History of LACUS

First Meetings. LACUS was founded in August 1974 by a group of linguists of the Great Lakes Region. Their plan was to create a forum for the free flow of ideas and discussion on human communicating behavior from all possible points of view, going beyond traditional grammatical studies in the various traditional modes. Their thinking was in part influenced by an enjoyable informal meeting held the year earlier, in the summer of 1973 in Seattle. It was a time of lively argumentation and occasional intolerance at meetings of established linguistics organizations.

As the inaugural meeting of 1974 at Lake Forest College drew to a close, it seemed clear from the reactions of those present that many linguists from around the world would respond positively to such an organization.

It was decided to hold an annual Forum at a university campus each year, alternating between Canada and the United States. The 1975 meeting was at the University of Toronto. The 1976 Meeting was at the University of Texas at El Paso, and the first elected President, Professor Dwight L. Bolinger of Harvard University, delivered the first Presidential Address in Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican side of the border.

Since then meetings have been held annually at many campuses in Canada and the United States, and a volume of papers has been published each year consisting of selected revised papers from the previous year's conference.




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