Linguistic Society of America

      The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a professional society for linguists. It was founded in 1924 to advance linguistics, the scientific study of human language. The LSA has over 4,000 individual members and welcomes linguists of all kinds. It works to advance the discipline and to communicate findings in linguistics to a wider audience. Through its website, its annual and summer meetings, its biennial summer institutes, and its journal Language, the LSA works to disseminate current research in linguistics and facilitate communication within the discipline. The Society also participates in the public discourse on language and linguistic issues, contributing to policy debates on issues such as bilingual education, "Ebonics", and the English-only movement.

      The first president of the LSA was Hermann Collitz, elected in 1925. Many prominent linguists have served in this position, including Franz Boas (1928), Edward Sapir (1933), Zellig Harris (1955), Roman Jakobson (1956), Mary Haas (1963), Morris Halle (1974), Peter Ladefoged (1978) and Joan Bybee (2004) among others. The current president of the LSA (2013) is Ellen Kaisse.

      Publications

      The LSA publishes a quarterly journal, Language,[1] consisting of major articles and shorter reports of original research, as well as review articles, book reviews, and book notices of recently published works. Journal articles cover all areas of the field and from all theoretical frameworks. The LSA also sponsors eLanguage, a platform for online, open-access journals. The LSA also awards recently published books the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award.

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      Meetings

      Each year in early January, the LSA organizes an Annual Meeting. The Annual Meeting is currently a four-day conference, with a program of talks, plenary speakers, symposia, and poster sessions for researchers to share their work. The 2013 meeting took place in Boston, MA. The 2014 meeting will take place in Minneapolis, MN.

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      Linguistic institutes

      In conjunction with a host institution, the LSA organizes a biennial Summer Institute, a four to six-week summer school where students, faculty, and others interested in linguistics can attend courses, talks, and workshops taught by experts in the field. The 2007 Institute was hosted at Stanford University, the 2009 Institute was hosted at the University of California, Berkeley, and the 2011 Institute was hosted at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The 2013 Institute will be held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Each Institute honors the contributions of particular linguists with their appointment by the LSA to titled chairs at the Institute: the Sapir chair in general linguistics, the Collitz Chair in historical linguistics, and (from 2005) the Ken Hale chair in linguistic fieldwork and the preservation of endangered languages.

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      Resolutions and statements

      The LSA takes a stand on many language-related issues, especially those relating to public policy. For instance, in 1987, the LSA officially took a stand against the English-only movement in the United States. The LSA statement argued that "English-only measures ... are based on misconceptions about the role of a common language in establishing political unity, and ... are inconsistent with basic American traditions of linguistic tolerance." In 1997, an LSA resolution supported the Oakland school-board in its attempt to favor teaching that is sensitive to the distinctive characteristics of African American Vernacular English (the so-called "Ebonics" debate). A 2001 resolution on sign languages "affirm[ed] that sign languages used by deaf communities are full-fledged languages with all the structural characteristics and range of expression of spoken languages" and lent the support of the LSA to a status for sign languages equal to that accorded to other languages in academic and political life. A complete list of resolutions and statements adopted by the LSA may be found on its website.

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      Presidents

      The following persons have been president of the Linguistic Society of America:[2]

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      References

      1. ^ "LSA: Publications". Lsadc.org. Retrieved 2012-06-24. 
      2. ^ "LSA: About LSA". Lsadc.org. Retrieved 2012-06-24. 
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      External links

      Linguistic Institutes
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      Last modified on 20 April 2013, at 15:12