The Philological Society

24/07/2024

Applications are open for this year's Robin's Prize competition! We encourage all student members to submit an article for the prize, which is awarded for an article of 7–8,000 words on a subject within the area of PhilSoc's interests.

A cash prize of £500 will be awarded to the winning author (together with a year’s free membership of the Society) and a cash prize of £250 will be awarded to the runner-up. Both submissions will also be considered for publication in ‘Transactions of the Philological Society’.

The deadline is 30th Nov and further details are available here:

PhilSoc competition for the R. H. Robins student Prize for an article on a linguistic topic that falls within the area of the Society's interests.

10/11/2023

The Society is pleased to support an event celebrating the life and scholarship of the lexicographer, writer, historian and scholar Henry Bradley (1845-1923), taking place at the Weston Library, Oxford from 3 to 6 p.m. on Friday, 17th November. This will be followed by a reception in Blackwell Hall. Admission is free, but prior registration is required (via Eventbrite):

One hundred years after Henry Bradley’s death, we offer a long-overdue reappraisal of his life and scholarship in a series of papers.

09/10/2023

Visit our blog (https://blog.philsoc.org.uk) to read a report by Frances Dowle (University of Oxford), who recently received funding from the Society to attend the 28th International Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) Conference in person at University of Rochester, NY. Frances presented a poster at the conference on complementizer-verb interactions in Welsh.

21/09/2023

Our latest blog post, 'Wayfinding LiVanuma', was written by Vasiliki Vita (SOAS University of London), who received a travel and fieldwork bursary from the society. Read all about Vasiliki's trip to Uganda here:

News from the Society and its members

07/06/2023

For those who weren't able to attend our meeting at the
University of Cambridge on 18th March, you can now view the recording of Prof. Katia Jaszczolt's fascinating lecture on the Society's blog and YouTube channel. Don't miss this fascinating talk, entitled 'Tensed and Tenseless Languages for Tenseless Reality: The Importance of Cross-Linguistic Data in the Philosophy of Time':

PhilSoc meeting of Saturday 18th March at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge The recording of PhilSoc’s recent meeting is now available to view on the society’s YouTube channel. The lecture was held…

30/04/2023

We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the Society's next meeting on Friday 5th May at UCL, London. Prof. Amalia Arvaniti (Radboud University) will be discussing intonation in what is sure to be a fascinating talk: '“It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it": Recent advances in the study of intonation.'
https://philsoc.org.uk/meetings

The meeting will take place in University College, London in the Wilkins Building (Main Building) Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre. Tea is served at 15:45. The talk will start at 16:15.

Events and meetings programme for the Philological Society

13/12/2022

For those who weren't able to attend our virtual meeting on 2nd December, the recording is now available on the society's YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/CkAbAKaLBcs.

This year, our early career researcher panel was hosted by the University of Edinburgh and was entitled 'Historical work with unwritten languages', featuring fascinating presentations by the following speakers:

Ryan Gehrmann (Payap University): 'Tonogenesis in Mainland Southeast Asia: Reconciling the historical evidence and the comparative evidence'
Tatiana Reid (University of Edinburgh): 'Untangling the origins of floating suprasegmental component in Nuer'
Laura Arnold (University of Edinburgh): 'From areal linguistics to historical sociolinguistics: Identifying contact events in northwest New Guinea'

03/05/2022

We are looking forward to our first in-person event in over two years this Friday 6th May! The 2022 Anna Morpurgo Davies Lecture (in partnership with the British Academy) will take place at the Royal Society. Dr Philip Durkin, Deputy Chief Editor at the Oxford English Dictionary will be giving this year's lecture, entitled "Tracking the history of words - changing perspectives, changing research".

We look forward to seeing many of you in person! The event is entirely free, but prior booking is essential:

Traditionally most words have been seen as having simple linear histories, with the earliest known attestation regarded as the date at which a word ‘entered the language’. Changing perspectives, especially from historical sociolinguistics and from detailed research on language varieties, are bri...

02/05/2022

Students! The Society is thrilled to announce that applications are now open for master's bursaries for the academic year 2022-23.

These bursaries, valued at £5,500 each, may be used for fees or maintenance and are aimed at students embarking on a taught postgraduate programme in the UK in the areas of linguistics or philology

Please visit the Societ's website for details on how to apply:

Funding and bursaries available from the Philological Society

05/04/2022

Postgraduate and ECR members of PhilSoc may be interested in registering for the ISLE Summer School 2022: "The Empire Speaks Back in a Postcolonial Dialect: Decolonising English Linguistics for the 21st Century" (bursaries available). For more information, visit the society's blog:

written by Prof. Karen Corrigan (Newcastle University) The International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE) has held Postgraduate and Early Career Schools since 2013 in various locations…

26/03/2022

In case you missed our last meeting and weren't able to hear Dr Thomas Juegel's wonderful talk, 'Tense in Time: The development of Iranic verbal categories and the difficulty of naming them', the recording is now available to view on our YouTube channel:

09/02/2022

Unfortunately, due to circumstances outside the Society's control, the event arranged for Friday 18th February will no longer be taking place. The next meeting will therefore be Dr Thomas Juegel's talk on Saturday 19th March 2022 at 4.15pm, which will take place online (and not in Cambridge).