A BRIEF HISTORY OF SALA
(by Hans Henrich Hock with help from Alice Davison; updated December 2024)
The foundation for SALA, the South Asian Languages Analysis Roundtable, was laid during the 1978 Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Linguistic Institute that year featured a “Conference on South Asian Languages and Linguistics”, organized by Hans Henrich Hock and Braj B. Kachru, with support from Yamuna Kachru and Rajeshwari Pandharipande. The Conference attracted many of the top South Asian linguists from both North America and South Asia, and the response was so positive that it was decided to offer similar meetings in the future. There was to be a biennial series of “International Conferences on South Asian Languages and Linguistics” held in India, and an annual series of meetings with more limited, North American scope, and thus SALA was born. Unfortunately, the tradition of international conferences was short-lived and ended after the third Conference, held 1982 in Mysore. As a consequence, there was an increasing tendency to broaden the scope of SALA beyond North America, with meetings in India (1997, 2005), the United Kingdom (1998), Germany (2001), and many other venues since then. The current geographical distribution of SALA hosts reflects the changing picture of South Asian linguistic studies in Europe, North America, and South Asia.
Throughout the years, the goal of SALA conferences has been to provide a meeting ground for linguists working on all South Asian languages, with no restrictions on disciplinary subareas. There have, however, been repeated attempts to encourage the coverage of minority or “Tribal” languages and of language families other than Indo-Aryan and Dravidian. The actual distribution of topics and disciplines at individual conferences, which has tended to favor syntax and semantics, reflects the distribution of submitted abstracts.
From the beginning, SALA Roundtables were organized on an ad-hoc basis, without a formal organization behind them. The advantage has been that, even though the University of Illinois hosted the first three Roundtables, this was not interpreted as establishing a monopoly; and soon other institutions followed suit in hosting the Roundtables. Moreover, there were no membership dues that might impose a financial burden on students and young scholars, especially from South Asia. The disadvantage is that there are no formal membership lists that can be drawn on for calls for papers, and there is no mechanism by which future host institutions can be easily identified. Nevertheless, through informal exchange of mailing lists and through a sufficiently large number of institutions volunteering to host SALA meeting, there has been an amazing and truly impressive succession of yearly meetings – only a few years (1996, 2000, 2007, 2012, and 2013) were without SALAs.
The first three meetings, held at the University of Illinois were organized by the same members of the UIUC Linguistics Department as the original Conference on South Asian Languages and Linguistics, with Hans Henrich Hock chairing the planning committee in 1979 and Yamuna Kachru in 1980 and 1981. After 1981, SALA began to be rotate between different universities, organized by local committees with support from national and international committees. The following SALAs have been held so far. (For upcoming meetings see the end of the document.)
2024 – University of Nagaland, India
2023 – University of Venice, Italy
2022 – Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal
2019 – INALCO, Paris
2018 – University of Konstanz, Germany
2017 – Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland
2016 – University of Lisbon, Portugal
2015 – University of Lancaster, UK
2014 – University of Hyderabad, India
2011 – Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, India
2009 – Northern Texas University, Denton
2008 – South Asia Meeting, Madison, Wisconsin
2006 – Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, India
2005 – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
2004 – SUNY, Stony Brook
2003 – University of Texas, Austin
2002 – University of Iowa, Iowa City
2001 – University of Konstanz, Germany
1999 – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
1998 – York University, UK
1997 – Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
1995 – University of Texas, Austin
1994 – University of Pennsylvania
1993 – University of Iowa, Iowa City
1992 – Stanford University
1991 – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
1990 – University of California, Berkeley
1989 – University of Wisconsin, Madison
1988 – University of Washington, Seattle
1987 – Cornell and Syracuse Universities
1986 – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
1985 – University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
1984 – University of Texas, Austin
1983 – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
1982 – Syracuse University, Syracuse
1981 – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
1980 – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
1979 – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Upcoming SALA meetings
2025 – Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland (29 September – 1 October)
2026 – University of Bielefeld
2027 – IIT Guwahati
2028 – University of Texas (Austin)