The Association of Latin-American Linguistics and Philology (ALFAL). (Appendix: FILLM--history and objectives).

Asociacion de Linguistica y Filologia de America Latina

The Asociacion de Linguistica y Filologia de America Latina, was created during a meeting held by the University of Chile's Instituto de Filologia (Vina Del Mar, 20-5 January 1964). According to its first President, the Brazilian linguist Joaquim Mattoso Camara Jr, the idea of its foundation had been previously discussed by a group of Latin-American linguists, during the Ninth International Congress of Linguistics held at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in August 1962. The main concern at that point in time was to foster research in such areas as Spanish, Portuguese and Amerindian linguistics, philology, and Latin-American literature, as well as in first and second language teaching.

Shortly after the foundation of ALFAL, Donald Sola and other leading scholars launched the Interamerican Program of Linguistics and Teaching of Languages (PILEI, in its Spanish-Portuguese acronym), again in Chile, 10-14 August 1970.

From then on, ALFAL and PILEI worked together, although in different ways: ALFAL with its biannual congresses, PILEI with its collective projects of research, institutes and symposia. The demise of PILEI in 1981 put an end to this pattern, which led ALFAL to host the projects of research previously managed by its partner.

Currently the Directorate consists of Ataliba T. de Castilho, president, State University of Sao Paulo (Brazil); Jose Moreno de Alba, secretary, National Autonomous University of Mexico (Mexico); Orlando Alba, Brigham Young University (USA). The Directorate is helped in its decisions by the Advisory Committee, whose …