Barbara Partee writes:
The LSA meeting in Minneapolis featured some events commemorating the 90th anniversary of the LSA, including two days of short talks contrasting the state of things in 1924 and 2014 in the different subfields, and of the LSA itself, and women in linguistics, and other related topics, all interesting. And there was a video compiled by Dennis Preston from materials sent in response to a year-long appeal (including a number of photos from the 1974 Linguistic Institute at UMass Amherst), which ended with a quiz: photos (many of them cryptic in one way or another) and clues about 10 linguists, and we were all invited to submit entries. There was also a “tie-breaker” photo with two guys in T-shirts, one with an undecipherable autograph, one with something written in some non-English language. It turned out that I won, to my great surprise. I guess I’m now a certified “old guy”, because I think you had to be. I was one of two to get 7 right, and I got the first three words on the t-shirt (I didn’t know the language, but it was something Scandinavian, and I deciphered “I have not ….” (turned out to be Icelandic, and to say ‘I have no idea what this T-shirt says’.) My prize: free registration for next year’s LSA, in San Francisco – so maybe I’ll go!
From the WHISC editor:
You can see the LSA’s 90th anniversary video presentation here. There is a section that includes the artistic accomplishments of several notable linguists — be sure to check out Emmon Bach’s poem and Barbara’s photography, as well as the contest that Barbara describes above.
