[Linganth] Options

[Ronald Kephart]

At 9:26 AM -0700 10/24/04, Richard J Senghas wrote:

>...When I've raised idea the [of separate meetings] informally in
>conversations at past AAA meetings, sometimes I get a positive
>response, but others worry about causing the SLA to become more
>isolated from the general membership...

Richard,

As perhaps the newest member of AAA and LSA (and therefore the least
qualified to comment, but why let that stop me?), I wonder if the two
need be mutually exclusive. Would it be possible to have smaller,
separate meetings that, as someone pointed out, would allow for
longer presentations, and also participate in the general meetings?
Maybe the smaller meeting would be better for individual papers,
while the general meeting would be a good place to focus more on
panels that might be attractive to folks who have strayed from the
*true* >:-) core of anthropology?

Of course even as I write I can think of arguments against, and I'm
sure y'all can as well. Just thinking "out loud" (in the virtual
sense)...

Ron

PS: I just graded my midterms, and I'm truly astounded at the number
of students who, on one problem, identified two sounds as allophones
of different phonemes, and than gave as their justification that one
is always initial and the other always occurs elsewhere, and
therefore the two are in complimentary (yes, with an "i")
distribution. Aaargh!