Speculative Grammarian is proud to bring you the following report on the important Third International Conference on Tone, held July 1991 at a posh resort in the Maldives.
There was a time slot for every announced topic, but for no apparent reason the organizers decided to fit the last few presentations into a single session. The contours of the issues were clear, but nevertheless there were highs and lows in the discussion.
Some Americanists showed off by whistling their presentations. They also insisted on numbering the agenda items in descending order.
There was much confusion when a number of Asianists registered twice, and some even three times.
One Africanist unfortunately was not watching upon exiting the meeting hall, and missed a step down.
One speaker with a forceful personality gave a heavily aspirated talk on tonogenesis, though at times his voicing dropped off so you could barely hear it.
Oddly, all of the presenters were named “Sandy.”