Dear colleagues,

As you may be aware, the International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics has a Steering Committee, the primary task of which is to oversee the site selection and organisation of each international conference. The first Steering Committee was appointed at 7ICAL in the Netherlands in 1994, with Andrew Pawley as Chair, and Byron Bender, Paul Li, Claire Moyse-Faurie, Bambang Kaswanti Purwo, Hein Steinhauer, John Wolff, and myself serving as members. This committee continued to serve through the organisation of 8ICAL (Taipei, Taiwan 1997), 9ICAL (Canberra, Australia 2002), and 10ICAL (Puerto Princesa City, The Philippines 2006).

During 10ICAL, the committee took the decision to stand down so that a new committee could be appointed. During the business meeting, conference participants nominated members for the new Steering Committee, which will commence its term from July 2006. This will allow the current committee to finalise discussions with a consortium of French linguists, headed by Laurent Sagart, about their proposal for 11ICAL to be held in France, most likely in 2009. The preliminary proposal presented by Laurent at the ICAL business meeting in Puerto Princesa City met with strong approval from participants.

I have been asked to serve as Chair of the new committee, and the members are I Wayan Arka, Lillian Huang, Ritsuko Kikusawa, Marian Klamer, Steve Quakenbush, Carl Rubino, and Laurent Sagart. The committee thus includes the lead organiser from the past ICAL (Steve Quakenbush) and the lead organiser for the proposed next ICAL (Laurent Sagart). At its first meeting the new committee asked Andy Pawley to continue to serve as Emeritus Advisor and we are very pleased that he has accepted.

Wayan Arka has begun building an ICAL web site, hosted from RSPAS at the ANU. You can visit this fledgling web site at
<http://rspas.anu.edu.au/linguistics/projects/ICAL/ICAL_HomePage.htm>
This web site will continue to grow as information is added about the ICAL conferences, and also about other matters relevant to Austronesian linguistics (researchers, research projects, publications, ICAL proceedings, etc.). We would like to invite people to send photos and short notes about their memories of earlier ICALs. These will be posted on the "Austronesianists remember" section of the Previous Conferences link. Relevant information can be sent to Wayan (though there may be a delay in adding material as he is going to be away from ANU for a couple of months.) Contact details for the new steering committee have been added to the web site.

As incoming Chair, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Andy and the committee members for their work through the past 12 years, which has contributed to the success of the past several ICALs. 

kind regards,
Margaret Florey
(Chair, International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics Steering Committee)
-- 
Dr Margaret Florey
Senior Lecturer
Linguistics Program
School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Monash University
Victoria 3800
Australia
Tel: +61 (0)3 9905-2237
Fax: +61 (0)3 9905-5437
Email: Margaret.Florey@arts.monash.edu.au
Home page: http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/ling/florey/

Studies in Language Endangerment
Web Site: http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/ling/pglangen/

Maluku Endangered Languages Project
Email: Maluku@arts.monash.edu.au
Fax: +61 (0)3 9905-8492
Web Site http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/ling/maluku/
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