UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 1989 - 2013
It is a pleasure to write this short preface to the 25th volume of UCL Working Papers in
Linguistics and to reflect on some of the changes that have taken place in Linguistics at UCL
over this time as well as on the strong continuities in vision and commitment.
When the first UCLWPL volume was assembled in 1989, we linguists (6 full-time members
of staff) were part of the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics (within the Faculty of Arts
and Humanities), headed by Neil Smith, and we were housed at 20 Gordon Square, next door
to our colleagues in phonetics. As that first volume shows, three strands of work were
especially strong then: GB syntax, reflecting the department’s strong allegiance to
Chomskyan generative grammar, relevance-theoretic pragmatics (in its early heady days) led
by Deirdre Wilson, and Word Grammar pioneered by Dick Hudson. Putting the volume
together at that time was a labour-intensive process of grappling with the vagaries of (preWindows) computer technology: the Amstrad PCW running the aptly named ‘Loco’-Script
word processing programme. We were proud and relieved when boxes of our green-bound
volume with its 18 papers (by staff and doctoral students) and its very own ISSN number
finally arrived from the printers. From then on, this was something of an annual event and we
got requests from far and wide for copies of each new volume.
There have been some changes since then. UCL Linguistics is now a research department,
distinct from, but regularly interacting with, the research department of Speech, Hearing and
Phonetic Sciences, and is part of the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences (PaLS).
In 2008, we moved to (newly refurbished) Chandler House in Wakefield Street, joining the
other research departments that fall under Language Sciences. After the initial restructuring,
Linguistics was part of the Faculty of Life Sciences, but the whole PaLS division is now in
the Faculty of Brain Sciences – it is interesting to speculate on what this relocation from Arts
and Humanities to Brain Sciences in the space of a few years indicates about our discipline.
In any case, the department (headed first by Hans van de Koot and now by Ad Neeleman) is
flourishing and expanding: permanent full-time staff now number 12 (with two new positions
to be filled) and the last ten years have brought considerable strengthening in phonology,
semantics and psycholinguistics, while syntax and pragmatics remain as vibrant as ever. A
major recent development is the growth of empirical, especially experimental, work aimed at
rigorous testing of the predictions of our linguistic and pragmatic theories. To this end,
several of our recent new appointments have been made with an emphasis on experience in
experimental design and techniques; considerable effort is being focused on securing
experimental equipment (we recently bought two eye-trackers) and laboratory facilities, and
our teaching is drawing more and more on psycholinguistic and other experimental work to
complement our theoretical modules.
These developments are, of course, reflected in the volumes of UCLWPL over the last few
years, as is especially evident in the current volume, with its balance of phonology, semantics
and pragmatics, and syntax contributions, and of theoretical and experimental work. As for
the editing and production of the working papers, this is now entirely in the hands of doctoral
students in the department, who do a very professional job, using the sophisticated word
processing packages that are now available. With a little reluctance (from some of us), we
gave in to the ‘paperless’ revolution and the volumes are now in e-book form only, with all
25 volumes now available electronically:
UCLWPL 2013
ii
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/psychlangsci/research/linguistics/publications
At times, we’ve wondered about discontinuing the working papers, but there has been
ongoing interest in them and substantial citation of some of the papers. They also provide an
opportunity for getting a piece of work out relatively quickly, enabling early feedback and
revision, which is especially useful for doctoral students before they subject themselves to the
protracted process of peer-reviewed journal publication. It remains to be seen whether
UCLWPL will continue to have a purposeful role to play over the next years as the
Linguistics department evolves and as new developments in publishing, such as the openaccess requirement, take hold – will there be a volume 50!?
Many thanks to all those who have contributed their time and energy to the success of the
working papers over the past 25 years.
Robyn Carston