The Hokkaido Linguistics Society

OFFICERS AND COMMITTEES FOR 2001

President, Hideto Hamada, Sapporo University
Vice-President, Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, Sapporo Medical University
Secretary-Treasurer, Katsunobu Izutsu, Hokkaido University of Education, Asahikawa

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
The preceding and,
Satoshi Oku, Hokkaido University
Tatsuo Ogiwara, Hokkaido University
Osami Okuda, Sapporo Gakuin University

CONSULTING COMMITTEE
Kan Sasaki, Sapporo Gakuin University
Koichi Sawasaki, The Ohio State University

OFFICE
English Language and Literature Office #2 (Izutsu's office)
Humanities
Faculty of Education
Hokkaido University of Education at Asahikawa
Hokumoncho 9 chome
Asahikawa city, Hokkaido
070-8621 JAPAN

The Hokkaido Linguistics Society was established in 2000 to encourage communication, discussion, and cooperation amongst linguists working in Hokkaido, the northernmost part of Japan, as well as between them and linguists living and working in everywhere else. It also intends to provide young linguists working in Hokkaido as well as in any other part of Japan with more opportunities for publishing their studies. The society purposes, in the short run, to provide students of different languages, in particular those working in Hokkaido, with as many opportunities as possible to assemble in one place in the name of language studies. In the long run, it aims to establish a nation-wide forum for the study of the languages native to Hokkaido, the northernmost part of Japan, the Ainu language in particular, as well as any other language spoken there, and to do so from various theoretical perspectives.
Japan has a long-standing tradition of making a clear distinction between major-language studies separately dubbed "Japanese Linguistics," "English Linguistics," etc. and minor-language studies, which are collectively termed "Linguistics." Although the former field has, to a greater or lesser extent, developed cross-linguistic perspectives as well as theoretical investigations of particular languages, there has been little communication, discussion or cooperation between linguists with different language specialties. Scholars in the latter field have tended to limit their tasks to grammatical and lexical descriptions of one particular language à la American Structuralism. Since the Ainu language has long been studied under this latter rubric, the interest it may have and the contribution it can make both theoretically and cross- linguistically have not yet been properly evaluated. We are proud to describe the establishment of the Hokkaido Linguistics Society as the first step toward resolving these discrepancies, so well preserved in the history of Japanese linguistic studies.



Notes to contributors