LINGUISTICS ASSOCIATION OF GREAT BRITAIN

Accommodation: The accommodation for conference participants is in the Weston Building, which contains both a hotel and a hall of residence with single en-suite rooms. Sessions will be in the Staff House Conference Centre, a few minutes' walk away.

Registration: Registration will be in the reception area of the Weston Building.

Bar: The Weston Hotel includes a bar which is open to those staying in the Hall.

Food: please indicate vegetarian and any other dietary requirements on the booking form below.

Childcare: If you require childcare during the conference, please contact the Local Organiser for further details.

Travel : The nearest railway station is Manchester Piccadilly, which is 5 minutes' walk from the UMIST campus. There are at least hourly services from most major British cities - the service from London Euston takes about 2hr40min. Manchester International Airport is linked to Manchester Piccadilly station by a frequent train service (usually every 15 minutes).

Manchester's Chorlton Street Coach Station is also just a few minutes' walk from UMIST, and has regular National Express services from the rest of the UK.

Manchester is at the heart of the national motorway network. From the motorways (M56, M60, M61, M62, M67) or major roads follow signs to Manchester City Centre, then for Universities.

Delegates must ensure that they do NOT go to the University of Manchester, which is a separate institution on a campus about a mile away from UMIST.

To get to the Campus from the Coach Station:

Leave the Coach Station by the main exit, onto Chorlton Street. Turn right, then take the first right (Bloom Street). Take the first left, Sackville Street, and continue down this, going straight ahead at the lights. Go under the railway bridge, and the Weston Building is 50 yards ahead on your right.

The Weston Building is on Sackville Street, and the main UMIST campus is on the other side of this road.

From the train station, cross London Road, go down Fairfield Street, bear left into Whitworth Street, past the UMIST Main Building (on your left), then turn left into Sackville Street. Then as above: go under the railway bridge, and the Weston Building is 50 yards ahead on your right.

Parking: Delegates would be required to park in the Charles Street multi-storey car park, which is across the road from the Weston Building. The cost is GBP6.00 per day or GBP8.00 for 24 hours (pay on exit).

A Language Tutorial on Romani, will be given by Dr Yaron Matras (University of Manchester).

There will be a Session of Linguistics at School on Community languages, organised by Dr Anthea Fraser Gupta (University of Leeds).

There will be a Wine Reception on Tuesday night, hosted by the Department of Language and Linguistics.

Bookings: Bookings should be sent to Paul Bennett, Department of Language and Linguistics, UMIST, PO Box 88, Manchester, M60 1QD. Due to UMIST needing to know how many rooms will be taken by the end of August, bookings for accommodation have to be in by the 30^th of August. After this date accommodation can not be guaranteed.

Guests: members may invite any number of guests to meetings of the association, upon payment of a guest invitation fee of 5 pounds in addition to the standard fees. Members wishing to invite guests should photocopy the enclosed booking form.

Abstracts: are available to members who are unable to attend the meeting. Please order using the booking form below.

Business Meeting: This is to be held on the afternoon of Wednesday, 18 September. Items for the agenda should be sent to the Honorary Secretary.

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At the Annual General Meeting at Edge Hill the LAGB Committee initiated a discussion of whether the LAGB should move to having a single (larger) annual meeting in September in place of the current two meetings in April and September. A single annual event would involve adding an extra day to the meeting, and two rather than one plenary speaker would be invited. A majority of the members of the Committee are in favour of the change. The Committee would like the Business meeting at UMIST on 18 September to come to a firm decision either for or against this, and invites comments, discussion and votes via email in advance of the meeting. Views expressed at the AGM included:

• it has become increasingly difficult to timetable the Easter meeting to avoid clashes with other large conferences

• there is now a regular imbalance in the number of abstracts received for the two meetings, with the September meeting the more popular

• a single bigger conference might attract more delegates from outside the UK

• having two invited speakers would allow better coverage of smaller areas of linguistics

• the LAGB would be better placed to maintain support from publishers, who prefer to attend just once per year

• the informal and friendly atmosphere of the LAGB meeting might be damaged if it became a larger event

• opportunities for specialisation already exist in the form of themed sessions in the existing two-meeting arrangement

Please let us know what you think either by sending a message to the LAGB mailing list for general discussion (messages to lagb@essex.ac.uk; to join, send the message subscribe lagb to majordomo@essex.ac.uk) or by e-mailing the Honorary Secretary (Ad Neeleman, ad@ling.ucl.ac.uk).

