36.2565, Confs: International Linguistic Association Symposium: Words On WORD (Online)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2565. Fri Aug 29 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2565, Confs: International Linguistic Association Symposium: Words On WORD (Online)

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Date: 28-Aug-2025
From: Shoba Bandi-Rao [sbandirao at bmcc.cuny.edu]
Subject: International Linguistic Association Symposium: Words On WORD


International Linguistic Association Symposium: Words On WORD
Short Title: ILA
Theme: Symposium on seminal papers by Harris, Hallilday, Hockett,
Halle, Ferguson, and Labov published in WORD

Date: 27-Sep-2025 - 28-Sep-2025
Location: Online
Contact: Shoba Bandi-Rao
Contact Email: sbandirao at bmcc.cuny.edu
Meeting URL: https://www.ilaword.org/conference

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; Discourse Analysis;
General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Phonology

International Linguistic Association Symposium: Words On WORD
In celebration of the 80th anniversary of its journal WORD, the ILA
presents within its annual meeting six distinguished linguists
discussing groundbreaking articles that first appeared in its pages.
Most of the speakers bring personal reminiscences of their authors.
Saturday, September 27, 2025 (all times Eastern Daylight Time, GMT +5)
I. New Approaches (10:00 am – 11:30 am)
Zellig Harris’s “Distributional Structure” (1954) has had uncanny
influence, a second wave of impact in the new century, when
computational linguists and AI researchers saw in it insights that
made possible large language models such as ChatGPT. I summarize the
ideas from DS that have been so influential in AI and examine new
questions as fundamental as, What can linguistics be about in view of
the success of radical fidelity to Harris’s distributional approach to
language?
I examine the groundbreaking impact of M. A. K. Halliday’s “Categories
of the Theory of Grammar” (19 1) on the evolution of systemic
functional linguistics. Comparison between the seminal concepts
presented in the article and the current state of systemic-functional
theorizing about language demonstrates that the s me brilliant mind
that produced “Categories” never ceased to pursue a better
understanding of how language works to make meaning.
II. Changing of the Guard (1:00 pm –2:30 pm)
Charles Hockett’s “Two Models of Grammatical Description” (1954) gave
us an insightful characterization of the methods of structural
linguistics, becoming a springboard for those who proposed alternative
approaches. I explore the article’s connections to the Structuralist
past and its influence on two models that followed: Transformational
Grammar (Hockett's paper is repeatedly cited in Chomsky's Syntactic
Structures) and word-based models of morphology.
Morris Halle’s “Phonology in Generative Grammar” (1962) is essentially
“A Program for Phonology”; the path to The Sound Pattern of English
and beyond is already clear. Its twelve sections center on simplicity
criteria as they bear on: segments as feature complexes, lexical
underspecification, rules and rule ordering, especially as related to
dialect differences, language acquisition, and linguistic change.
Economy and explanatory power galore both glimmer on the horizon.
III. The Invention of Sociolinguistics (2:45 pm – 4:15 pm)
Putting “Diglossia” (1959) in Its Place: Charles Ferguson’s most cited
article was one of many forays into “language situations” that
inspired thousands of studies of various types of linguistic behavior.
His interest in “conventionalization” was the impetus for “Diglossia”
and continued to productively engage his wide-ranging intellect over
the course of his life. The presentation includes excerpts from
interviews with him in 1994.
William Labov’s study of Martha’s Vineyard, “The Social Motivation of
Sound Change” (1963), broke down the “Saussurian firewall" (Kiparsky)
between synchronic and diachronic linguistics and provided a model for
the study of language change in progress. Using quantitative analyses
to reveal the underlying social matrix fostering the change, it has
motivated sociolinguistic research on language variation and change
ever since.
IV. Additional talks scheduled via the abstract submission process
(4:30–5:30)
To register for the meeting and receive the Zoom link, go to
https://ilaword.org/conference
Papers on other topics will be presented on Sunday, September 28.



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