BLING welcomes back all members of the department, new and old!  We trust your summers were both productive and enjoyable (yes, it can happen).

Today, Thursday, marks our first tea of the new academic year.  Hosted by CLS46, it starts at 4 p.m. and will be held in the linguistics lounge on the 3rd floor of Classics as usual. Come chat, eat, drink, and merrily meet the new students.

(And, watch for the first colloquium of the year on October 8.)

Indiana University will host the Sociolinguistics Fest during the week of June 9th. During the week there will be a set of minicourses on the topic of Language, Gender, Identity, Variation and Ideology given by Mary Bucholtz, Scott Kiesling, Dennis Preston, Sali Tagliaomonte and Susan Herring/John Paolillo followed by a one day conference. Details on registration and other logistical information are given on their website.

The University of Chicago will host a conference and masterclass in CORPUS METHODS IN LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY (CMLLP-2008) Wednesday-Sunday, March 26-30, 2008. Application/Registration Deadline is January 21, 2008. For more information, please visit http://languages.uchicago.edu/corpuslinguistics.

Introduction to Balochi
SALC 27001, 37001 or LGLN 25800, 35800
TuTh 1:30 – 2:50

Instructor: Elena Bashir

This course will be a combination of a “structure of a language” course and a beginning language course. It is intended as an orientation to Balochi, a Western Iranian language spoken in several dialects in Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and marginally in Turkmenistan. There is no prerequisite, and both undergraduate and graduate students of South Asian languages, anthropology, or linguistics are the anticipated audience. The aim of this course is to prepare a student who completes it to continue successfully with independent study. The basic textbook used will be M.A.R. Barker’s A Course in Balochi, the pace and detailed focus of the course depending on the prior knowledge of the students enrolled.