2003 Meeting Reports

ICLA Governing Board and CL Editorial Board Meetings, ICLC 8, July 2003

A report on the ICLA Governing Board Meeting, held jointly with the meeting of the Cognitive Linguistics Editorial Board.

Date/time: Tuesday July 22, 2003, 16.00 hours
Location: The Meeting Room ("Sala de Juntas") in the Quintiliano Building, University of La Rioja, Logroño

Present at the Governing Board and Editorial Board Meeting:
The Governing Board: Suzanne Kemmer, President; Marjolijn Verspoor, Sectretary/Treasurer; Dirk Geeraerts, Past President; Kee Dong Lee, Regular Board Member; Ron Langacker, Regular Board Member; Sally Rice, Regular Board Member; Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibañez, Representative of Organizing Committee for ICLC 8, 2003, in Logroño; Arie Verhagen, Editor of Cognitive Linguistics; Adele Goldberg, incoming Editor of Cognitive Linguistics; and Anke Beck, Editor in Chief, Mouton de Gruyter.

Items of Business

Call to order of ICLA Governing Board - Suzanne Kemmer
Presentation of the Report of the 2001 meetings, Santa Barbara. Approved by the Board. [Later posted at Meeting Reports 2001.]
Cognitive Linguistics Editorial Board meeting agenda
1. Editor's report - Arie Verhagen. It was announced that Arie would remain Editor in Chief until the backlog of papers on which he has begun the editing process has appeared in the journal. This might take a year or more.
2. Publisher's Report: membership and journal's financial report - Anke Beck
3. Discussion of past achievements and general future goals for journal - Anke Beck and Arie Verhagen
4. Introduction of the Editor-Elect; her vision for the journal, new proposals, and goals - Adele Goldberg
5. Governing Board discussion of editor and publisher proposals
6. Adjournment of Editorial Board meeting
Refreshment Break
Reports on past 2 years' business
1. Secretary/Treasurer's financial report - Marjolijn Verspoor
  The Association has $6706.13 in the American account and €8590.21 in the European account.
2. ICLC 7 (2001) Final Conference Report - Ron Langacker reported on the Santa Barbara ICLC. The conference was solvent and was able to turn $3000 over to the ICLC accounts. It was suggested after the 2001 conference by some Board Members to start a Sign Language Interpreting fund with this money. Ron Langacker proposed, given this suggestion and the accumulated money in the ICLA accounts reported by Marjolijn, that the Governing Board recommend to the Assembly that $5000 be used for Sign Language Interpreting expenses at the next conference. The Board supported the recommendation.
3. ICLC 8 (2003): current conference news and announcements - Francisco Ruiz. Suzanne Kemmer, on behalf of the Board, thanked Paco for his tremendous efforts in putting on the largest ICLC ever. The ICLA is grateful to him for taking on this task and bringing it off successfully.
4. ICLC 9 (2005), Seoul, South Korea : news on conference plans and progress - Kee Dong Lee.
ICLA Website - Suzanne Kemmer
After ICLC 7 in 2001, the domain names cogling.org and cognitivelinguistics.org were secured, with the idea that even if the website moved, the domain names would remain the same. A new website was designed by Dan Parvaz of the University of New Mexico, and came online in 2002. In Spring 2003, Dan designed a webform that would allow new members to automatically generate a membership form and fax it to Mouton with their credit card information. A useful feature is that a copy of the membership form (without credit card info) is automatically sent by email to the publisher and the secretary of the organization.
Marjolijn reported that memberships began to be submitted as soon as the web form was activated, and submissions continue at a good pace. Suzanne reported that the volunteers for the positions of Webmaster and Web Editor that we got in 2001 (see 2001 Report) have stepped down. Dan Parvaz recently accepted a job and is unable to continue as Webmaster. The site has been moved to Rice and Suzanne has been acting as Webmaster, at least for the interim. Anatol Stefanowitsch served in an advisory role on the website creation through spring 2002, but did not choose to continue as web editor subsequently. It seems there were some misunderstandings about the precise responsibilities of that position and its relation to the Governing Board. [Post-conference: Suzanne located a graduate student at Rice, Martin Hilpert, who is willing to take on the tasks of updating the site and helping to expand it with information from members. Suzanne will continue to act as Webmaster and Martin will serve as Web Editor, dealing with expansion of content and formatting issues in consultation with Suzanne.]
