GLOW Linguistics

GLOW has gone through some difficult times. Our goal is and always has been to represent the community in the best way. For that reason, we are committed to listening to criticism and find the fairest way to address it. As a reaction to urges by the LODGI group, we attended to their concerns by asking the community about whether a new vote on the venue for GLOW47 should be conducted or not. We realize that this step was considered inappropriate by some people, but this was the only way for us to see whether the broad community sees a need to readdress the issue. 

In the course of this process, we took the long overdue opportunity to revisit the inadequacy of the archaic GLOW voting system of GLOW, and move to a fully democratic system. After another administrative vote, the actual vote on the venue yielded a small majority against holding GLOW in Israel. The entire process was difficult and more than unfortunate for the organizers in Israel, for which we apologized to them, but we hope that our transparent way to deal with what felt like an impossible situation at least shows that we only had the best intentions.

In reaction to this outcome, again various criticism was received, which we are taking very seriously. For one, we are generally moving to a democratic online voting system to allow the entire GLOW membership to participate (not just whoever happens to be present at the business meeting) and enable each member to voice their opinion freely and secretly. We are also considering a better way of choosing and approving conference venues in the future so that such an unfortunate situation won’t arise again. Lastly, and most importantly, we are planning a broader discussion with the entire generative community about some fundamental issues regarding the GLOW organization: the purpose of GLOW, the way GLOW can serve the generative community, the name of the society, the geographical range, and others. Our goal is to strengthen generative linguistics and support its members in the best way possible, and we will be reaching out to the community with various options soon and throughout the year.

We hope that you support us in doing so.

The vote about GLOW 47 in Israel has finished.

• 113 of the total of 170 members (66%) cast a valid vote.
• 52 members (46% of the valid votes cast) were in favor of GLOW 47 in Israel.
• 61 members (54% of the valid votes cast) were against GLOW 47 in Israel.

The General Assembly has thus decided that GLOW 47 will not take place in Israel.

Herewith the search for a new venue for GLOW 47 (2024) is initiated. If you have a proposal, please don’t hesitate to share it with the board. Our hope is that a new venue can be confirmed at GLOW 46 in Vienna.

Following the advisory vote which took place in January, the GLOW board has decided to organize a new vote about GLOW 47 in Israel. This vote is planned to start on Thursday 16 February, at 17:00 CET.

After the vote is opened, no members can be added to the voting pool anymore. Only active GLOW members are eligible to vote.

If you took part in GLOW in person last year, it is likely that you are still a member. If you are unsure whether you are currently a member, feel free to contact us on glow.gw@uu.nl.

If you are not a member yet and wish to cast a vote, please register for the GLOW membership by Tuesday 14 February. Note that the GLOW membership only counts as active after payment has been received.

GLOW 47 is planned to take place at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben Gurion University of the Negev. This decision was reached by the GLOW board after an online questionnaire in 2021, receiving a 2/3 majority of votes (26/39) in favor of GLOW in Israel. At the business meeting at GLOW 45 in London in April 2022, the venues were confirmed. In May 2022, the GLOW board received a letter asking us to reconsider the choice. After extensive discussions, the board decided in June 2022 to move forward with the plan to hold GLOW 47 in Israel. Nevertheless there has been an ongoing protest against this decision, leading to the recent establishment of the LODGI group (with 28 signatories as of November 24, 2022):

https://www.facebook.com/glow2024venue

See also some discussion here.

A summary of all letters can be downloaded from here. 

In light of the ongoing protests and to make sure that the board’s decision reflects the view of the GLOW community, we are reaching out to ask for input regarding whether a new vote should be held or not. This will be determined via a vote using the following procedure:

• The voting pool consists of all active GLOW members, the current GLOW abstract reviewers, the LODGI signatories, as well as everyone who has been a GLOW member, presenter or organizer at least once between January 1, 2020 and January 1, 2023.
• The vote (about whether to hold a new vote about GLOW 47) will open on January 2, 2023 and close on January 15, 2023.
• The link to the online voting system will be sent by e-mail to everyone eligible to vote, on the day the voting system will open.
• The system will identify eligible voters via their e-mail addresses.
• Those eligible to vote will also receive an information email in the next couple of days. If you think you should be eligible, but have not received an information e-mail by December 20, 2022, please contact  the GLOW secretary, Radek Šimík <Radek.Simik@ff.cuni.cz>.

As per GLOW statutes, a simple majority of those who vote will suffice to hold a new vote. The broader GLOW community is consulted for this advisory poll to reflect the ongoing process of the issue. Should the decision be to hold a new vote on the venue of GLOW 47, as per the statutes, only members with an active GLOW membership at the time of the vote will be able to vote.

The 46th GLOW Colloquium will take place at the University of Vienna and the University of Graz on 12^th-14^th April, 2023.

Additionally to the main session, there will be two thematic workshops:

11^th April: Workshop on Pronouns, University of Graz

15^th April: Workshop on Phonology, University of Vienna

Find more information at the GLOW46 website!

The 45th GLOW Colloquium will take place at Queen Mary University of London on 27^th-29^th April, 2022 in a hybrid fashion.

In addition to the main session, there will be two thematic workshops (26^th April): 

Workshop I:
Typological generalizations and semantic theory

Workshop II:
Sources of variation in phonological theory

See the GLOW 45 website for more information.

The 44th GLOW Colloquium will be held fully online, synchronously over three days, April 15–17, 2021, and organized by the GLOW Board.

To offer something unique for the global linguistics community, GLOW 44 will feature a an entirely new flavour of main session talk, to provoke high level discussion and theorizing: targeted collaborative debates. Targeted collaborative debates are joint talks that present contrasting analytical proposals to a particular concrete empirical problem, in any area of linguistics. Traditional research contributions are also sought, to be presented and discussed in synchronous and asynchronous online media, including in a synchronous flash talk session. Please read more about the format of GLOW 44 and its motivation.

Abstracts for both types of contributions are due December 15. See the Call for Papers.

Future GLOW Meetings are projected to be physical:

• Spring 2022 Queen Mary, University of London
• Spring 2023 University of Vienna

GLOW 43 is online, free, and happening now!

The team at Humboldt University Berlin have arranged for all GLOW 43 presentations (main session, posters, and three thematic workshops) to be online and available for discussion from now through April 20th. Presenters are available for online discussions at designated times, and discussions can also take place on the OSF platform.

Read more about how to access the presentations and participate in the discussions.

The 43rd GLOW conference (GLOW 43) will take place at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin from March 31st to April 3rd, 2020. 

GLOW 43 has moved online!

In addition to the main session (April 1-3), there will be three thematic workshops on March 31st:

• Workshop I: Prosody in speech signal, perception and gestures
  Organized by Marzena Zygis and Stefanie Jannedy (Leibniz – ZAS Berlin)
• Workshop II: Semantic Universals in the Modal and Attitudinal Domain
  Organized by Uli Sauerland (Leibniz – ZAS Berlin) and Wataru Uegaki (University of Edinburgh)
• Workshop III: Remarks: the Legacy
  Organized by Artemis Alexiadou (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin & Leibniz – ZAS Berlin) and Hagit Borer (Queen Mary University London)

For details, please visit the conference page:  https://glowlinguistics.org/43/