It has been an honor, and a real treat, to host more than 400 faculty, students and affiliates at the 2019 Linguistics Institute. Having so many colleagues around UC Davis (and I include the students in this category too) has been exciting and exhausting. We will miss the level of intellectual frenzy the Institute brought to our campus. Normally, as a member of a small department and now chair, I know what all of my colleagues are writing about, the research topics of our graduate students, and even the names and faces of our majors.

The most shocking revelation of acting as an institute director was that I couldn't keep up with all that was going on. All the participants embraced the principles that make life at Davis so bucolic: Advance by consensus, acknowledge the contributions that every subfield makes to the scientific understanding of language, celebrate each other’s achievements, and take some time off to pet the cows. But we also had our dose of educated controversy. Some people flashed their lossless theories, while others took pride in being lossy. Our second Tuesday felt like we were attending a wake for Generative Grammar, but then we found out that news of its demise had been greatly exaggerated.

Those debates make us wonder: “where is linguistics heading?” "Are we on the cusp of a new paradigm shift, a new scientific revolution like the one that brought us Structuralism or Generative Grammar?" Institutes have become famous breeding grounds for new theories, but like with those California earthquakes some of the participants felt, we are always waiting for the next Big One. We wanted our Institute to be that one. Paradigm shifts are often precipitated by changes in observational methods, measuring techniques, and discoveries of new sources of data. We thought that the fast changes that accompany the digital revolution would bring those about.

Hopefully we achieved some of our goals. The Institute also reminded us of how limited our capacity to model complex linguistic phenomena still is. But we also learned that our expertise allows us to do things like give a voice to those that do not have it, either because of historical neglect or present discrimination. In the Year of the Indigenous Languages, the Institute surpassed 200 indigenous languages discussed. The Institute taught us that the digital revolution can help us there too, be it through better ways to store, document, and disseminate data, or through the savvy use of social media. And so, the 2019 Institute happened, here at Davis. And a lot happened here too: learning, friendships, discoveries. We hope everyone experienced Davis in all its hidden glory, and that they will share their memories with us and others at home.

Raul Aranovich, Co-Director, 2019 Linguistic Institute