The origins of CLS are shrouded in mystery. According to Eric P. Hamp, it began as the spiritual successor to a “little group that met in Chicago to talk about linguistics” before World War II, one member of which was Werner Leopold (at the time affiliated with Northwestern University) (Hamp 1981). On January 19, 1951, after “a series of conferences”, the group was revived under the name “Chicago Linguistic Society” as a series of monthly meetings (held at Abbott Hall, Northwestern downtown campus) open to anyone with an “interest in linguistics” (CLS 1951). Thus began a tradition wherein 1 to 3-4 scholars were invited to present their research, lead discussions or panels, or give reports on meetings (conferences, symposia, etc.). Presenters were almost always from UofC or NU, but there were also presenters from other Chicago-area institutions as well as from universities around the country and the world (presumably visiting Chicago). It was co-organized by members from the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, both faculty and students, from various departments. The monthly meetings always happened Friday evenings, and consisted of, besides the main event, of post-colloquium socializing. It is not clear when these monthly meetings were discontinued; the programs are only available up to December 1965, but Peranteau, writing in 1973, phrases his description of the monthly meetings in such a way as to imply that they were still occurring at that time (the usage of the present and present perfect).
In the fall of 1964, Doris Bartholomew, then a recent PhD graduate and lecturer at the University of Chicago, led the effort to plan a “Regional Meeting” of the Chicago Linguistic Society, to which affiliates of various Midwestern universities were invited. The committee for the first regional meeting, besides Bartholomew, consisted of a representative from Northwestern (Oswald Werner) and one from UIC (then known as the University of Illinois, Navy Pier) (Andrew Schiller). While initial interest in the meeting was low (Peranteau 1973), the “First Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society” was held April 3-4, 1965, at the Center for Continuing Education at the University of Chicago. Attendance was large, with 132 registrants, mostly from the three organizing universities. In the Chicago area, there were also participants from Illinois Tech (IIT), St. Xavier’s College, Chicago Teachers College, DePaul, UofC Lab School, the Chicago Board of Education, Wheaton College, N. Central College (Naperville), York High School (Elmhurst), and “Mundelein” (probably the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary). From outside of the Chicago area, there were attendees from OSU, UIUC, IU Bloomington, U. of Iowa, Iowa State, UW Milwaukee, UW Madison, U. of North Dakota, Wisconsin State (Whitewater), NIU (DeKalb, IL), Brown, and the Magnavox Company (Fort Wayne, IN).
According to Paul Peranteau (1973), after this first regional meeting, the organization of CLS very quickly came to be dominated by University of Chicago students; after 1968, no non-UofC affiliate was on the CLS commitee, and after 1972, no explicit effort was made to include other Chicago-area institutions in the planning. Peranteau (1973) notes that the fifth regional meeting was especially highly attended, and that it was beginning with the fifth meeting that CLS became a major venue for work in transformational grammar (generative syntax, and at the time, generative semantics). He also states that the fifth meeting was the first which was truly “national in scope” (interestingly, though, it was not until CLS 32 (1995) that the word “Regional” was dropped from the title of the CLS proceedings volumes).
Peranteau cites George Lakoff (1973), who stated that the proceedings of CLS 5 through CLS 8 were all together “the best single source for current papers by young linguists in this tradition [referring to generative semantics] as well as in Chomsky’s [referring to generative syntax]”. According to Peranteau, there was at the time no clear venue for work in transformational grammar, such that the combination of this lacuna and the fact that the graduate students at the University of Chicago in that era were especially interested in this approach led to CLS becoming associated with work in this theoretical approach; Peranteau also notes, though, that explicit efforts towards including other approaches and traditions were common. This dynamic has continued through the history of CLS until the year 2025: it is still the case that a large proportion of the abstracts sent for consideration to CLS every year fit under the umbrella of generative approaches to linguistics, but it is also still the case that intentional efforts towards diversity in approach and content are common (a case in point would be that there have been sessions and/or invited speakers in the field of variationist sociolinguistics in the last few CLS meetings, especially at CLS 57 but also at CLS 58 and 61).
While the first three regional meetings were single-day affairs with no published proceedings, the fourth regional meeting started the tradition of both published proceedings and multi-day meetings. From CLS 8 (1972) until CLS 47 (2011), the proceedings were published as two volumes, one containing the papers from the main session and another containing papers from the ‘parasession(s)’. As of 2025 (most recent published proceedings: CLS 60), the papers from both the general sessions and the special sessions are compiled into a single volume. The first two secondary volumes were given humorous names: “The Chicago Which Hunt: Papers from the Relative Clause Festival”, and “You Take the High Node and I’ll Take the Low Node, Papers from the Comparative Syntax Festival: The Differences between Main and Subordinate Clauses”.
Here you can find the programs of some previous CLS conferences, as well as the programs of the pre-1965 CLS monthly meetings, some of them containing brief descriptions of the papers presented.