F. Lowenthal Universite de l'Etat a Mons 24 rue des Dominicains 7000 Mons Belgium series of "Language and Language Acquisition" conferences The was born in Mons in 1977. One day the Dean said to me: "You are doing research in that field, why don't you try to organize a small conference?". I thought about it, tried to contact people, received several answers and finally told the Dean: "There will be so many participants and I need so much money to organize the conference". His answer was a short one: "I told you to organize a SMALL conference". I do not know what he did, but he succeeded in working a miracle: the funds were found and the conference took place. This miracle has been repeated twice: once in Mons (1980) and once in Ghent (1983). The group of people interested in these conferences has become bigger, but the aim of the organizers is still the same: to bring together people working in different fields such as mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, logic, computer, science, education, psychology, medicine, ... and to give them the possibility to have long discussions even if the time devoted to the presentation of papers has to be reduced.