The South Asian Languages Analysis (SALA) Roundtable was organized on November 28-30, 2024 by the Department of Tenyidie, Nagaland University held at NIELIT, Kohima and was co-sponsored by the Government of Nagaland and the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore.

The South Asian Languages Analysis (SALA) Roundtable draws its foundation from the 1978 Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, organized by Hans Henrich Hock and Braj B. Kachru, with support from Yamuna Kachru and Rajeshwari Pandharipande. The Roundtable is an international forum dedicated to the study of Languages and Linguistics in the region of South Asia. For the fifth time, the Roundtable is being conducted in India, and the very first time that this Roundtable is being organized in the Central University of Nagaland and in this part of the region, under the initiative of Dr. Mimi Kevichüsa Ezung, Department of Tenyidie, Nagaland University.

The roundtable, especially after the Covid 19 halt, with its wide coverage provided an excellent opportunity for young Naga scholars to network with some of the well-known scholars from around the globe and other parts of India and to build stronger research networks.

The Roundtable which concluded on November 30,  2024 was well attended with 90 registrations in total and with 70 paper presentations, on various South Asian Languages including the Naga languages, received from all the globe including the University of Oxford, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The keynote address at the Roundtable was delivered by Professor Uma Maheshwar Rao, former Professor & Director, Centre for Applied Linguistics & Translation Studies (CALTS), University of Hyderabad, and Honorary Professor of Linguistics, Central University of Kerala, on the topic AI and Large Language Models in Building Linguistic Applications.

At the inaugural programme, the welcome address was given by Dr. Petekhrienuo Sorhie, the Head of the Department of Tenyidie, and the inaugural address was delivered by Professor Jano L. Sekhose, Dean of the School of Humanities & Education. The inaugural session was chaired by Dr. Mimi Kevichüsa Ezung, Associate Professor, Department of Tenyidie and the Director of SALA 38.

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The Chief Guest to the programme was Professor Jagadish K. Patnaik, the Vice Chancellor of Nagaland University. A special speech was delivered by the President of the Linguistic Society of India, Professor M. J. Warsi who stated that steps are underway to start the discipline of Linguistics in the under graduate courses and for its inclusion as a paper in the UPSC examinations. The session ended with a vote of thanks delivered by Dr. Kethokhrienuo Belho, Assistant Professor, Department of Tenyidie, Nagaland University.

At the valedictory function, which was chaired by Dr. Laishram Bijenkumar Singh, Assistant Professor, Centre for Naga Tribal Language Studies, the baton of SALA Roundtable was handed over to Professor Dr. Kryzysztof Stroński, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, the organizer of SALA 39 next year.