Promoting interest in HPSG

[Rob Malouf]

At the risk of really stepping in it...  is it obvious that we ought to
be promoting interest in the HPSG conference?  Maybe the drop-off in
submissions is sign that we don't really need an HPSG conference *and* a
formal grammar conference *and* a construction grammar conference *and*
an LFG conference *and* a dozen other theoretical and computational
linguistics conferences.  Maybe preserving the HPSG conference as such
isn't the most forward-thinking way for the standing committee to foster
a research community that goes beyond the current style of "name brand"
syntax.  I don't really know what would be better (perhaps organizing
conferences around particular descriptive challenges?), but I think we
should open this discussion up to a broader range of options.
--
Rob Malouf <rmalouf at mail.sdsu.edu>
Department of Linguistics and Oriental Languages
San Diego State University