Proposals for ICLC 10
1. Proposal #1 - Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk. The Polish CLA proposes to host ICLC 9 in 2007 in Krakow, Poland. The Board was enthusiastic about the conference being hosted in Poland, by organizers who had done so much to get Cognitive Linguistics a foothold in Europe. It was noted that Poland had probably the oldest and one of the most active Cognitive Linguistics communities in Europe, so it was felt appropriate that the PCLA should have the opportunity to host an ICLC.
2. Possibility #2 - Suzanne Kemmer reported news from Eve Sweetser that the LSA Institute was likely to be held in Boulder in Summer 2007. The Board discussed the issue of whether the proposal on the table should be submitted without reservation to the Assembly for 2007, or whether the Board should wait to see if a proposal from Boulder would be forthcoming soon. The Board was of differing opinions on this matter. Some urged that we should only consider proposals submitted at this conference. They felt that the Polish one was excellent and the organizers' requested year should be honored in submitting the proposal to the Assembly. Others worried about the ICLC remaining away from the U.S. for too long, at least 8 years in the case that the 2007 conference was held in Krakow. The importance of to the Cognitive Community in the U.S. of linking the ICLC conference to LSA Institutes was emphasized.
  In the end it was decided to submit the Polish proposal to the ICLA Assembly for approval, but without a specified year. We would then investigate immediately whether a Boulder proposal would be submitted soon. The Board would take until Christmas (at the latest) to determine whether a proposal would be submitted for consideration; if none was forthcoming, the Krakow conference would take place in 2007. If a Boulder proposal materialized during this time, the Board would consider it at that time. [Note: It was discovered that Boulder Linguistics had withdrawn their proposal to host the LSA Institute in 2007, and so the Board approved the Krakow proposal via email in October 2003.]
Discussion began again about how to use the surplus funds that ICLA has acquired. Ron Langacker proposed that $5000 be dedicated to providing travel scholarships or other subsidy for conference attendance to needy participants such as students and scholars from low-currency countries. The Board approved the recommendation.
There was some discussion of aspects of conference organization. Suggestions and comments on organization were made. Suzanne Kemmer agreed to draw up a set of guidelines for running and ICLC conference for future organizers. Marjolijn had already provided a list of considerations for proposed ICLC venues, some of which was relevant to conference organization, and Suzanne proposed to start from there.
[A document called Proposals for Hosting the ICLC: Policies and Procedures, an expanded version of Marjolijn's original guidelines, was circulated to the Board by Suzanne and approved in September 2003. Boardmembers' suggestions for good conference organization at the meeting and during much email correspondence afterwards were compiled by Suzanne in a document called "ICLA Guidelines and Requirements for Conference Organization and Aftermath" which was given to the Korean organizers in early 2004 and an updated version in March 2005. It will be made available to future organizers in good time for each conference.]
Board recommendations for positions for the 2003-2005 Governing Board
Adjournment of meeting

--Submitted by Suzanne Kemmer, June 2005. Approved by Governing Board in Seoul, July 19, 2005. One small correction in wording made July 29, 2005, by Suzanne Kemmer.

Report on the Business Meeting of the ICLA Assembly, ICLC 8, July 2003

Date/time: Thursday, July 24, 2003, 13.00-14.00 hours
Location: Gran Aula in the Quintiliano Building, University of La Rioja, Logroño

