Report from MALC.

[Rankin, Robert L]

All:
 
I hope everyone agrees that the rather impromptu meeting with the Mid America Linguistics Conference in Lawrence was a success.  We had a number of very nice papers and it was, for me at least, a lot of fun.  The papers from the conference will appear at some point on the University of Kansas Linguistics Dept. website in the KU Working Papers series.  I'm assuming the organizers will communicate deadlines, style, etc.
 
As for future meetings of the "real" SACC (= SCLC or whatever), everyone was enthusiastic about Mark's proposal for 2009, and he is working out the dates, etc. for that.
 
Jill Greer at Missouri Southern State Univ. in Joplin proposed hosting the conference this coming year, 2008, sometime in May or June.  This is quite close to the Quapaw population in NE Oklahoma.  I assume she will be contacting us with additional information if she gets agreement from her institution.
 
John Boyle offered to host the 2010 meeting at his institution, and  we look forward to hearing more about that as time goes on.  
 
In response to Johannes' question about the comparative grammar project, we discussed this a bit and I think everyone is eager to continue it.  Linda Cumberland, our designated editor, was fully occupied with her D.E.L. grant for work with her Assiniboine texts this past year, but that is over now and she has returned to her work with Justin at the Kaw Nation.  This means that people like me, who have been a bit lazy about revising their promised papers, will need to get busy and think about getting material to Linda.  
 
And speaking of my comparative verb morphology paper, although I did quite a bit of revision on my verbal prefix paper last Winter (and nothing at all since), I have about decided that the companion piece on post-verbal enclitics should be more of a co-authored work.  The post verbal morphology is so complex in the various languages, and so little of it is clearly cognate from group to group (as opposed to the prefixes, which are regularly cognate), that it would be best if each of us wrote up a (short?) survey of it for his/her language.  I'd be happy to work whatever comparative magic I can on the results, but there will be far less cognacy than among the prefixes.  (So the results should be all the more "interesting".)
 
It was great fun seeing everybody again and hearing new research.  We missed some old friends that we hope to see again next Spring, and we had an excellent new contribution from one of John Boyle's students, whom we hope to see more of.  
 
Wiblahan everyone,
 
Bob