News & Announcements

My close friend and colleague for some fifty years and longstanding member of the Philological Society, Professor Giulio Lepschy, died on 8 February 2026 aged 91 after a long illness. At a time when languages and linguistics are under threat in British – and not just British – universities and schools, Giulio's career stands as a compelling example of how things could be different and why it matters that they should be.

Born in Venice on 14 January 1935, son of Sara Castelfranchi, member of a distinguished Jewish family, and Emilio Lepschy, Giulio attended Liceo Classico there before graduating from Pisa's elite Scuola Normale. The English version of his doctorate, A Survey of Structural Linguistics (1970, 2nd ed. 1982), was described by Roman Jakobson as the best introduction to those ideas available at the time, no small accolade for a student thesis! More accolades pursued him throughout his career: election as Fellow of the British Academy in 1987 and as member of the Italian Accademia della Crusca in 1991, an honorary degree from the University of Turin in 1998, award of the British Academy's Serena Medal and Emilio Goggio Visiting Professor University of Toronto in 2000, appointed Commendatore of the Italian Republic in 2003.

After further study in Zurich and Paris, he came to Oxford where he met and in 1962 married Anna Laura Momigliano, the daughter of the famous classical historian and pre-war emigré academic Arnaldo Momigliano. An eminent literary scholar (winner of the Serena medal herself in 2010), she and Giulio published regularly together. Their book The Italian Language Today (1977, 2nd ed. 1991) and its Italian translation (1981) is a standard work, still widely consulted and cited around the world. She survives him.

Another important collaboration was with Luigi Meneghello, novelist, former partisan and professor of Italian at the University of Reading, where Giulio was appointed lecturer in 1964 and remained until retirement in 2000. They worked together in developing an internationally reputed department covering the full range of literary, linguistic and cultural studies. It is no coincidence that several Italians opted to conduct doctoral research there under Giulio’s supervision before pursuing successful academic careers in Italy and elsewhere.

As will be clear from the works already mentioned, there are two principal strands to Giulio's research: the history and structure of the Italian language, and the history of the discipline of linguistics. For the former, in addition to the already cited volume with Anna Laura there are many articles over the years and an important collaboration with Tullio De Mauro on his major dictionary project GRADIT: Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso (1999-2000). The two strands converge in one of my favourites among his writings,  the set of lectures on translation and translation theory: Tradurre e traducibilità (2009). It deserved to be translated!

When it comes to the history of linguistic thought, in addition to individual studies on thinkers and schools, he is perhaps best known for having conceived and overseen the 4-volumes of A History of Linguistics (Longman, 1994-1998, original Italian version il Mulino, 1990-1994). This involved close collaboration with two former Phil Soc presidents: Peter Matthews who authored the chapter on Greek and Latin linguistics (vol 2, 1-133), and Anna Morpurgo Davies, sole author of volume 4 dedicated to linguistics in the nineteenth century.

Although personally shy and retiring, Giulio engaged easily with his classes and was always ready to respond to colleagues, teachers, students, and the general public. As Anna observed in her preface to his festschrift, his academic contributions fall into three categories: works by him, works edited by him and works commented on by him.

Obituaries inevitably address the past but Giulio's blend of erudition, original thought, professional co-operation and public responsiveness serves as an example for the present and the future.

Nigel Vincent

The Philological Society invites abstracts for consideration for the Early Career event, to take place on Friday 16 October 2026 at University College London (UCL).

The Philological Society (PhilSoc) was established in 1830 and is the oldest learned society in Great Britain devoted to the scholarly study of language and languages. As well as encouraging all aspects of the study of language, PhilSoc has a particular interest in historical and comparative linguistics, and in the structure, development, and varieties of Modern English. The event will be immediately followed by the public Philological Society meeting, at which the speaker will be Dr Guyanne Wilson (UCL). Therefore, we anticipate that part of the Early Career event will be linked to the talk and themed around the sociolinguistics of World Englishes and part of it will be a general session. As such, we invite abstracts focussed on any aspect of linguistics as well as abstracts specifically addressing World Englishes.

We welcome work in its early stages, as well as more developed work. We define ‘Early Career’ relatively loosely: postgraduate students, post docs, and researchers within 5 years of the award of their PhD are welcome to submit. If you are unsure if you would qualify, feel free to reach out to the organisers.

