Out of the estimated 6,800 languages in the world today, most linguists agree that nearly 90% will be gone by the end of the 21st century. Change is a constant all researchers can agree upon, and this century will certainly present numerous challenges for linguists. The linguistic landscape is not the only aspect of our discipline that is in flux. The research questions set out by linguists over the past centuries are constantly being approached from new angles and reformulated into new lines of inquiry. Along with the challenges, research in the 21st century will undoubtedly bring increased opportunities for understanding human language, and how it interacts with both culture and cognition in our ever changing world.

In many ways, the research conducted in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado is representative of the diverse and evolving questions being asked by linguists across various sub-fields. Our aim in this working papers journal is to provide a glimpse of the diverse research conducted at CU and to facilitate communication with colleagues in other institutions and departments.

The format we have chosen underscores another change in academic research at the beginning of the 21st century--the way we access and distribute journals. As you have discovered by now, Colorado Research in Linguistics has gone completely paperless and is now strictly an online publication.

The main feature of our journal is original research papers, and this double issue features ten papers ranging in topics that include the examination of case marking in Semitic languages and Old English, the use of a Croatian complementizer, the item-based nature of child syntax, the function of yeah in spoken discourse, the political micro-economy of linguistic interaction, the debate over linguistic reclamation, the use of code-switching in Spanish-language TV commercials, and computational linguistic applications for identifying languages and classifying movie reviews. You can gain a quick summary of each paper by clicking on the abstract links, and then read the full papers in PDF format.

In addition, we have a special article about life as a field researcher in the Amazon written by Kristine Stenzel, who is completing her doctoral dissertation on the never before documented Wanano language. You can read her first person account of field work in Brazil in, "Can You Sleep in a Hammock? And a Few Other Questions that Never Came up in Field Methods Class." Complete with pictures!

The issue also offers a glimpse of the type of research presented by CU linguists at recent conferences--just click on the links to read their abstracts. You can also view an index of publications to find references for some of the recent work published by researchers in our department.

Please feel free to contact authors with comments or inquiries about papers, and if you are from a department that would like to be linked from our site, please send us your URL. We hope you enjoy this inaugural issue in our new format!

Linguistically yours,

Adam Hodges
CRIL Editor

Colorado Research in Linguistics - Volume 17, Issue 1 - June 2004