DLI-DEL Position Paper & Petition

The Documenting Endangered Languages (DLI-DEL) Program, now NSF Dynamic Language Infrastructure-NEH Documenting Endangered Languages (DLI-DEL), has played a crucial role in the realization of United States federal policy to preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of communities to practice and develop Native languages. For over fifteen years, DLI-DEL has supported projects to advance research and education across many fields of inquiry, providing resources for projects that have strong intellectual merit and broader impacts. However, the recent repositioning of programs within the Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences at the NSF has resulted in the merger of DLI-DEL with Linguistics and the loss of a dedicated program officer, a move which is counter to the NSF’s own strategic plan. This has the potential to exacerbate an already serious threat to information and insight on our collective human cognitive capacity, and to our cultural and historical traditions. This document outlines recommendations for the continuation and growth of DLI-DEL.

Message from the SSILA President - 2021 SSILA Annual Meeting

We hope this email finds you well given the circumstances. We are writing to let you know of our plans for the 2021 conference. SSILA Board members have been in constant communication as events unfold all over the world. After careful consideration we have decided to move our annual conference to a virtual format for this meeting. We are all very concerned about the effects this pandemic has on the populations we are very closely in relationships with, particularly elder Indigenous language speakers. Furthermore, the uncertain and unpredictable circumstances related to travelling, social gatherings and academic (and personal) budgets has led us to believe this is in the best interest of everyone in our society.

Call for Nominations - SSILA Archiving Award, in honor of Michael Krauss

SSILA is pleased to announce a call for nominations for the SSILA Archiving Award in honor of Ken Hale. This award highlights the importance of creating long-term archived materials that are accessible to all communities concerned, including heritage and source communities as well as scholarly communities. It is meant to encourage others in academia to value such work as more comparable to analytic research.

Indigenous Linguist – Department of Anthropology, University of Winnipeg

The Department of Anthropology is seeking an Indigenous linguist who will help build an interdisciplinary Indigenous languages focus at The University of Winnipeg. We are seeking an individual with training in descriptive linguistics and/or language documentation and who has experience developing curriculum, programming, and research relevant to the revitalization of Indigenous languages in Manitoba and neighbouring regions. The successful applicant will be an effective teacher whose scholarship is grounded in community-engaged practices and methodologies and who has a demonstrated ability to work collaboratively in an interdisciplinary environment. The ability to speak an Indigenous language spoken in Manitoba or neighbouring regions is an asset.

Call for Papers - 13th International Workshop on Writing Systems and Literacy (AWLL13)

Call Deadline: April 15, 2020

The 13th International Workshop on Writing Systems and Literacy meeting will continue to bring together researchers from diverse research backgrounds and from various countries, the Association of Written Language and Literacy's thirteenth gathering (AWLL13) will be the first to be hosted in the USA at the University of North Carolina.

Language Legacies Call for Proposals (2020)

The Endangered Language Fund provides grants for language documentation and revitalization, and for linguistic fieldwork. The work most likely to be funded is that which serves both the native community and the field of linguistics, although projects which have immediate applicability to one group and more distant applicability to the other will also be considered. Support for publication is a low priority, although it will be considered. Proposals can originate in any country. The language involved must be in danger of disappearing within a generation or two. Endangerment is a continuum, and the location on the continuum is one factor in our funding decisions.

Call for Papers - 23rd Workshop on American Indigenous Languages

Call Deadline: Friday, February 7th at 6:00 pm (Pacific Standard Time)

The Linguistics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara announces its 23rd Annual Workshop on American Indigenous Languages (WAIL), May 22, 2020 - May 23, 2020. WAIL provides a forum for the discussion of theoretical, descriptive, and practical studies of the Indigenous languages of the Americas.

Keynote Speaker: Roberto Zariquiey (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru)

Call for Papers

Linguistic Field (s): Any topic relevant to the study of indigenous languages of the Americas

Anonymous abstracts are invited for talks on any topic relevant to the study of Indigenous languages of the Americas. Talks will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion. Abstracts should be 500 words or less (excluding examples and / or references).

Individuals may submit abstracts for one single-authored and one co-authored paper. Please indicate your source (s) and type (s) of data in the abstract (e.g. recordings, texts, conversational, elicited, narrative, etc...). For co-authored papers, please indicate who plans to present the paper as well as who will be in attendance.

Abstracts should be submitted in .pdf format to wail.ucsb@gmail.com. Please submit two abstracts, one with the identifying information of the person or persons giving the presentation along with affiliations and contact information, the other with no indication of the author (s).

Hard copy submissions will be accepted from those who do not have Internet access. For this, please send four copies of your abstract, along with a 3x5 card with the following information: (1) your name; (2) affiliation; (3) mailing address; (4) phone number; (5) email address; and (6) title of your paper. Send hard copy submissions to:

Workshop on American Indigenous Languages
Attn: Jordan AG Douglas
Department of Linguistics
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Deadline for receipt of abstracts is Friday, February 7th at 6:00 pm (Pacific Standard Time). Notification of acceptance will arrive by email no later than: Monday, March 2nd.

Contact Persons: Alonso Vásquez Aguilar, Jordan AG Douglas, and James Yee

For further information, please contact the conference coordinators, at wail.ucsb@gmail.com


Call for SSILA Program Committee Member

In 2017, SSILA created a new Program Committee structureto assist the Executive Committee and the Program Administrator inorganizing the SSILA annual meeting. We are pleased to say that thisstructure is working well. Analía Gutiérrez has served three years and is rotating off the committee. We thankher for her service to SSILA and her contribution to the Program Committee. So,we are requesting nominations for a SSILA member to serve as the new member ofthe Program Committee for three years.

CFP: Tlalocan XXVI

The journal Tlalocan, published by the National Autonomous University of Mexico, is pleased to announce its call for papers for volume XXVI. The journal, founded in 1943, is dedicated to the publication of oral and ethnohistorical texts in indigenous languages of the linguistic families found in Mexico. We are now accepting manuscripts for consideration to be published in the upcoming issue. In addition to texts based on oral tradition and written texts based on colonial documents, for instance, we also accept book reviews and notes.