There is no registration fee, and lunch is provided. There is financial support available to assist with travel and other attendance costs. Further details about this will be circulated shortly.

Participants are invited to present work either in a 15-minute slot followed by questions, or as a poster. Please indicate your preference at the top of your abstract. Abstracts for proposed presentations or posters should not exceed 300 words (excluding references) and be submitted in PDF format to the Hon. Secretary of the Society.

Deadline for submission: Monday 2 March 2026
Notification of acceptance: Friday 27 March 2026
Event dates: Friday 16 October 2026, 12.30–6pm (followed by an informal dinner).  

The event will take place at University College London.

PhilSoc is please to announce that Innovations in Linguistics Education, a journal devoted to teaching linguistics in higher education, has been re-launched and is officially open to new submissions as of January 2026. The first five volumes of the journal were published by editor Daniel Dinnsen at the Indiana University Linguistics Club from 1979 to 1990 and re-issued in 2017 by editor Ann Bunger. Volumes 6 onwards will be published on the University of Edinburgh's open access online platform, Edinburgh Diamond, with co-editors Itamar Kastner (Edinburgh) and Rory Turnbull (Newcastle). The journal is supported financially by PhilSoc and LAGB.

Innovations was originally intended as "A forum for Linguistics faculty and advanced graduate students to exchange ideas and materials on linguistics courses." Now the time is right to revive the journal, this time with a renewed international focus. Recent developments in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and the expansion of the field of linguistics as a whole, have led to a variety of educational and pedagogical innovations across the globe in a variety of contexts. The editors are excited to enter a supportive environment that includes, among others, the well-established teaching sections of Language and American Speech. Their vision for Innovations is a journal where new ideas and practices from around the globe, supported by evidence-based research, can be shared freely and quickly.  

They welcome contributions on teaching linguistics in higher education in long and short paper formats. For more information visit the journal website.

The editors can be contacted at innovations.journal@protonmail.com.

In December 2025, Dumuzi's Dream and Dumuzi's Demons was released. Performed by students from Trinity College Dublin entirely in the ancient – and dead – language of Sumerian, the film tells the story of how Dumuzi, a Sumerian shepherd god, repeatedly escapes from underworld demons, until they finally catch him for good.

The short film is a dramatisation of the mythological poem known today as 'Dumuzi’s Dream'. Eighteen students participated in the production, some as part of their formal studies. It was directed and produced by Professor Martin Worthington. The film has subtitles in over twenty-seven languages. PhilSoc is very proud to have supported the project. There is an announcement here and the YouTube video here.

It is with great sadness that we report the passing of Keith Brown, who served as the President of the Society from 2007 to 2009, as well as the president of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain from 1990 to 1994 and as an editor of the Transactions of the Philological Society for many years. A full obituary will be published in the Transactions in due course.

Dear friends, colleagues, members of the Philological Society

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the new President of the Philological Society. I am very honoured and excited to work with and for the Society in this important role. I would also like to thank my predecessor, Professor Susan Fitzmaurice for her excellent leadership over the last four years.

I am based at SOAS University of London and my academic work focusses on comparative and historical linguistics, morphosyntax, and African languages, especially Bantu languages of East and Southern Africa (see my SOAS profile here). I have a long and warm relationship with PhilSoc, which I joined as a Student Member in 1996. I was Honorary Secretary in the early 2000s and the editor of the Transactions of the Philological Society from 2020 until earlier this year, and I have grown very fond of the Society and the values and activities it supports during this time. 

We are also fortunate to have a strong new team of officers. Please join me in welcoming Professor Delia Bentley as Editor of the Transactions, Graham Pointon as Membership Secretary, Becky Hunt as Student Associates Secretary, and Professor Kersti Börjars as new Honorary Secretary (from January 2025) – and in thanking the outgoing officers Professor Paul Russell, Dr Richard Ashdowne, and Dr Joshua Booth for their sterling work. Our Treasurer, Dr Ranjan Sen, and Publications Secretary for Monographs, Dr Melanie Green, will continue in their roles.

Since my appointment in the summer, I already had a chance to chair two meetings of the Society, Laura Wright’s captivating talk on the social life of words and our meeting at the University of Manchester with excellent talks by two early career researchers, Savio Meyase and Eve Suharwardy. Both events were amazing demonstrations of the vibrancy and appeal of our research. Like all our talks, these three will be made available on the Society’s YouTube channel – do have a look if you have missed them.

