGB home page on the Web can be found at the following address: http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/LAGB.

Electronic network: Please join the LAGB electronic network, which is used for disseminating LAGB information and for consulting members quickly. It can be subscribed to by sending the message "add lagb" to: majordomo@essex.ac.uk.

Nominations for speakers: Nominations are requested for future guest speakers; all suggestions should be sent to the Honorary Secretary.

Changes of address: Members are reminded to notify the Membership Secretary of changes of address. An institutional address is preferred; bulk mailing saves postage.

Future Meetings

9-11 April 2002
Edge Hill College of Higher Education
17-19 September 2002
UMIST
Spring 2003 (provisional)
University of Sheffield

The Meetings Secretary would very much like to receive offers of future venues, particularly from institutions the LAGB has not previously visited.

The LAGB Committee

President
Professor April McMahon
Department of English Language and Linguistics, University of Sheffield, 5 Shearwood Road, Sheffield S10 2TD april.mcmahon@shef.ac.uk
http://www.shef.ac.uk/english/language/staff/april.html

Honorary Secretary
Dr Ad Neeleman
Dept. of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT ad@ling.ucl.ac.uk
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/ad/home.htm

Membership Secretary
Dr David Willis
Dept. of Linguistics, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA dwew2@cam.ac.uk http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/ling/staff.htm#willis

Meetings Secretary
Dr Marjolein Groefsema
Dept. of Linguistics, University of Hertfordshire, Watford Campus, Aldenham, Herts. WD2 8AT
m.groefsema@herts.ac.ukhttp://www.herts.ac.uk/fhle/faculty/h umanities/web%20pages/linguistics/MGroefsema.htm

Treasurer
Dr Wiebke Brockhaus
Dept. of German, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL
wiebke.brockhaus@man.ac.uk
http://www.art.man.ac.uk/german/brockhs.htm

Assistant Secretary
Dr Gillian Ramchand
Centre for Linguistics and Philology, Walton Street, Oxford OX1 2HG
gillian.ramchand@linguistics-philology.oxford.ac.uk