The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) is a non-profit academic association, which was formally registered as a charitable organization in Hong Kong on March 8, 1986. The general aims of the Society, as stated in its Constitution, include

• to promote linguistics teaching and research in Hong Kong;
• to help to foster greater exchange and interaction between linguistic scholarship in and outside China;
• to encourage and facilitate the exchange of ideas and dissemination of information among local linguists on research developments in linguistics;
• to secure and develop contacts with other linguistic organizations and institutes with similar aims and interests in language;
• to sponsor conferences and other activities consonant with the above aims;
• to provide advice and relevant services with regard to training, policy planning and evaluation on language and linguistics for public and private organizations; and
• to promote publications which are in line with the above aims.
  

The Annual Research Forum ('ARF') of the Society is normally held in December, which has become a tradition of the Society through the years and provides very good opportunities for members to publicize their research progress and findings, and to receive feedback from their colleagues. Occasionally, there will be a theme or a special session on some particular topics. For example, the theme for the ARF in 2007 was 'Language across Time and Cultures'. Three parallel sessions were devoted to the theme, which brought up many interesting issues in the study of corpora. The ARF is hosted by a local institution. So far, six local institutions have been the hosts of this important and meaningful event. The brief history of our ARF is the following.

1987: City Polytechnic of Hong Kong ('Language Policy and Language Planning')
1988: Chinese University of Hong Kong
1989: City Polytechnic of Hong Kong
1990: University of Hong Kong ('Bilingualism and Education in Hong Kong: into the Nineties')
1991: Hong Kong Baptist College ('Teaching of Linguistics in Chinese Communities')
1992: Chinese University of Hong Kong ('Interdisciplinary Approaches to Language Acquisition')
1994: University of Hong Kong
1995: University of Hong Kong ('Chinese/English Contrastive Grammar')
1996: Chinese University of Hong Kong
1997: University of Hong Kong ('Sound, Meaning and Script')
1998: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University ('Cantonese: Forms and Functions')
1999: Chinese University of Hong Kong ('Linguistics and the New Millennium')
2000: City University of Hong Kong
2001: Hong Kong Baptist University ('Linguistics and Corpora')
2002: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology ('Comparative Linguistics')
2003: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University ('The 10th anniversary of the LSHK Cantonese Romanization Scheme')
2004: Chinese University of Hong Kong ('Language Change and Language Standardization')
2005: City University of Hong Kong ('Language and Society in Greater China')
2006: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
2007: Hong Kong Baptist University ('Language across Time and Cultures')
2008: University of Hong Kong

Workshop on Cantonese (WOC) is organized by the Society, which aims at providing the research community an informal forum for discussion and encouraging the exchange of interesting observations in Cantonese linguistics under some specific themes. The hosts and the themes of WOC are the following.

WOC-1: 2000, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University ('Cantonese Particles')
WOC-2: 2001, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University ('Verbal Complements')
WOC-3: 2002, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology ('Deictic Properties')
WOC-4: 2005, City University of Hong Kong ('Development of Cantonese Grammar: an Interaction between Diachronic and Synchronic Grammar')
WOC-5: 2006, Chinese University of Hong Kong ('Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Recent Changes in Cantonese')
WOC-6: 2007, City University of Hong Kong ('Adverbs in Cantonese Grammar: from Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives')
WOC-7: 2008, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology ('Cantonese Meets Theoretical Linguistics')

We also co-sponsor linguistic research seminars and conferences, call occasional informal small gatherings 'linguistic salons' to share our interest in selected linguistic topics, put out publications, and have special interest groups.

Communication among members of the Society is our top priority. Thanks to advancement of computer technology, most of the members are now accessible on electronic mail, which enables the Society to keep in touch with its membership much more effectively through the computer network. The Society has also set up its own email account at the address lshk.linguists@gmail.com and developed this website (www.lshk.org), which contains the most updated information of the Society. I hope you will find the information in the following pages interesting and useful.

The Society has grown substantially since its inception. To further its development, the Society needs the continuous support and new ideas from our local as well as overseas colleagues. To share your opinions and suggestions with us, feel free to contact the Executive Committee at the above address or myself directly. If you are not yet a member but interested in linguistics and language studies, do not hesitate to join us. You should benefit a lot from our Society!

Sze-Wing Tang
President, LSHK
sw.tang@polyu.edu.hk

January 2008