Ebook: Historical linguistics 2001: Selected papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 13-17 August 2001

Preface This volume contains 25 papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL 15) held August 13-17, 2001, in Melbourne., hosted by the Linguistics Program of La Trobe University. Over 200 people attended over the five days of the conference. Six plenaries were presented plus 110 papers. On the final day there were three workshops at which another 32 papers were presented. This volume presents a selection of papers presented at the general sessions and the plenaries. All papers offered for inclusion in the proceedings were read by at least two referees. It was Nigel Vincent who suggested a decade ago that La Trobe offer to host ICHL, and 2001 was the first time this conference was held in the southern hemisphere. As might be expected this meant a greater participation from Australian linguists, mainly reflected in the workshop on Reconstruction and subgrouping in Australian languages, but the 150 presenters came from 33 countries with particularly strong representation from the United States and northern Europe. The selection in this volume reflects the fact that themajority of papers were onmorphosyntax with a smaller number on phonology. There is one paper on semantics (Riemer) and one on contact (Aikhenvald). Finally we would like to thank those who supported the conference and the production of this volume. Our vice-chancellor, Michael Osborne was generous in providing financial backing, while our secretary, Rosemary Bellair, worked indefatigably on setting up the conference, and Jo Taylor carried out the arduous task of copy-editing this volume. Barry J. Blake, Kate Burridge October 2002