In discussion on Friday, Kensei, Nik, Jasp, Dick, Eva & me were able to firm 
things up a bit, so here is how they stand.

1. WHAT HAS BEEN DECIDED SO FAR
DATE: Monday 19 December (1 day) OR Mon+Tues 19-20 December (2 days).
[Constraint: the two days should fall within that week, 19-23 December. We 
could change which particular 2 days we choose, though. We chose this week 
because it's the earliest time that Kensei could manage. If this week is 
really bad for somebody who would otherwise come, then there might be the 
possibility of dates in early January instead.]

Hopefully it'll be 2 days, but we will reduce it to the one day if there 
aren't enough contributors to justify the second day.

VENUE: Central London, either Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, nr Regent's 
Park, or UCL.
Fallbacks (unlikely to be fallen back on): UCLAN (Preston) or Edinburgh.

(If UCL then probably arranged through Italian department if we firm up 
arrangements pretty soon -- unless anybody thinks it desirable to arrange it 
through English or Linguistics? It's after the end of term, so rooms 
wouldn't be in short supply).

I am assuming the important requirements of the venue are (i) a room with a 
table we can sit around (looking at each other and NOT Powerpoint 
presentations), (ii) a location that the greatest number of people can reach 
with the greatest ease.

We want to use the symposium to give everybody the opportunity 
(unconstrained by short time slots) -- & to encourage them to take it -- to 
explain to everybody else their current thinking on WG, or on matters 
related to WG, and to allow for enough discussion that any potential areas 
of consensus have the chance to emerge. There are a couple of reasons for 
this being our main aim. The first is that after a long period of divergence 
among our evolving ideas, we have recently glimpsed tantalizing signs of 
convergent evolution, offering up the chance that there could once again be 
a single version of WG, rather than as many versions as there are people 
working in it. The second reason is that when in one's research one 
encounters phenomena that WG seems unable to deal with satisfactorily, there 
is an unhappy temptation to avoid engaging with those phenomena, which 
sharply constrains the areas of grammar with which one can comfortably 
engage. But if there were more concerted activity among WGers, we could 
collectively work on revising the model in areas where it falls short, 
thereby making it much more practicable to do work using the WG model.

Currently scheduled are:
* discussion of Dick's new book
* 2 papers by me, which I will try to circulate in advance ("A regency 
syntax
  for WG", & "Language, syntax, and why dogs really are nouns: Against
  tripartite parallel architecture")
* some as yet unspecified contributions from Jasper

2. WHAT I NEED TO KNOW FROM YOU AS SOON AS POSS

a. Whether you want to contribute any paper(s).
b. Whether you want to come, and if so, whether you can manage the proposed 
dates.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

--And.