THE FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE LANGUAGES OF SCOTLAND & ULSTER was held at Aberdeen University in the first week of August. This triennial conference was inaugurated in Aberdeen in 1985, and has been held in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Sabhal Mor Ostaig. Its original aim was to provide a forum at which scholars and students in the Scots and Gaelic fields could become acquainted with each others' work. The first was held under the auspices of the Association of Scottish Literary Studies, but more recently their organisation has been undertaken by the Forum for Research in the Languages of Scotland and Ulster: the fourth in the series was the first of which the scope was officially widened to include Ulster. Place-name studies have always been represented by at least one paper at each conference: at the most recent this aspect of Scottish linguistic studies was represented by a plenary paper from Doreen Waugh, entitled "Settlement Names in the South-West: Dumfries and Galloway". This paper, which aroused much interest and prompted extensive discussion, was chaired by that eminence grise of Scottish toponymics, Wilhelm Nicolaisen. The Sixth International Conference will be held in Northern Ireland and will be organised by John Kirk.
Derrick McClure
(Conference Organiser)
Department of English
University of Aberdeen