[1] The ALT has several hundred members; and through its website, its annual meetings, and its journal Linguistic Typology it works to disseminate and highlight current research in comparative grammar.
The founding of ALT was initiated by Frans Plank in 1994, after the European Science Foundation's EUROTYP programme (1990–1994) had for the first time brought together dozens of typologists from Europe and beyond.
Since 1997, the ALT has published the journal Linguistic Typology in association with De Gruyter Mouton.
It was first edited by Frans Plank, followed by the current editor, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm.
The following persons have been president of the Association for Linguistic Typology:[7]