ALT is proud to announce the establishment of a new grammar prize to encourage and honour achievements in the field of documenting the world's linguistic diversity through the writing of reference grammars. To be eligible, a grammar must provide a systematic, accessible, comprehensive, original, insightful and typologically well-informed account of the workings of the language being described, generously exemplified with natural data. Though the normal expectation is that it would deal with a hitherto little-described language, outstanding grammars of better-known
languages or dialects thereof may also be considered if they achieve major breakthroughs in a comprehensive understanding of the language. Grammars may be written in any major language, subject to the availability of a sufficient and geographically balanced set of jury members able to read the language.
Entries will be judged by a committee of half-a-dozen distinguished linguists, including a number of judges who have themselves written major reference grammars but also typologists and other categories of grammar-reader. The chair of the jury will be nominated before the submission date by the President of the ALT, in consultation with the Executive committee, and the chair and the president will then constitute the jury once the full set of submissions is known.
The ALT grammar prize will be awarded every two years, with the winner announced in time for them to present a plenary lecture or language tutorial at the next ALT Conference, setting out the most typologically interesting aspects of the language.
There will be two categories of prize, on alternating four year cycles - one, to be known as the Panini Grammar Award, for grammars written as dissertations, and one, to be known as the Georg von der Gabelentz Grammar Award, for published grammars.
For each category, any grammar (respectively) passed as a dissertation or published in the four year period leading up to December 31st in the year preceding the ALT Conference, will be eligible provided that it meets the conditions above and that the author is a member of the ALT. Grammars which win the Panini award cannot be submitted at a later date for the Gabelentz award. Six copies of the entry must be submitted to the Chair of the Jury by February 1st of the year following the four year period. In the case of the Panini award only, entries may be submitted as a pdf file with embedded fonts, except that submission of bound copies is preferred in the case of countries such as the Netherlands where a form of non-commercial publication is a requirement. Submitted copies remain the property of the members of the jury. It will normally be the responsibility of the applicant to cover the costs of submitting their work, but the Chair will consider applications for assistance in the case of demonstrable financial hardship. It is planned that the initial award would be made in 2007, in the Dissertation category. Marianne Mithun has kindly agreed to chair the first Panini award, and anyone wishing to be considered should send their entries to her address:
Marianne Mithun
Dept of Linguistics
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
USA
mithun@linguistics. ucsb.edu
Prize winners for the Panini award will receive a paid fare to and accommodation and registration at the ALT conference at which they will present their plenary, as well as a collection of reference grammars and other works donated by major publishers in the area. Because of current financial limitations on the ALT Budget, Prizewinners for the Gabelentz award will not receive a paid fare to the ALT conference, but other
conditions will be identical.
For information on the ALT (and on joining) consult:
http://www.lancs. ac.uk/fss/ organisations/ alt/
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