SSILA News

Meet the team behind your new SSILA website!

We would like to introduce you to the team who created the new SSILA website:

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Diego Frankel

Diego is an undergraduate computational linguistics major at the University of Southern California. He is a summer 2020 intern with Mary Linn, the SSILA Secretary/Treasurer, at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH).

He is responsible for the bulk of the work you see (and don’t see) on these pages, and in getting the membership transferred from the old site.

Diego also translated all of the content into Spanish.

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Hali Dardar

Hali is the Language Reclamation and Media Project Coordinator at CFCH. Some of you may have met her at the LSA/CELP closing event for the 2019 Year of Indigenous Languages at the winter meetings in New Orleans, where she was with the Houma Language Project presenting some of their language and culture learning activities.

Hali oversaw Diego in the technical aspects and financial linkings on the new platform.

She kept all of us on track.

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Cecelia Halle

Cecelia is the Strategic Communications Specialist of Cultural Sustainability at CFCH. She worked as an intern on the Smithsonian Mother Tongue Film Festival before joining the staff.

She refreshed our logo, and decided on colors, styles, and images for the new look.

As the granddaughter of Morris Halle, Cecelia is honored that her design skills could be used for SSILA.

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Danny Hieber

And a special thank you to Danny Hieber, former SSILA Webmaster and PhD Candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who designed and took care of the old site single-handedly for many years, and who was there for us to answer questions during this transition.

Mary Linn

SSILA Secretary/Treasurer

Reminder: Nominations for SSILA Archiving Award Due Oct. 1

This is a quick reminder that nominations for the SSILA Archiving Award are due on October 1, 2019.

This award highlights the importance of creating long-term archival materials that are accessible to all communities concerned, including heritage and language communities as well as scholarly communities. It is meant to encourage others in academia to value such work as more comparable to analytic research.

Please visit the award page for more details about the award and the nomination process. We look forward to receiving your nominations!

Read more about the SSILA Archiving Award here.

SSILA 2020 Call for Session Chairs

The SSILA Program Committee is seeking session chairs for our 2020 annual meeting in New Orleans. The meeting will be held on January 2–5.

Session chairs introduce speakers, moderate any discussion during the question-and-answer period, and remind speakers when the time allotted for their 20-minute talk is drawing to a close. Session chairs should hold a Ph.D. and be current SSILA members.

The following sessions are in need of a chair:

  • Thursday, January 2: Digital Tools for Lexicography and Orthography – 4:00PM-5:30PM
  • Thursday, January 2: Historical Linguistics 1 – 4:00PM-5:30PM
  • Thursday, January 2: Syntax 1 – 5:30PM-6:30PM
  • Thursday, January 2: Revitalization 1 – 5:30PM-6:30PM

  • Friday, January 3: Syntax 2 – 9:00AM-12:00PM
  • Friday, January 3: Historical Linguistics 2 – 9:00AM-12:00PM
  • Friday, January 3: Semantics 1 – 9:00AM-12:00PM Friday, January 3: Phonology – 2:00PM-5:00PM
  • Friday, January 3: Semantics 2 – 2:00PM-4:30PM
  • Friday, January 3: Archiving – 4:30PM-5:00PM

  • Saturday, January 4: Revitalization 2 – 9:00AM-11:00AM
  • Saturday, January 4: Morphology 1 – 9:00AM-11:00AM
  • Saturday, January 4: Syntax 3 – 9:00AM-11:00AM
  • Saturday, January 4: Language Acquisition – 2:00PM-3:00PM
  • Saturday, January 4: Morphology 2 – 2:00PM-3:00PM
  • Saturday, January 4: Sociolinguistics – 2:00PM-3:00PM
  • Saturday, January 4: Revitalization 3 – 3:00PM-5:00PM
  • Saturday, January 4: Phonetics – 3:00PM-5:00PM
  • Saturday, January 4: Language Contact – 3:00PM-5:00PM

  • Sunday, January 5: Morphophonology – 9:00AM-10:30AM
  • Sunday, January 5: Historical Linguistics 3 – 9:00AM-10:00AM
  • Sunday, January 5: Syntax 4 – 10:30AM-12:00PM
  • Sunday, January 5: Revitalization 4 – 10:00AM-12:00PM

To volunteer to chair a session, please add your name and university affiliation to the relevant session in the following link by September 30.

