Madhumita Barbora

Tezpur University, Assam

The Second International Conference of the North East Indian Linguistic Society (NEILS) was held from 7^th-9^th February 2007 at the Don Bosco Institute in Guwahati and inaugurated by Prof. A.J. Choudhury, Vice-Chancellor, Gauhati University.

The three day conference was preceded by a two day workshop from 5^th-6^th February 2007 for research scholars. Linguistic typology and language documentation being the focus of second NEILS, the topics discussed at the workshop pertained to Field Linguistics and documentation. Eric Andvik from SIL spoke on orthographic development, Francois Jacquessan from Laceto-CNRS, Paris, discussed nominalization in Tibeto-Burman languages and Shobha Satyanath from University of Delhi, spoke on speech community and research methodology. Two documentary films by Moji Riba, Rajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh were screened at the workshop. The first documentary Between God and Me was about the new concept of ‘Donyi Poloism’ and the second documentary was on the dormitory lives of the Nagas. The documentaries captured the socio-cultural changes amongst the various speech communities of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, respectively.

Participants from Kyϋi Ghϋng Maang, Payap University, University of Michigan, University of Oregon, University of Florida, Laceto-CNRS, Paris, France, Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, La Trobe University, Melbourne, University of Delhi, Gauhati University, Hindustan Institute of Technology, North Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, Rajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh and Tezpur University presented the papers on topics from different fields of Linguistics: typology, phonology, syntax, sociolinguistics and historical linguistics.

On the second day of the conference, a river cruise was organized on the Brahmaputra. At the business meeting the members expressed the desire that third NEILS conference be held at the same venue. Subsequent conferences of NEILS will be organized in the various universities of the NE region. NEHU, Shillong was decided as the venue of 4th NEILS conference. The conference concluded with a Valedictory function with Dr. Rajesh Sachdeva, deputy director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore as the guest of honour.

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