Dear colleagues, I have been asked to forward this message to the list (the same information is given below and in the attachment)about a research project and an invitation to participate in the XV ALFAL International Congress, to be held in Montevideo, Uruguay, 2008. Please contact Cristine Altman with any queries: [log in to unmask] Best wishes, Nicola LINGUISTIC DOCUMENTATION AND HISTORY ANNOUNCEMENT OF PROJECT OF INVESTIGATION 1. Lines of research The Latin American Committee in Linguistic Historiography was established at the XIIIth International Congress of the Associação Latino Americana de Letras e Lingüística (ALFAL) held in Costa Rica in 2002, with the main objective of bringing together researchers — Lusitanists, Hispanists and Americanists — interested in the critical analysis of the Latin American research traditions, notably the reflection on the formation of the linguistic methods in the treatment of linguistic diversity as well as language universality. The core of the committee consisted of members of regional groups already integrated, like those of the ANPOLL Linguistic Historiography Workshop (National Association of Graduate Research in Languages and Linguistics), of the Center of Documentation in Linguistic Historiography of the University of São Paulo (CEDOCH-DL/USP), of the Group of Studies in Portuguese Language Historiography from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, those of the Oslo Project on Missionary Linguistics (OSPROMIL) and those from others European and American institutions who interacted with these groups. Three main lines of research were pursued by the researchers of the committee who, between 2002 and 2005, developed their projects in a integrated way and presented their partial results in the XIV ALFAL International Congress in Monterrey, México: the treatment of linguistic diversity; missionary linguistics and Portuguese grammaticography. 2. Project in course: Linguistic Documentation and History In 2006, researchers from the University of Amsterdam and from the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores em Antropologia Social (CIESAS) in Mexico City, developing the Revitalizing Old Linguistic Documentation project, and researchers from the Center of Documentation in Linguistic Historiography of the University of São Paulo (CEDOCH/USP), working on the Documenta Grammaticae et Historiae project, joined forces, motivated by their common interest in revisiting, restoring and preserving the documentation about the American Indian languages as well as studying the Portuguese and the Spanish spoken in the Americas. As a result of these efforts, in 2008, during the XV ALFAL International Congress, to be held in Montevideo, Uruguay, besides the established lines of research of the committee, we intend to emphasize the relevance of the documentary research concerning American languages. It is our main objective exchange experiences with researchers who are developing similar projects, or that are able to present results concerning the investigation dedicated to a) the elaboration of corpora concerning Native American languages, vital or endangered, but also dealing with Latin American varieties of Portuguese and Spanish; b) the edition, re-edition, and recovery of texts (notably grammars, dictionaries, glossaries) about these languages; c) critical studies of these texts (keeping in mind ways of grammar construction, descriptive techniques, the treatment of metalanguage, and the like). 3. Contact address and deadline of submission Those interested in joining us are invited to make contact with undersigned by sending the subject of the work and abstract describing the main lines of the research (max. 300 words), and their institutional addresses no later than February 29, 2008. Coordinator: Professor Dr Cristina Altman Center of Documentation in Linguistic Historiography Department of Linguistics University of São Paulo [log in to unmask]