Click here to volunteer as a session chair.

Chairs will be assigned on a "first come, first served" basis. Please do not write your name in if there is already a volunteer for that session. Also, please do not volunteer to chair a session unless you are certain you will be attending the meeting.

Volunteers will be provided with a packet containing basic instructions and time cards to let speakers know how much time they have left.

Thank you in advance for your willingness to help!

Martin Kohlberger, SSILA Program Committee Coordinator

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Reminder: SSILA abstracts due Wednesday, July 17

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This is a reminder that abstracts for the Winter 2020 meeting of SSILA are due this upcoming Wednesday, July 17. This year's meeting is being held from January 2–5 in New Orleans, Louisiana, concurrently with the Linguistic Society of America.

Click here to view the complete abstract and submission guidelines.

SSILA looks forward to receiving your abstract submissions!

Letter from the President, concerning SSILA abstract requirement changes

As you might recall, the call for papers for the 2019 SSILA meeting suggested that submitters include in their abstract a brief discussion of broader impacts of their work. There was extensive discussion of this at the 2019 business meeting, and an ad hoc committee was struck to produce a proposal to be voted on by the membership. The statement from the ad hoc committee is included in this year’s call. It will be voted on after there has been an opportunity for submitters to try this out and there has been some discussion. The ad-hoc committee interrogated the current issues of what should be required for abstracts and how to evaluate those abstracts from not only an academic perspective but also the lenses of the Indigenous communities whose languages are the focus of SSILA. This has not been the norm of SSILA.

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Call for Papers: SSILA Winter 2020 Meeting

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Deadline for Abstracts: July 17, 2019

Location: New Orleans, LA

Dates: January 2–5, 2020

Please note the two significant changes in this call for papers that are different from previous years:

  1. The submission deadline has been moved back to July 17. This change comes as a consequence of the LSA having moved their deadline as well. Please keep this in mind as this is earlier than in previous years.

  2. The abstract requirements now include a description of the social outcomes / impacts / implications of the work presented. Details about this and a request for feedback on this trial will be addressed in a separate email.

View the complete abstract guidelines here.

Call for Papers

The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) will hold its annual winter meeting jointly with the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) in New Orleans, LA on January 2–5, 2020. SSILA meetings allow scholars to present on a wide range of topics centered on any aspect of Indigenous languages of the Americas.

Information about the hotel and location can be found at the LSA website. Participants will be able to register for the meeting on the LSA website and reserve hotel rooms at reduced rates between September 1st, 2019 and December 11th, 2019.

SSILA welcomes abstracts for papers that present original research focusing on the linguistic study of the Indigenous languages of the Americas. Submitters must be members of SSILA.

Not yet a member of SSILA? Join here!

Abstract Submission

The deadline for receipt of all abstracts is on July 17th at 11:59 PM (Hawaii-Aleutian time). Please note that the deadline this year is two weeks earlier than in previous years. This is because the LSA submission deadline was changed to an earlier date this year, and SSILA endeavors to make acceptance decisions at the same time as the main LSA conference.

Abstracts should be submitted electronically, using the electronic submission website EasyChair. Consult the SSILA website for detailed instructions. Also, e-mail or hard-copy submissions will be accepted if arrangements are made in advance with the SSILA Program Committee Administrator, Martin Kohlberger (conferences@ssila.org). Abstracts may be submitted in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.

Click here to view the complete abstract guidelines.

Click here to go to the EasyChair submission page.

New Series from Syracuse University Press: Haudenosaunee and Indigenous Worlds

Syracuse University Press is pleased to announce its new Haudenosaunee and Indigenous Worlds series. This series will expand the Press’s historical emphasis in “Iroquois” and Native American publications to better reflect current scholarship regarding oral tradition, de-colonial and Indigenous studies—writ large. We welcome submissions from diverse authors across disciplines, traditions, and orientations, but with special emphasis on the Haudenosaunee. The series will be led by Philip P. Arnold and Scott Manning Stevens.

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FEL XXIII (2019) Causes of language endangerment: Looking for answers and finding solutions to the global decline in linguistic diversity

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Deadline for abstract submission: 1st July 2019 Notification of acceptance: 31st July 2019 Deadline for submission of full papers: 30th October 2019 Early bird registration starts: TBA Early bird registration ends: TBA Registration deadline: TBA Conference 14–16th December 2019