I am writing this letter in support of the funding request by the organizers of LISSIM. I taught at LISSIM last year. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and I am grateful to the Central Institute of Indian Languages for making the event possible with their funding. I have taught at a number of summer schools, including the GLOW Central European Summer School, Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, University of the Basque Country European Courses, and Indiana Syntax Fest. Still, I have never seen a group of students that was so excited about linguistics, that spent so much time working on linguistics even after the classes were over (often until 2-3 in the morning, and it was strictly linguistics, nothing else), and that came up with so many interesting and important observations on their own (especially with respect to Indian Languages) as at LISSIM. Secluded surroundings of the Kangra region provided a perfect setting for the summer school; there were no distractions to do anything else but linguistics. My own research on the topics I talked about was improved tremendously as a result of the feedback I got on my lectures there, which also got me to think very seriously about the application of my proposals to Indian languages. In fact, I strongly believe that the work that the participants did at the summer school last year (both the students and the teachers) will have a very strong impact on the study of the syntax and semantics of Indian languages.

As a testament to the extremely high quality of the students at LISSIM, let me finally add that some of the very best applications to our Ph.D. program this year came from LISSIM’s participants. I very strongly support the organizer’s request for funding.