Print a Form to Mail
For the Flourishing of the Field of Chinese Linguistics
International Association of Chinese Linguistics
A letter from Ken Takashima, President, IACL (2007-2008)
Dear All,
As a humble servant of the IACL since May of 2007, I would like to ask your consideration for the present and the future of our Association, particularly in its financial aspect. Until now this has been dependent mainly on your active participation in attending the annual meeting which makes it mandatory to become a member. Now in its 16th anniversary, the IACL is the only international scholarly association devoted to the promotion of Chinese linguistics with a current membership of about 300. More than one half of this figure consists of life members with a single payment of US $300, and the rest has been shifting from year to year, resulting in a lamentable lack of sufficient funds to support and augment various programs the Association would like to propose.
Apart from the membership fee, we have had some dedicated scholars whose generous contributions to the Association in the past have made it possible to provide scholarships (e.g., IACL Summer Institute Scholarship) and awards (Young Scholar Award, Mantaro J. Hashimoto Award for Chinese Historical Phonology, Pola Award [1st competition will be held in 2008]). It is our earnest hope that these scholarships and awards will encourage students and scholars to conduct linguistic inquiries into Chinese both ancient and modern, as well as inter- and cross-disciplinary studies with researches on the Chinese language set firmly as a guiding probe. The annual meeting is an ideal venue to present their findings before eventual publication. However, the amount of these scholarships and awards have been more honorary than substantial, and it is our aspiration that we could make them be more commensurable, and increase the number of worthy recipients. The highest amount of any of the scholarships and awards, given to one, or two persons at the maximum a year, has not exceeded $500, whereas travel stipends to help students and young scholars to attend the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies amount to $2000 per recipient. Of course, it is not prudent to compare our Association with the AAS in view of the nature, size, and diversity of the organization. However, the IACL has potentials to be a fertile organization in terms not only of funding but also of genuine scholarship. For we do our work in the most fundamental and salient aspect of civilization: the language that has a continuous history of over 3200 years, with a rich variety of regional differences, and spoken by one quarter of the global population.
The New York meeting last May on the campus of Columbia University, the 15th annual gathering of our Association, was a great success with the number of participants nearly 200, the largest conference on Chinese linguistics held outside of China. Many of you who attended the meeting may still have fresh memory of the papers read, comments received, old and new colleagues and friends met, and the award ceremony held—with two young recipients (Ivy Song from University of Wisconsin and Wei Wang from CASS, China). Speaking from my own experience, attendance at a scholarly meeting when I was a graduate student has had a tremendous impact in my own career, and I believe this would be true for a young scholar entering the field and its related disciplines. To make such entrance even more attractive, we need added financial resources. In addition to these scholarships and awards, we can support other activities such as group projects, special seminars, library and data services, etc. It is indeed my dream to create a scholarly organization in which those who are interested in the study of Chinese in various subfields can congregate to make the organization a true meeting ground of the like mind and of what is already a congenial group of people. It will also be a scholarly organization of altruism. Just think about it, we cannot find anything better in our lives! Your gift of any amount—be it $49, $99, or $199—to the IACL will help it become such an organization.
With all the best wishes,
Ken Takashima
January 4, 2008
