SIL focuses on services at 90th Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting

Verna Stutzman, coordinator of SIL's Dictionary & Lexicography Services team, demonstrates the online Webonary.

(January 2016) SIL’s focus this year at the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) conference was on the services SIL provides to the linguistics community. Several SIL linguists attended the 90th Annual Meeting of the LSA which was held 7-10 January in Washington, D.C. As part of its on-going involvement in cutting-edge linguistics, SIL has a long history of participation with the LSA.

As an exhibitor at the conference, SIL demonstrated several ways that SIL assists linguists. One service displayed was the well-recognized Ethnologue, giving attendees an opportunity to interact with the Ethnologue General Editor, Dr. M. Paul Lewis. Information was available explaining how contributing information to the Ethnologue is now easier than before.

Verna Stutzman, coordinator of SIL’s Dictionary & Lexicography Services team, demonstrated another service, the online Webonary, a repository where people can post dictionaries, in whatever stage of development they exist. Also displayed were the most recent SIL publications. Dr. James Gruber, professor at Reed College, participated in the poster presentation: “An acoustic analysis of tone and register in Louma Pala.”

Linguistics—the study of language in all its aspects—has been a central focus of SIL since its beginning. Dr. Kenneth Pike served as president of LSA in 1961 and a number of SIL linguists have served on various committees.

Related Links

90th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America 
Linguistics in SIL
Language puzzles
Ethnologue: Languages of the World
Webonary
SIL Publications
SIL Language & Culture Archives
News article: SIL linguists at LSA 2015