Comparative Siouan Workshop (Appended to the SCLC)

[Koontz John E]

After the SCLC last year in Ponca City, a few of us began discussing the
possibility of writing a collaborative account of typical Siouan grammar,
with a view to publishing it.  We are shooting for a sort of manual of the
Siouan languages as they are (or have been).  This will be written by a
committee.  The idea for this grew out of our appreciation for
introductory manuals that exist for other families.  In particular, it has
been a long-standing idea of Bob Rankin's that there should be something
like this for aspiring Siouanists. Louanna Furbee has referred to some of
his previous correspondence in this vein as an elicitation guide.

You can see that "comparison" is perhaps less the appropriate word than
"survey" or "inventory."  This is a synchronic or perhaps typological
comparison or survey, not a diachronic one, though diachronic factors
may be appealed to in some discussions.

We decided that we would begin by writing a series of individual drafts on
subjects of interest to us.  We would then meet to hammer out a set of
chapters or papers in which the range of Siouan data was exhibited,
somehow reaching a compromise between individual effort and language
knowledge and a more uniform coverage of the family.

We decided that the hammering out would be accomplished at a workshop to
be held sometime next year, i.e., this year.  It developed that the
easiest time and place to hold this workshop was right before or after the
SCLC in Billings.  We eventually settled on after.  The workshop is
currently scheduled to take place at the same venue as the SCLC, under the
same living arrangements, and running from Noon on Sunday, June 18th to
Noon on Wednesday, June 21st, 2006.

Those of us involved in this effort would like to open up attendance at
the Workshop to other linguists and interested parties with the caveat
that due to the short time we will have there together and the complexity
of the topics to be covered, no effort will be made to have formal
presentations or to make the discussion during the workshop intelligible
to a general audience.  There was a suggestion that discussion didn't even
have to be intelligible to non-Dhegihanists, but in the face of vehement
objections from the rest of the crew, this proposal has been scrapped.

We are very sorry we did not announce any of this earlier.  There was some
initial desire not to talk about the project openly until we had a more
concrete idea of what we wanted to do, then everyone got distracted by the
requirements of the school year, and here we are, half-organized and two
weeks from the meetings.  It did not occur to us until the last minute
that we hadn't announced the project.

There is a distinct analogy here with a group of Siouanists planning where
to have lunch, and suddenly realizing that the lunch hour has come and
gone.

That said, please feel free to communicate with Randy Graczyk if you'd
like to attend this working session.  If you'd like to participate in the
project otherwise, I am less certain what to suggest.  To some extent the
details of the discussion might be unsuitable for the list.  You can try
writing to the list, or to Randy, or to me, or to Bob "I am not in charge
of this!" Rankin.

Given the state of our organization, it is quite possible that you may now
see some corrections and clarifications from Randy Graczyk or other
participants.

I append a list of presentations - papers may be too strong a word - which
have been proposed for the Workshop.