After the long pause of more than a quarter century in Austroasiatic International Conferences, a working group of invited participants met in Siem Reap (28-29th June 2006) with the goal of reinvigorating the movement. Below we provide a redacted* version of the 3rd circular which was issued by Gérard Diffloth and George van Driem (9 October 2005). The photos below (as with the circular) were kindly provided by Roger Blench. More details about the Pilot Picnic are posted here.
Note: the meeting documentation uses the abbreviation “ICAL” instead of “ICAAL”, although the same meaning is clearly intended. However, subsequent meetings resumed the term “ICAAL” with the Pune meeting the following year was numbered “3” and the Siam Reap meeting subsequently referred to generally as just the “Austroasiatic Pilot Picnic”.
THIRD CIRCULAR: ICAL 3 pilot picnic
Dear Participants, We have been authorised by Prof. Dr. Franciscus Verellen, Director of l’École française d’Extrême-Orient, to send out another circular. We are pleased once again to invite you to the pilot picnic for the 3rd International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics (ICAL 3) to be held at l’École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in Siem Reap on the 28th and 29th of June 2006. At that time of year, Siem Reap is a warm place, but usually not unseasonably hot.
Everyone is invited to present a paper and indulge in discussions of Austroasiatic linguistics at this informal meeting. Our aim is to identify a suitable venue for ICAL 3, and hopefully also ICAL 4 and ICAL 5. We aim to revitalise the international network of scholars interested in Austroasiatic languages and Asian prehistory and so to rekindle and pass on the torch that shone brightly at the 1st International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics (ICAL 1, University of Hawai‘i in Honolulu) in 1973 and the 2nd International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics (ICAL 2, Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysore) in 1978.
Siem Reap is not an expensive travel destination by global standards, but prices have been going up. Please feel free to stay as long as you like, but do bring along extra cash to feed and lodge yourself at any rate. As most of you already know, the Cambodian economy has been dollarised so that the unit of currency is the US dollar.
List of invited experts and email addresses
Anvita Abbi, Delhi <[email protected]>
Roger Blench, Cambridge <[email protected]>
George van Driem, Leiden <[email protected]>
Nick Enfield, Nijmegen <[email protected]>
Michel Ferlus, Paris <[email protected]>
Nicole Kruspe, Bundoora <[email protected]>
K.S. Nagaraja, Pune <[email protected]>
Suvilai Premsirat, Bangkok <[email protected]>
Long Siam, Phnom Penh <[email protected]>
Theraphan Thongkham, Bangkok (€ 200) <[email protected]>
Prof. Dr. Franciscus Verellen, Paris <[email protected]>
Dr. Christophe Pottier, Siem Reap <[email protected]>
*Some financial support was provided for participants, specific details have been redacted for privacy reasons. Affiliations and emails in the list of invitees were current in 2005.
