Dear Reader,
Because of the sudden and untimely death of Professor J. A. Boyle, President of the 21st meeting of the PIAC held in Manchester (England) in 1978, the Proceedings of that meeting were not published. However, six papers read in Manchester by respectively, B. Chichlo, R. Dankoff, E. Esin, A. J. Joki, E. Moerloose, and M. F. Weidlich, appeared in volume 4 (1980) of the Journal of Turkish Studies.
Oliver Corff, July 19, 2018.
Dear Reader,
the latest issue of “Turkic Languages”, ed. by Lars Johanson, is available: Vol. 22, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. 2018 No. 1.
The volume presents articles by Camille Simon (“Evidential modalities in Salar. The development of a Tibetan-like egophoric category”, pp. 3–35), Lars Johanson (“Five dimensions of linguistic distance”, pp. 36–42), Éva Á. Csató and Astrid Menz (“On the linguistic distances between Gagauz and Karaim”, pp. 43–62), Eyüp Bacanlı and Saide Tokuç (“Cranberry morphems in Turkish”, 63–84), İsa Kerem Bayırlı (“Adjective ordering in Turkish”, pp. 85–106) and Peter Paule Piispanen (“Additional Turkic and Tungusic borrowings into Yukaghir”, pp. 107–137).
Besides the articles, there is also a detailed report by Ákos Bertalan Apatóczky: “Report on the 60th Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference, August 27–September 1, 2017, Székesférvár, Hungary” pp. 138–142.
The volume closes with a review by Mutsumi Sugahara: “Review of A Turkic medical treatise from Islamic Central Asia: A critical edition of a seventeenth-century Chagatay work by Subḥān Qulï Khan. Edited, translated and annotated by László Károly. (Brill’s Inner Asian Library Volume 32.) Leiden: Brill. 2015, pp. 143–148.
Oliver Corff, July 19th, 2018.
Dear Reader,
For those of you who engage in the research of the more contemporary aspects of Central Asia, it might be of interest that less than two weeks before the 61st Meeting of the PIAC, a conference hosted by the American University of Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, will take place from August 13 to 15, 2018, in Bishkek.
The title of the conference organized by the Asian Borderlands Research Network is: Borderland Spaces: Ruin, Revival(s) and Resources. Strictly for information purposes, this is the website of the conference: https://www.asianborderlands.net/ (the deadline has long been met).
Oliver Corff, July 17th, 2018.
Dear Reader,
The Permanent International Altaistic Conference Newsletter had the fine tradition to announce informations offered by learned societies and universities. Honouring this tradition, similar announcements will from now on also appear at altaist.org.
The International Association for Mongol Studies (IAMS) announced their new website on July 09th, 2018: http://iams.org.mn/
Oliver Corff, July 15th, 2018.
Dear Reader,
As the PIAC approached its 60th Annual Meeting in 2017, it was considered meaningful to collect the references of approximately 1,500 papers that had appeared in PIAC proceedings over the years and to present them in a concise bibliography. The purpose of this bibliography is twofold: on one hand, it is intended to offer an overview of virtually everything that has been published so far as an outcome of the Annual Meetings, and on the other hand, the interested reader can browse through an enormous variety of subjects and contributions in order to find inspiration.
This bibliography, entitled “60 Years of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC)” is published by Klaus Schwarz Verlag, Berlin.
Oliver Corff, July 2018.
Dear Reader,
Finally, after a long delay, the report of the 60th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, held 2017 in Székesfehérvár, is available, together with the resolutions passed at the business meeting.
Oliver Corff, June 27th, 2018.
Dear Reader,
Over the years, obituaries for the following scholars appeared in the Permanent International Altaistic Conference Newsletter:
The academic achievements of our academic teachers remind us that our work begins everyday anew.
Oliver Corff.
Dear Reader,
A few days ago, I wrote here that the Permanent International Altaistic Conference Newsletter produced by the PIAC Secretariat started in 1966 and ended in 1999. By today, I stand corrected: the last Newsletter was produced in 2002. It looks quite different from the earlier issues as modern computer-aided text-editing systems became ubiquitous. Computers and the internet brought an end to the necessity of using newsletters to communicate important information for a selected audience; this was felt already in the late 1990s but became manifest around the year 2000.
The PIAC Newsletters, beginning with No. 1 in 1966 and ending with No. 27 in 2002 (only No. 24 is missing, the number never existed and was skipped unintentionally) span an era of fulminant political changes of the Altaic world; what used to be a world divided into two blocs, all things Altaic firmly located in the less accessible bloc, suddenly became a world of open frontiers and new fledgling states in Central Asia. Inner Asian and Central Asian studies, once supported by governments out of political logic, became, at least for a few years, a new fashion; the number of new conferences and study courses announced in the Newsletter after 1990 gives vivid testimony. After economic and political reality left their impression, interest in Central Asia somewhat diminished, only to re-emerge temporarily after 2001.
The Newsletters end in 2002, and it is the chronicler’s task to record what has happened since. Denis Sinor’s (mostly) yearly reflections on the immediate past as well as the ramifications of arranging the next meeting (most rewarding to read is his report on how the 29th Meeting in Tashkent 1987 was organized). Equally insightful is his review of the 13th Meeting in Strasbourg, where he reflects on success and failure due to the political circumstances of the time.
Even if Altaic Studies are not intended as political studies, their research objects are frequently embedded in highly political environments. This fact has not changed since the conception of the PIAC in 1958; only the modalities have changed.
An overview of all Newsletters is found on a dedicated page. All contents of all Newsletters is listed, Newsletters can be downloaded, and individual articles of the Newsletters have found their way into the corpus of www.altaist.org.
Oliver Corff, June 24th, 2018.
Dear Reader,
the resolutions as well as the list of participants for the 20th Meeting, Leiden 1977 is now available.
Oliver Corff, June 22, 2018.
Dear Reader,
The resolutions and list of participants of the 19th Meeting, held 1976 in Helsinki, are now available.
Oliver Corff, June 22, 2018.