Keynote Speakers for the conference include leading names in Turkic, Iranian, Mongolic and Uralic linguistics, as well as phonology, syntax and second language acquisition, including:

• William Fierman, Professor Emeritus, Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University
• Matthew Gordon, Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of California Santa Barbara
• Ayşe Gürel, Professor, Department of Foreign Language Education, Bogazici University
• Irene Vogel, Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Delaware
• Karen Baertsch, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

	William Fierman, Professor Emeritus, Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University Bill Fierman is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University. He holds a PhD (1979) from Harvard University. He is a former Director of IU’s Inner Asian & Uralic National Resource Center (IAUNRC) and the founding director of the Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region (CeLCAR). He is a revered longtime Central Asian scholar and was recently presented with the Edward Allworth Lifetime Service to the Profession Award in recognition of an extraordinary lifetime achievement in the field of Central Eurasian Studies.
	Matthew Gordon, Professor of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara Matthew Gordon is a Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at University of California, Santa Barbara. He holds a PhD (1999) from University of California, Los Angeles. His primary research interests include phonetics and phonology, in particular the role of acoustic and auditory properties in shaping the typology of sound systems. Much of his work involves the study of prosodic features of language such as stress and intonation and focuses on underdocumented languages, including Uralic, Northwest Caucasian, and North American languages.
	Ayşe Gürel, Professor of Foreign Language Education, Boğaziçi University Ayşe Gürel is a full professor at the Department of Foreign Language Education of Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. She holds a PhD (2002) from McGill University as well as both an MA (1996) and BA (1992) from Boğaziçi University. Her primary research interests include first language attrition and second language acquisition of morpho-syntactic features in English and Turkish as well as neuro- and psycho-linguistic aspects of language acquisition and language loss in children and adults.
	Irene Vogel, Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Delaware Irene Vogel is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Delaware. She holds both a PhD (1977) and MA (1975) from Stanford University and a BA (1973) from University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research interests include the interaction of phonology with components of grammar, including morphology syntax, and semantics, as well as the phonology of both first language and second language acquisition.
	Karen Baertsch, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale Karen Baertsch is an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. She holds a PhD in Linguistics (2002) from Indiana University, as well as an MA in English Linguistics from Arizona State University (1996) and BA in English (1987) from Utah State University. Her research interests include phonology, phonetics, historical linguistics, dialectology, Central Asian languages, and language acquisition.

There will also be a number of other invited speakers, selected among linguists working on Central Asian languages and linguistics.