On April 4-6, the Department hosted the Twelfth Spring Workshop on Theory and Method in Linguistic Reconstruction, a long-running biennial series that began in 1986.  The talks were on Indo-European (Ben Fortson, Eric Hamp, Jay Jasanoff, Brian Joseph); Tibeto-Burman (Jim Matisoff, David Kamholz); Native American languages (Terry Kaufman, Ives Goddard, Bob Rankin); Australian languages (Claire Bowern); Caucasian languages (Alice Harris); Austronesian languages (Mark Hale); and general topics (Andrew Garrett, Lyle Campbell).  The best title (and certainly one of the best talks) was Bob Rankin’s: “The mystery of the Vice President’s Chair”.

From July 30-August 10, Bill Baxter co-ran an intensive workshop on Old Chinese reconstruction along with Professor CHEN Jian of Fudan University, Shanghai. The workshop was held at Leiden University, the Netherlands and was sponsored by the Research School for Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS) and the Leiden University’s Faculty of Arts. The workshop focused especially on interpreting the
script of texts of the Warring States period (5th-3rd centuries BCE) recently excavated at
archeological sites in China.