AFLA II (1995)
McGill University, Montréal, Canada
While this is technically the second annual meeting of AFLA, most of you were probably unaware of the first annual meeting or of how AFLA came to be. As I understand it, sometime in the spring of 1993, Barry Miller at York University in Toronto and Diane Massam at the University of Toronto decided to have a workshop on Austronesian morpho-syntax in the spring of the following year. Due to funding problems, the workshop was small, but in May 1994 the Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto and the Linguistics Section, York University hosted five speakers. Besides Diane and Barry, there was Richard McGinn (Ohio University), Anna Maclachlan (McGill University) and myself. Since there were only five of us, it had the feel of a true workshop. The first day consisted of the presentations and discussion with the help of an enthusiastic audience from Toronto. The second day we met again for more discussion but with the main goal of setting up a way to continue and develop the group. We felt that there was a growing number of morphologists and syntacticians working on Austronesian languages within formal theoretical frameworks. We thought that we would all benefit from having a way to meet with others who shared not only some basic theoretical assumptions, but also a feel for the language family. And so AFLA was created.
This year AFLA has grown substantially. The generous funding by SSHRCC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) and McGill University allowed us to have invited speakers. We are grateful to them as well as to Ileana Paul and Vivianne Phillips, linguistics graduate students at McGill with whom most of you have corresponded and who have done enormous amounts of work organizing the workshop. We would very much like to ensure the continued existence of AFLA, if not as an annual workshop, at least as a reasonably frequent meeting. We would also like to encourage the informal workshop flavor that was started in Toronto. Obviously, the larger the group, the harder this is to achieve. However, given the overlap of interests represented in the group, we are hoping for lively, friendly discussion.
So, welcome to Canada, Quebec, Montreal, McGill, and AFLA. We wish you a pleasant stay, an informative workshop, and bearable weather.
Best wishes,
Lisa Travis