Items of Business

Call to order - Suzanne Kemmer
Cognitive Linguistics Journal
Arie Verhagen, current Editor of the Cognitive Linguistics Journal, reported on the acceptation/rejection rates of the past two years. In the period of 2001-2003, the journal received 88 manuscripts. The general acceptance rate has been 37%, which is about the same as during the 1999-2001 period.
Suzanne Kemmer announced that the ICLA Board, in consultation with Mouton de Gruyter, has appointed Adele Goldberg as Editor of the journal to succeed Arie Verhagen. Adele has gladly accepted. She will begin accepting submissions in January 2004 at her address at the University of Illinois.
Secretary/Treasurer's report
1. Membership and Finances Marjolijn Verspoor, current ICLA secretary, reported on membership and finances.
  The ICLA now has about 262 individual members (paid subscriptions to the journal not including institutional subscribers) in 37 countries:
  Total EU (133)
  [Germany (27), Great Britain (18), Spain (17), Netherlands (13) Belgium (10), Finland (7), Sweden (7), Poland (6), Italy (5), Denmark (4), Norway (4), France (3), Greece (3), Austria (2), Portugal (2), Slowenia (2) Ireland (1) Estonia (1), Hungary (1)]
  Japan (47)
  USA (45)
  Australia (6)
  South Korea (4)
  Brazil (4)
  Canada (4)
  Israel (2)
  New Zealand (2)
  Russia (2)
  Switzerland (2).
  The following countries each have one member: Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Romania, Serbia, Russia, South Africa, and Ukraine.
  The Secretary/Treasurer announced the state of the ICLA bank accounts (see Governing Board meeting item 5a. above)
2. Spending Proposals
  The members approved the Board's recommendation that $5000.00 will be put into a travel fund for the Seoul conference. It will be at the discretion of the Seoul Organizing Committee to award the travel scholarship funds.
  The Board's second recommendation, to use $5000.00 of ICLA funds to support Sign Language Interpreting at the Seoul conference, was also approved by the Assembly.
ICLA Website
Suzanne Kemmer, in her capacity as Webmaster, announced the new site URLs to the members as well as some plans for new content to the site. Members were urged to submit suggestions and content for the growing site. The intent is to make it the central clearing house for information about Cognitive Linguistics. Research, Conferences, Places to Study Cognitive Linguistics, and anything else pertaining to the field that we can make accessible from the site.
Report ICLC 2003
Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza Ibañez reported that the current attendance of ICLC 8 is about 640. This is an attendance record for the ICLC conference.
Locations of future ICLCs
Suzanne Kemmer announced that as decided in Santa Barbara in 2001, the next conference in 2005 will be held at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. The Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association would like to organize the 2007 conference in Krakow, but in 2007 the LSA Institute, an important American summer school with associated conferences, may be held in Boulder, a desirable venue for an ICLA conference. After a brief discussion, the members present voted to approve Krakow as a venue for either 2007 or 2009. They agreed that they will leave it up to the ICLA board to make a final decision on the year for the Krakow conference once it is clear where the American summer school will be held. [Secretary's note: Meanwhile the decision has been made to hold the 2007 conference in Krakow.]
Conference Announcement
Chris Sinha, a member from the floor, announced that a Cognitive conference called Language, Culture and Mind would be held in Portsmouth in Summer 2004. He was asked if the group there would evolve into a UK Cognitive Linguistics Association. The answer was unclear. Suzanne Kemmer noted that a UK affiliate of the ICLA would be very welcome.
Election of board members
The election was held for members of the Governing Board for the 2003-2005 term. The term begins at the end of this meeting and lasts until the end of the next conference in Seoul in July 2005.
The results of the 2003 election are as follows:
President: Suzanne Kemmer (re-elected); Regular members: Laura Janda; Klaus-Uwe Panther; and Sally Rice (re-elected).
Marjolijn will continue her 4-year term as Secretary/Treasurer, to which she was elected in 2001, until the new election in Seoul.
The ex-officio members are Arie Verhagen (CL journal editor); Dirk Geeraerts (keeping his role of most recent Past President after the re-election of Suzanne Kemmer); and Kee Dong Lee (ICLC 2005 representative of the Seoul organizing committee, changing his role from Regular Board Member in 2003). Adele Goldberg will join the Governing Board when her term as Acting Editor begins in January 2004, replacing Arie Verhagen on the Board. [The incoming 2003-05 ICLA Governing Board and their contact information was posted on the ICLA website in August 2003.
Adjournment of meeting

Report submitted by Marjolijn Verspoor, August 2004. Completed and posted by Suzanne Kemmer, June 2005. Approved by the ICLC Governing Board in Seoul, July 19, 2005.

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