Linguists from throughout the world will descend on the University of Queensland in July for the fourth Australian Linguistics Institute (ALI).
This major event in the country's linguistic calendar, from July 6 to 16, is expected to attract close to 500 teachers and postgraduate and undergraduate students.
They will have the chance to hear from 30 international speakers from as far afield as the United States, Canada, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Holland and England.
A strong contingent of linguistics experts from New Zealand will join more than 20 other scholars from Australian universities in offering a wide range of courses, lectures and workshops.
Among the Australian-based speakers are five from the University of Queensland - Professor Rodney Huddleston (English grammar), Dr June Luchjenbroers (cognitive linguistics), Dr Michael Harrington (second language acquisition), Professor Bruce Rigsby (Queensland and Torres Strait languages) and Francis Bond (machine translation).
Chair of the organising committee Dr Mary Laughren said the quality of linguists teaching at ALI this year was attracting enrolments from overseas, including some from America and Europe.
Linguistic institutes have been held at different universities every two years since the first at Sydney in 1992. Each time there has been a growing number of attendees from areas such as Asia, the United States, New Zealand and Europe.
A major drawcard this time is the number of scholars presenting courses focused on exotic languages.
'A very strong program of lectures and workshops will relate to Australian Aboriginal languages,' Dr Laughren said.
'These will be very attractive to overseas linguistics students and will dovetail with the University of Queensland's strength in this area.
'The ALI will draw attention to this University's teaching and research programs in linguistics and languages, and we hope to attract students, especially postgraduate students, as a result.'
The institute will include 38 courses, from introductory to advanced level, five workshops and a two-day symposium. These are open to everyone wanting to learn more about languages and linguistics.
Sources of financial support and sponsorship include the Australian Research Council which has provided $12,000 for the symposium on language contact and language contact induced change, the British Council and the Dante Alighieri Society.
This year's ALI will be part of a wider Languages and Linguistics in Brisbane program starting June 30 which includes four other linguistic conferences together expected to attract more than 600 participants.
The annual conference of the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia will take place at Griffith University from June 30 to July 3 before the focus shifts firmly to the University of Queensland.
The Lexical Functional Grammar Conference will be held from June 30 to July 2, the annual conference of the Australian Linguistics Society from July 3 to 5, and the Australex Conference on July 17, all at Emmanuel College.
For further information, visit the ALI web site: www.cltr.uq.oz.au:8000/ali98 or contact Dr Mary Laughren (telephone 3365 2024).
