LINGUIST List Special Issue: Fund Drive

[LINGUIST Network]

LINGUIST List Special Issue: Fund Drive 

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>
 
Reviews: Monica Macaulay, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
	  Eric Raimy, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
	   Joseph Salmons, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
	    Anja Wanner, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
         <reviews at linguistlist.org>  

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, 
and donations from subscribers and publishers.

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:31:20
From:  linguist [linguist at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Join us in the launch of Fund Drive 2010


Dear Subscribers,

It's never a happy time for us when Fund-Drive comes around again, for we 
hate asking for money.  The simple fact is, however, that the LINGUIST List 
survives on the kindness and generosity of our colleagues.  You can see 
that we have very little choice.

The LINGUIST List began from very small beginnings:  we were just an 
academic mailing list at the start.  Perhaps because of that, we've never had 
anything like a firm financial basis for what we do.  We'd love it if we had it, 
of course;  but unless some generous person gives us an endowment, we'll 
have to keep on asking for money each year, so we can go on giving the 
discipline the services the List provides.

You know, I hope, that all the money you give us goes to the students who run 
LINGUIST.  Faculty work for LINGUIST as well, here at Eastern Michigan 
University and at the University of Wisconsin at Madison; but none of us are 
compensated for the time we spend at the List.  But the students do not have 
the ability to survive without an income.  These students are wonderful people: 
devoted to linguistics, determined to make it their career, hard-working and 
intelligent.  To me, they just seem wonderful.  You can meet them each year 
at LSA, and see that I'm not exaggerating.  They work for very small salaries, 
but you could not ask for a harder-working group of young people.  They come 
to us from everywhere, not just the USA:  we have had students from Great 
Britain, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Indonesia, China, Japan, India, Argentina 
and Russia.  Indeed, we make an effort to attract students from everywhere: they 
add so much richness to our enterprise.  We've been working to improve our 
outreach, and this year, for the first time, we will be able to offer visas to 
international students who wish to be part of our internship program.

I wish it were not so costly to pay these fine young people, but without them we 
would be able to offer you no services at all.  They are the ones who do almost 
all the work, and do it wonderfully.  They are worth every penny it costs us to 
provide them with a small living.  And we are always aware that they are the 
future of the discipline, and that one day they will be professors and researchers 
too, helping drive linguistics to greater understanding of human language.  And 
that feels like a wonderful thing to be encouraging. 

So we are asking you to help us again this year to reach our goal in this 
fund-drive of 2010.  Whatever you give will be for a really excellent cause: 
supporting these young people as they work towards their degrees, and 
become our colleagues.

Anthony Aristar and Helen Aristar-Dry

Donate now: https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm 


-------------------------Message 2 ----------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 09:03:00
From:  linguist [[log in to unmask]]
Subject: Grad School Challenge Coordinators: We Want You!


Dear Subscribers,

This year, the LINGUIST List is offering great rewards for the Grad
Schools won donate the most!  If you are a coordinator for your
school and you are encouraging your fellow students, faculty and
staff to donate to LINGUIST during Fund Drive, there are a myriad
of prizes that are your school may win!

What do you have to do?

1. If you want to be a grad school coordinator for your University,
send an email to maria at linguistlist.org with your contact information
and your school's name.

2. Coordinate donations from anyone at your school.  Make sure that
they enter your institution's name while submitting the donations so
that they are properly credited to your organization. Of course, the
more you promote the LINGUIST List Fund Drive, the more donations your
school will have assigned. If it is easier for your and your colleagues,
you can have them bring you all their donations and then submit one
lump sum all together at
https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm .

3. If you school is at the top of the list, your school name and logo
will be displayed prominently on the LINGUIST List homepage.

4. If at the end of Fund Drive your school is at the top of one of the
regions, your school will be the winner of one of the grad school
challenge prizes!

So, hurry up and get ready to promote the LINGUIST List Fund Drive now!
The more you do, the more donations that your school has, the better
chances your school has to get one of the prizes!

https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm

The LINGUIST Crew

-------------------------Message 3 ----------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 10:45:00
From:  linguist [[log in to unmask]]
Subject: An Internship in Linguistics that Seemed Like a no-brainer


Dear Subscribers,

I started at The LINGUIST List in May 2009 as a summer intern. I 
was so thrilled to have found an internship in linguistics that 
it seemed like a no brainer that I should pack my bags up and 
move to Michigan. After I completed my internship, Helen and 
Anthony asked me and my fellow interns if we would like to stay 
as graduate assistants. This opportunity shocked me and, once 
again, deciding to work at The LINGUIST List and work on an M.A. 
at Eastern Michigan University was no brainer. 

The LINGUIST List is run by interns and graduate assistants like 
me, and we are primarily funded through your generous donations. 
Please contribute today to help keep the organization alive:

https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm
 
Since I began at The LINGUIST List, I've had the good fortune of 
being able to work on several projects that give students like me 
an opportunity to learn more about the field while creating online 
features for you, our readers. I've worked on MultiTree, collecting 
many different historical hypotheses about language families and 
uploading them into an online viewer. Check out our work by 
searching for a specific language (or family) here:

http://multitree.linguistlist.org/search

In addition to working on the MultiTree project, I am also the FYI 
editor for The LINGUIST List. Editing has made me more aware of 
what is happening in the linguistics community around the world and 
it has improved my writing skills and my attention to detail.  Last 
fall I also helped to organize the Endangered Languages Information 
and Infrastructure (ELIIP) Workshop that took place in Salt Lake 
City, UT. The team here at LINGUIST managed the logistics for that 
workshop, including arranging the travel for most of the participants 
and developing the workshop's website 
(http://linguistlist.org/eliip/). 

Your generosity makes these projects possible. Donating to The 
LINGUIST List gives students like me the opportunity broaden our 
knowledge and skills and give something back to the linguistic 
community. Please donate today so that I, along with my fellow 
crew members, can continue working for another year:  

https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm

Sincerely,

Danielle St. Jean 


-------------------------Message 4 ----------------------------------
Date: Web, 3 Mar 2010 11:03:00
From:  linguist [[log in to unmask]]
Subject: Claire Bowern is our Linguist of the Day

Dear subscribers,

Today we feature our first Linguist of the Day nominated by the
LINGUIST List crew. Claire Bowern from the Department of Linguistics
at Yale University tells us here how she got into linguistics. Her
story and work has inspired our crew in many ways.

"I have a fairly typical background for an Australianist: my
linguistics training really began in classics. I took Latin and
Greek as an undergraduate at the Australian National University,
but "just in case" I also enrolled in an English major and an
introductory linguistics class. I very quickly found out that I
didn't really like writing the sort of essays that literature
departments wanted. On the other hand, I thought that the sorts
of things I was learning about languages was incredibly cool (for
example, that there were languages that marked tense with tone
changes rather than affixes, and that in addition to common-or-
garden "past", "present" and "future" there were languages that
marked "tomorrow around dawn" or "later today"). I also found it
a little hard to believe (but was pleasantly surprised to learn)
that there were people who were paid to think about languages as
systems, not just as something that people write literature in.

At that point I was still hooked on historical study and classical
languages. Then in my third year, when I was thinking about a
fourth year honours thesis topic, Harold Koch suggested I do
something on historical linguistics related to Australian languages,
and he suggested reconstructing a subgroup of Pama-Nyungan. That was
definitely being thrown in the deep end!"

Read the rest of her story at:
http://linguistlist.org/fund-drive/2010/linguists/index.cfm

Donate to LINGUIST now to support our crew at:
https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm

The LINGUIST List crew