From: Siewierska, Anna Sent: 10 September 1999 14:23 To: april; david; dick; marjolein; paul Subject: Minutes of the Business Meeting Minutes of the LAGB Business Meeting, Wednesday, 9th September 1999, York > 1. Apologies were received from the Meetings Secretary, Marjolein Groefsema and the Assistant Secretary, April McMahon 2.. The minutes of the AGM held at the University of Manchester on 9 April were accepted. 3. Committe membership a. New assistant secretary The meeting accepted the committee's nomination for assistant secretary, Gillian Ramchand who will be taking over as of 8th September from April McMahon. The president thanked April for her extremely efficient work over the last three years. b. New treasurer Our treasurer of the last five years, Paul Rowlett, is resigning in the spring. The committee will invite nominations for this post in the next circular. c. New president The president's term of office also ends next spring. RH does not wish to seek re-election. Nominations will therefore be invited for this post too. 4. Presidents report a. ESRC meeting RH reported that he and MG had attended a meeting of the ESRC with learned societies in linguistics. RH drew attention to the relative shortage of proposals to the ESRC from linguists, although the success rate of applications is in fact high. The ESRC would welcome more applications for both research grants and studentships. A further point which had emerged at the meeting was that it is possible to apply for part-time, fees-only studentships under existing ESRC schemes. The ESRC is reviewing its themes, and has invited comments. David Adger stressed the importance of taking themes seriously, as proposals which relate to them are favoured, so the President will circulate members (via the LAGB list) with an invitation to comment. [Action: RH] b. AHRB meeting RH reported that the LAGB was well represented at the July meeting of langauge departments with the AHRB. RH and AS attended as LAGB representatives and April McMahon and Robert Borsley as members of the AHRB. AM asked the president to inform the meeting that the AHRB has, under our urging, changed the name of the Modern Languages panel to Modern Langauges and Linguistics. c. QAA RH informed the meeting that benchamrks for linguistics will be established by the QAA this year. The LAGB is likely to be approached by the QAA in this connection soon. RH will notify members via the LAGB list, and invite comments. [Action: RH] d. National Literacy Strategy RH was pleased to be able to tell the meeting that the NLS group at DfEE have agreed to revise the glossary of linguistic terms for teachers along the lines suggested by a group from the LAGB consisting of RH, David Denison and Catherine Walter, who are due to have another meeting at DfEE soon to discuss other ways in which the LAGB might support the NLS. e. RAE RH asked John Local, a member of the RAE panel, to present the composition of the panel and comment on the coming RAE. The RAE panel is as follows: Chair: Professor Greville Corbett, University of Surrey Panel Secretary: Ms Karel Thomas, Loughborough University Panel Members: Professor Robert Borsley, University of Wales, Bangor Professor Jenny Cheshire, Queen Mary and Westfield College Professor Heinz Giegerich, University of Edinburgh Professor Shalom Lappin, Kings College London Professor John Local , University of York Dr Mick Perkins, University of Sheffield Dr Steve Pulman ,University of Cambridge Professor Andrew Radford, University of Essex Dr Ben Rampton, Thames Valley University Professor Elisabeth Traugott, Stanford University JL informed the meeting that the draft criteria for RAE submissions can be accessed on the HEFCE RAE website http:/www.rae.ac.uk and strongly urged members to send their responses before October 15th. f. CUP poster RH displayed the CUP poster advertising linguistics which has been designed in cooperation with the LAGB committee and infomed the members that all linguistic departments will be receiving three copies of it. It is hoped that the poster will be used for advertising linguistics especially in secondary schools. More copies of the poster can be obtained from Emma Baxter at CUP (ebaxter@cup.cam.ac.uk). 5. Treasurer's report PR reported that CUP proposes to cut the cost of subscriptions to JL, for LAGB members only, to 20 pounds for full members (from the current 31 pounds), and 10 pounds for student members (from the current 16 pounds, itself a recent reduction). This would allow the LAGB to reduce subscriptions including JL to 34 pounds and 14 pounds from next year. The CUP reductions would hold for a trial period of 2-3 years, and if insufficient new subscriptions were sold, the prices would be gradually increased.This news was very gladly received by the meeting and during the course of the discussion it was agreed that CUP should be asked to advertise this fact together with other benefits of LAGB membership (e.g. student bursaries for attending LAGB meetings and special grants for organising other conferences by members of the LAGB) in a special leaflet. Ewa Jaworska agreed to liase with RH on this. [Action EJ and RH] 6. CLIE report Ewa Jaworska, who on behalf of the LAGB attends the meetings of the Committee for Linguistics in Education, presented a report of the last CLIE meeting and circulated it among the members. 7. Future meetings RH informed the meeting that the speakers, workshop and language tutorial for the April 2000 LAGB meeting at UCL and September 2000 meeting in Durham have been finalized. Nominations were taken for possible speakers for the April 2001 meeting in Leeds. After a vote it was agreed to invite Larry Horn or Stephen Levinson. There being no other business the meeting ended at 5.30 p.m.