The Sixth RH Robins Prize of the Philological Society
PhilSoc intends to offer a sixth R. H. Robins student Prize for an article submission on a linguistic topic that falls within the area of the Society’s interests as defined by present and past publications in the Transactions of the Philological Society.
The Prize will be awarded in open competition. The competition is open to any individual or individuals who is/are both:
(i) registered students (at the time of submission); s/he/they should submit a letter from his/her/their supervisor, or from a person of similar standing, attesting to his/her/their status and that the submission is his/her/their own work); and,
(ii) Members or a Student Associate Members of the Society (membership can be applied for at the time of submission).
The article submission could — but need not — be based on some part of a projected doctoral or masters dissertation. The article should not have been published before (except possibly in a departmental working paper or the like), nor should it have been submitted for publication elsewhere.
The author(s) of the winning essay will receive a cash prize of £500 (shared equally between the authors of a jointly authored submission); the author(s) of the runner-up essay will receive a cash prize of £250 (again, shared equally as appropriate). Additionally, the prize-winning and runner-up submissions — revised where appropriate in line with referees’ comments — will be accepted for publication in the Society’s journal, the Transactions of the Philological Society (TPhS). In making a submission, authors undertake to give the Transactions first refusal to publish the article. The cash prize will only be awarded on submission of a revised publishable version of the winning or runner-up essay. If no submission is judged suitable for publication, no prize will be awarded. If non-prize-winning submissions are judged to be suitable for publication, then these, too, may be accepted for publication.
The prize will be awarded by PhilSoc Council on the recommendation of a prize committee formed from members of Council with the President in the Chair. In awarding the prize the Council will take into consideration the originality and the expression of the submission and the theoretical and/or empirical contribution it makes to the discipline.
The closing date for submissions is 1 November 2010. Submissions should be written in English. They should not exceed — but need not be as long as — 10,000 words, including tables, figures, notes, appendices, references, etc. Submissions should be made via the TPhS electronic editorial office. Submissions should be accompanied by a covering letter indicating clearly to the TPhS editor that the submission is for the Prize rather than a regular submission to the journal. Submissions should also be accompanied by the letter mentioned in (i) above. The article should follow the style sheet of the Transactions. The style sheet can be downloaded by clicking on the link on the left. The winner and runner-up will be announced at the Society’s Annual General Meeting in May 2011, and the prize will be awarded when the final version of the article has been accepted for publication in Transactions. It is expected that the prize-winning and runner-up article will appear in Transactions Vol. 110. The Council’s judgement is final.
| 2000 | Virve-Anneli Vihman (Edinburgh) | Middle voice in Estonian (100.1: 131--160) |
| 2004 | Sarah Turner (University College, Oxford) | Post-verbal subjects in Early East Slavonic (TPhS 104.1: 85--117) |
| 2006 | Louise Mycock (Manchester) | Constituent question formation and focus: A new typological perspective (TPhS 105.2: 192--251) |
| 2008 | Petros Karatsareas (Cambridge) | The loss of grammatical gender in Cappadocian Greek (TPhS 107.2: 196--230) |