UNE > News and Events > Browse by article > UNE group attracts international experts to Linguistics Institute

Next Night of fun and fashion to help sick children May 25, 2006  

Previous Year 8 maths students share their enthusiasm at UNE May 23, 2006 

UNE group attracts international experts to Linguistics Institute

May 24, 2006

ReidLing.thumb.JPGSix leading European and American linguists will travel to Australia in July to contribute to the Australian Linguistics Institute (ALI) 2006 - a week-long series of intensive courses organised by researchers from The University of New England.

The 12 courses in this year's ALI are designed to cover recent research (and current thinking) by international authorities in some of the most important branches of linguistics. The group of 12 presenters will also include five from Australia and one from New Zealand.

Organised by members of UNE's Language and Cognition Research Centre, ALI 2006 will be at the University of Queensland in Brisbane from July 10 to July 14. The organisers say it will be "a unique opportunity for graduate students, advanced undergraduates, professional linguists and language professionals to upgrade their knowledge and skills in key areas of linguistics".

They are hoping it will also attract people from other disciplines with an interest in linguistics. Many of the courses in ALI 2006 will be on a theme - "language and cognition" - which has far-reaching ramifications. The Language and Cognition Research Centre at UNE includes philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists and archaeologists, as well as linguists, among its members. One of these - Professor Brian Byrne from UNE's School of Psychology - will be among the ALI presenters. Professor Byrne is a Principal Researcher in a major international project, funded by the Australian, Norwegian, Swedish and US Governments, that is analysing children's reading ability into components influenced by their genetic inheritance and/or their home and school environment. His course will be on "Language and Genetics".

Among the other presenters will be Professor Lera Boroditsky from Stanford University in the United States ("Language and Thought"), Professor Istvan Kecskes from the State University of New York ("Bilingualism: Cognitive Aspects"), Professor Mark Steedman from the University of Edinburgh ("Combinatory Grammar and Natural Cognition"), Professor Stephen Crain from Macquarie University's Centre for Cognitive Research ("Logic in Child Language Acquisition"), and Professor William Foley from the University of Sydney ("Papuan Languages"). Full program and registration details are at: http://www.ali2006.une.edu.au/

"Early bird" registration for ALI 2006 (at a reduced fee) closes on May 26, but registration will remain open until July 10. For more information, contact organising-committee members Professor Cliff Goddard (cgoddard@une.edu.au) or Dr Andrea Schalley (andrea.schalley@une.edu.au) at UNE.

Dr Nick Reid (pictured here), another member of the committee, explained that Australian Linguistics Institutes had been hosted every two years by different universities. “This year’s ALI event will be the first to be organised by UNE’s Linguistics discipline and the Language and Cognition Research Centre,” Dr Reid continued. “While each of the earlier events was two weeks long, we’ve redeveloped it as an intensive five-day program, with a focus on language and cognition. We're very happy that we've been able to get such big names and such a wide variety of topics onto the program."

UNE’s Language and Cognition Research Centre organised the highly successful International Language and Cognition Conference, at Coffs Harbour in September 2004, which attracted leading experts from 17 countries.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at May 24, 2006 04:31 PM