IASCL’s 50th Anniversary

Did you know? Come 2024, the IASCL was founded about 50 years earlier! That called for a celebration. At our 2024 Congress in Prague, that celebration took the form of a special Presidential Anniversary Session. It was really presidential, because aside from our then President, Annick De Houwer, nine past Presidents took part, either "live" or through video. The session started with a brief overview of IASCL's early days, followed by presidential statements, and a mention of wishes for the future of the field of child language scholars expressed through an online survey earlier this year. The session also highlighted the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Child Language, and included a video interview (now on YouTube) with its founding Editor, David Crystal (check out our JCL page here). 

We hope that those present at the Presidential Anniversary Session in Prague on July 15, 2024, found it interesting!

History of IASCL

Early days

In her Preface to "Baby talk and infant speech" (see towards the bottom of our Proceedings page) later IASCL Vice-President Walburga von Raffler-Engel wrote that she had been thinking of founding an international organization for child language scholars since 1964. At the 1969 Conference on Psycholinguistics in Bressanone, coordinated by Giovanni B. Flores d’Arcais, Fabio Metelli, and Guido Petter, and attended by 64 scholars from North America and Europe, including several scholars working on child language, the idea of forming a child language association was also discussed. 

This idea started brewing even more at the First International Symposium of Paedolinguistics, held in Brno (at the time that was part of Czechoslovakia, now it is in the Czech Republic). Brno is about 200 km southeast from Prague, where our XVIth Congress is taking place. The Brno meeting was held on 14-16 October 1970, under the auspices of the International Society of Phonetic Sciences, and organized by Karel Ohnesorg. 

The First International Symposium of Paedolinguistics was likely the first truly international meeting focused on child language: there were 58 participants from 15 countries (43 from 7 Warsaw Pact member countries, three of which had also participated in the Bressanone conference the year before; 3 from what was Yugoslavia at the time; 12 from 7 “Western” countries). The Proceedings published by Mouton in 1972 clearly show this internationalism: aside from three articles based on plenary talks (one very interesting one by Tatiana Slama-Cazacu on “Fifty years of European child language studies, and perspective in this field”, which highlights many issues child language scholars are still grappling with today), there are 24 articles in English, French, German, or Russian. The prologue and epilogue by the editor, Karel Ohnesorg, are in Latin. 

Combined, the articles report on aspects of Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Polish, and Serbocroatian child language in both typically and non-typically developing children. There is a main emphasis on articulation and phonetic development.

Interestingly, most of the articles are followed by comments participants made during the meeting (with or without authors' responses). Maybe a tradition to take up again?

Our future Association started to take more and more shape at a second international meeting on child language (also invitational, like the 1970 Brno one). Walburga von Raffler-Engel from Vanderbilt University in the USA had good contacts in Italy and organized the International Symposium on First Language Acquisition in Florence on 4-6 September 1972. 

There were around 65 participants. They voted to constitute themselves as an international association, with many Officers but no statutes yet. 

• President: Charles A. Ferguson (USA)

• 7 (!) Vice Presidents: Francesco Antinucci (Italy), Margaret Bullowa (USA), David Crystal (UK), Stefan H. Herzka (Switzerland), Melanie Mikeš (Yugoslavia), Tatiana Slama-Cazacu (Romania), Dan I. Slobin (USA)

• Secretary: Walburga von Raffler-Engel (USA)

• Assistant Secretaries: Irène Spilka (Canada) & Nathan Stemmer (Israel)

• Treasurer: Els Oksaar (West Germany)

Seven eminent scientists were named Honorary President, viz., Marcel Cohen (France; RIP 1974), Roman Jakobson (USA; RIP 1982), Werner Leopold (USA; RIP 1983), Aleksandr R. Luriya (USSR; RIP 1977), Karel Ohnesorg (Czechoslovakia; RIP 1976), Milivoj Pavlović (Yugoslavia, RIP 1974), and Jean Piaget (Switzerland; RIP 1980). 

The preface by Walburga von Raffler-Engel to the 1976 Proceedings entitled "Baby talk and infant speech" and her Foreword to the 1978 selected proceedings in the volume "The development of communication" explain how everything came about (see towards the bottom of our Proceedings page for the full bibliographical reference). 

It’s official now: Statutes!

The years after 1972 must have been buzzing with activity related to further setting up the new Association, because at a third international meeting on child language in 1975 finally the IASCL was incorporated with official statutes and Officers were elected according to statute rules. In addition, a 15-member Executive Committee was established (which we still have today). If at the time our current statutes were the same as regards the nomination of Officers they must have been nominated already in 1974. So if we are celebrating our 50 years in 2024 rather than 2025 we really aren't far off the mark! Plus, the first Newsletter of the Association was published in 1974 (we later changed the name to "Child Language Bulletin"). Read more about that here on our Child Language Bulletin page.

The Third International Child Language Symposium was held in London (UK), 3-5 September 1975, and was chaired by Natalie Waterson. It was still mostly invitational. Abstract based Congresses started in 1978, with the first IASCL Congress (in Tokio, Japan, organized by Fred Peng). The London meeting had many more child language scholars (270) than the previous ones. This meeting ratified the nominations of the following Board members:

• President: Els Oksaar (West Germany)

• Vice President: Walburga von Raffler-Engel (USA)

• Secretary: Fred C. C. Peng (Japan)

• Treasurer: Terry Myers (UK)

These four elected positions are still with us today.

Honoring our "founding mothers"

The main work in the early days was done by Walburga von Raffler-Engel and Els Oksaar (Els had spoken at the Brno conference, too). We want to honor and thank these multilingual and internationally minded "founding mothers" for their invaluable service to our Association and our field.

You can find an overview of the IASCL Board, places where our Congresses have been held, Congress main organizers, and our newsletter editors over the years here.

We are grateful to the many colleagues who helped us compile all this information, including, in particular, Dan I. Slobin and IASCL Past President David Ingram (1981-84). IASCL Past President Virginia M. Gathercole (2017-2021) started the search for our history in 2019, and IASCL President Annick De Houwer (2021-2024) dug a bit more, realized 2024 is an anniversary year, wrote the texts here, and organized the Presidential Anniversary Session. 

IASCL Memories

Below, you’ll find photos submitted by our members of their IASCL memories throughout the years. Pictures are arranged from earlier (left) to more recent (right). If you want to know who is in the photo and where it was taken, make sure that you center the photo so that the caption appears. Thank you to the members who shared their memories with us!

We're working on posting more photos of IASCL members at past Congresses...please check back in a bit...