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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 (address below) of changes of address. An institutional address is preferred; bulk mailing saves postage.

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: listserv@postman.essex.ac.uk.

Members of the LAGB organising conferences on linguistics in the UK are invited to apply for grants of up to 300 pounds; conference publicity will in return have to state that the event is sponsored by the LAGB, and membership application forms should be enclosed in conference packs. Applications should be made to the President, ideally by e-mail to allow a quick response.

(i) The 14-19 Green Paper: Dick Hudson has responded on behalf of the LAGB to this and to the associated paper on Language Learning.

In essence the Green Paper recommended that English (amongst other subjects) would be compulsory at 14-16 but that a second language would not: there would be a "statutory entitlement" to a modern foreign language. The paper on Language Learning includes the aspiration that "all primary school children will be entitled to study languages by 2012". The LAGB responses to these papers welcome the aspiration to promote the importance of language learning but disagree with the proposal to demote language learning to an option at 14; welcome the idea that MFL may include community languages; and propose that English Language (but not literature) should be compulsory at 14-16.

(the full responses are at: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/ec/ectop.htm)

(ii) Meeting of the Committee for Linguistics in Education, June 19th 2002:

Links have been established between CLIE member organisations (LAGB, BAAL and other professional bodies involved in linguistics and education) and those involved in the development and implementation of government policy (eg the NLS team, QCA), in order to offer linguistic expertise not only by giving feedback on policy documents already published but also by consultation at an earlier development stage of such policies. One such document, Teaching Speaking and Listening, was discussed.

The meeting also reported the generally negative responses of BAAL, the Association of Language Learning and the National Association of Teachers of English to the Green Paper above.

(A full report of this meeting will appear shortly on the above website)

(iii) Grammar for Writing: Materials for the teaching of English Grammar at Key Stage 3 (11-14 yr olds) developed by the NLS team in consultation with (amongst others) Dick Hudson have been recently (favourably) reviewed (in Syntax in the Schools 18, 2002)

on behalf of LAGB EC (Dick Hudson, Keith Brown, Anthea Fraser Gupta, Sue Barry)

On 16-17 September 2002, immediately before the main meeting, there will be a workshop on Agreement, with papers by Dunstan Brown (University of Surrey), Bernard Comrie (MPI Leipzig), Greville Corbett (University of Surrey), Nick Evans (University of Melbourne), Marianne Mithun (UC Santa Barbara), Maria Polinsky (UC San Diego), Anna Siewierska (University of Lancaster), and Carole Tiberius (University of Surrey). The aims are to discuss central issues of agreement and to disseminate the results from an ESRC project which includes a typological database. We intend the workshop to be of interest to linguists of different persuasions and to psycholinguists.

The workshop is organised by the Surrey Morphology Group. It is sponsored by the ESRC and the LAGB. For booking information see the main booking form.

David Willis’s term as Membership Secretary and Gillian Ramchancd's as Assistant Secretary are reaching their end, and they have indicated that they do not want to stand again. Therefore, the LAGB would like to receive nominations for a new Membership Secretary and Assistant Secretary, to be elected at the Autumn Meeting and to commence in Spring 2003.

1.00 LUNCH

3.45 TEA

4.15 Workshop continues.

6.30 DINNER

7.45 Henry Sweet Lecture 2002

Prof. Tony Kroch (University of Pennsylvania)

9.15 WINE PARTY

Hosted by the Department of Language and Linguistics.

11.00 COFFEE

1.00 LUNCH

2.00 Language tutorial on Romani

Dr Yaron Matras (Manchester)

2.00 Linguistics in Schools: on Community languages
Chair - Dr Anthea Fraser Gupta (University of Leeds).

3.30 TEA

4.45 LAGB Business Meeting

6.30 DINNER

8.00-9.30 Language tutorial continues

11.00 COFFEE

1.00 LUNCH

Session A

4.00 TEA and CLOSE