Each year, the President of the LSA has the honor of delivering the Presidential Address at the Annual Meeting. Listed below are the titles and abstracts (where available) of the addresses, as well as links to the addresses that were sometimes published as articles in Language

Conference Year Name Title Abstract Article

2015

Joan Maling

A Syntactic Rubin's Vase: The Inherent Ambiguity of Non-promotional Passives and Unspecified Subject Construction

2015 Annual Meeting Handbook (PDF; see p. 89)

2014

Ellen Kaisse

The dialects of Spanish and of Modern Greek – Natural laboratories for the generative phonologist

2014 Annual Meeting Handbook (PDF; see p. 77)

2013

Keren Rice

Variation, Phonology, and Fieldwork

2013 Annual Meeting Handbook (PDF; see p. 84)

2012

Sandra Chung

Bridging Methodologies: Experimental Syntax in the Pacific

2012 Annual Meeting Handbook (PDF; see p. 88)

2011

David Lightfoot

Linguists Leading and Lagging

2011 Annual Meeting Handbook (PDF; see p. 93)

2010

Sarah Thomason

Safe and Unsafe Language Contact

2010 Annual Meeting Handbook (PDF; see p. 83)

2008

Stephen R. Anderson

The logical structure of linguistic theory

2008 Annual Meeting Handbook (PDF; p. 75) Language, Vol. 84, No. 4, Dec., 2008 

2007

Sally McConnell-Ginet

Words in the World: Why and How Meanings Can Matter

2007 Annual Meeting Handbook (PDF; see p. 69)

2006

Mark Aronoff

In the Beginning Was the Word

2006 Annual Meeting Handbook (PDF; see p.69) Language, Vol. 83, No. 4, Dec., 2007 

2005

Joan Bybee

The impact of usage on representation: Grammar is usage and usage is grammar

2005 Annual Meeting Handbook (PDF; p. 60) Language, Vol. 82, No. 4, Dec., 2006 

2004

Ray Jackendoff

Reintegrating generative grammar

2003

Frederick J. Newmeyer

Grammar is grammar and usage is usage

Language, Vol. 79, No. 4, Dec., 2003 

2002

Walt Wolfram

Constructive controversy in linguistics: The development of African American Vernacular English

2001

David Perlmutter

Language-internal and cross-linguistic bases of explanation

2000

Joan Bresnan

Optimality in Syntax

1999

D. Terence Langendoen

Constraints on subordination

Language, Vol. 84, No. 4, Dec., 2008 

1998

Janet D. Fodor

What is a parameter?

1997

James D. McCawley

Why surface syntactic structure reflects logical structure as much as it does, but only that much

Language, Vol. 75, No. 1, Mar., 1999 

1996

Emmon Bach

The politics of universal grammar

1995

Kenneth L. Hale

Universal grammar and the necessity of linguistic diversity

1994

Lila R. Gleitman

A picture is worth a thousand words, but that's the problem

1993

Arnold M. Zwicky

Mapping the Ordinary into the Rare: Basic/Derived Reasoning in Theory Construction

1992

Charles J. Fillmore

The grammar of 'home'

1991

Robert P. Austerlitz

External Reconstruction

1989

William O. Bright

With One Lip, With Two Lips: Parallelism in Nahautl

Language, Vol. 66, No. 3, Sept., 1990 

1988

Calvert Watkins

New Parameters in Historical Linguistics, Philology and Cultural History

Language, Vol. 65, No. 4, Dec., 1989 

1987

Elizabeth C. Traugott

The Rise of Epistemic Meanings: A Case Study in the Unidirectionality of Semantic Change 

Language, Vol. 65, No. 1, Mar., 1989 

1986

Barbara H. Partee

Possible Worlds and Possible Languages

1985

Victoria A. Fromkin

Grammars and Linguistic Processing

1984

Henry Kahane

The Typology of the Prestige Language

Language, Vol. 62, No. 3, Sept., 1986 

1983

Arthur S. Abramson

Phonetics in Linguistics

1982

Dell H. Hymes

The Language of Myth

1981

Fred W. Householder

Kyriolexia and Language Change

Language, Vol. 59, No. 1, Mar., 1983 

1980

Ilse Lehiste

Prosodic change in progress: Evidence from Estonian

1979

William Labov

Resolving the Neo-Grammarian Controversy

Language, Vol. 57, No. 2, June, 1981

1978

Peter Ladefoged

Fundamental Phonological Units

Language, Vol. 56, No. 3, Sept., 1980

1977

Joseph H. Greenberg

Rethinking Linguistics Diachronically

Language, Vol. 55, No. 2, June, 1979

1976

Rulon S. Wells

Suggested Meaning

1975

Thomas A. Sebeok

The Pertinence of Peirce to Linguistics

1974

Morris Halle

Confessio Grammatici

Language, Vol. 51, No. 3, Sept., 1975

1971

Eric P. Hamp

Reconstruction, Inheritance, Diffusion and Change

1970

Charles A. Ferguson

Some requirements for a theory of language behavior

1969

Archibald A. Hill

Laymen, Lexicographers, and Linguists

Language, Vol. 46, No. 2, Part 1, June, 1970

1968

Eugene A. Nida

The Science of Translating

Language, Vol. 45, No. 3, Sept., 1969

1967

William G. Moulton

Structural Dialectology

Language, Vol. 44, No. 3, Sept., 1968

1966

J Milton Cowan

Attention

1965

Yakov Malkiel

Linguistics as a Genetic Science

Language, Vol. 44, No. 1, Mar., 1967

1962

Albert H. Marckwardt

Opportunity and Obligation

Language, Vol. 40, No. 3, Part 2, July - Sept., 1964

1961

George L. Trager

Linguistics is Linguistics

1958

Henry Hoenigswald 

Some Uses of Nothing

Language, Vol. 35, No. 3, July - Sept., 1959

1950

Einar Haugen

Directions in Modern Linguistics

Language, Vol. 27, No. 3, July - Sept., 1951

1949

Murray B. Emeneau

Language and Non-Linguistic Patterns

Language, Vol. 26, No. 2, April - June, 1950

1945

Y. R. Chao

The Logical Structure of Chinese Words

Language, Vol. 22, No. 1, Jan. - March, 1946

1940

A. L. Kroeber 

Some Relations of Linguistics and Ethnology 

Language, Vol. 17, No. 4, Oct. - Dec., 1941

1925

Hermann Collitz

World Languages

Language, Vol. 2, No. 1, Mar., 1926