Looking ahead, we have a number of exciting talks coming up and we continue to run our meetings in hybrid mode (or sometimes online only), so please join us at a future occasion, whether you are able to be there in person or accessing the online version. For those who can make it for the in-person meetings, there will be tea and biscuits and an opportunity to talk to other linguists before the talk.

Also, we continue our support for academic activities, especially for early career researchers and the next generation of philologists through our bursaries, travel and fieldwork grants and the bi-annual Robins Prize. Please do share this information and raise awareness of the opportunities available.

In the wider context, we are going through turbulent and sometimes unsettling times, with changes in higher education in the UK and internationally in terms of policies, funding and priorities, and with ongoing challenges for linguistic diversity and equitability. But we are also seeing exciting developments in our field, in terms of new theoretical ideas, more thorough description and analysis, and innovative models of data representation. We are building a strong case for the importance of language and linguistics research, and I am keen to develop this further in the future.

Over the next few years, we will make sure that the Society helps to meet some of the challenges we face as a community, and to amplify and celebrate some of the new developments – through our talks and events, our journal and monographs, research support, and other activities. I would like to invite all our members to stay in touch, engage and contribute to the Society and I am looking forward to stimulating and rewarding times ahead.

Finally, let me extend to you and your friends, colleagues and family the best wishes for today’s National Linguistics Day!

Lutz Marten

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Comparative Philology Seminar at Oxford, an afternoon celebration will take place on Tuesday 3rd December 2024 in the Sultan Nazrin Shah Auditorium at Worcester College, Oxford OX1 2HB.

Programme:

2.15pm – Welcome and reminiscences
2.30pm – Professor Daniel Kölligan (University of Würzburg), “On the development of future tenses”

3.30pm – Coffee break and social time

4.30pm – Professor David Langslow (University of Manchester), “Some species of family tree in the editing of a late Latin medical text”
5.30pm – Conclusion

Everybody is welcome! We would, of course, be particularly happy if former participants of the seminar were able to attend.

The event, which is free of charge, will also be livestreamed. If you are intending to attend either in person or online, please register by 25th November 2024 by using the following link:
https://forms.office.com/e/jN0yVWFCGL

The link for the livestream will be sent to online attendees on the date of the event itself.

For any questions, please contact either of the organisers via e-mail (andreas.willi@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk / michele.bianconi@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk).

The Society seeks to appoint a new Associate Secretary for Student Associate Members to succeed the current incumbent, Dr Joshua Booth. Interested applicants should consult this job description and advert and submit their application according to the guidance laid out therein.

We are sorry to report the passing after a long illness of Professor Neil Smith, a leading figure in British and world linguistics for many years and a member of the Society since 1962.

Neil read Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge, graduating in 1961, before moving to University College London (UCL) to undertake fieldwork-based doctoral research on the Nigerian language Nupe. He received his PhD in 1964 with the results being published as articles and in the monograph An Outline Grammar of Nupe (1967, SOAS Press). From 1964 to 1970 he was Lecturer in West African Languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) to which title Linguistics was added in the period 1970-2 before he moved back to UCL to be Reader and then Professor of Linguistics, a post he held until his retirement in 2006.

By his own account, a key stage in his intellectual development and subsequent career was the Harkness Fellowship which allowed him to spend the years 1966 to 1968 at MIT and UCLA, making the acquaintance of Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle and other leading figures of the time and deepening his knowledge and understanding of generative linguistics. Following his appointment at UCL he set about building a department centred on that approach which rapidly acquired a national and international reputation. Generative thinking and theoretical constructs also underpinned his studies of the phonological development of his elder son (The Acquisition of Phonology 1973) and grandson (Acquiring Phonology 2010, both published by Cambridge University Press), and of the linguistic capacities of the polyglot savant Christopher (The Mind of a Savant co-authored with Ianthi Tsimpli, 1995, Blackwell, and The Signs of a Savant co-authored with Ianthi Tsimpli, Gary Morgan and Bencie Woll, 2011, CUP). He saw it too as important to move beyond the specialist academic community in books aimed at a general audience such as Modern Linguistics: The Results of Chomsky’s Revolution (co-authored with Deirdre Wilson, 1979, Penguin Books), and Chomsky: Ideas and Ideals (1999, CUP, 2^nd ed. 2004, with a third extended edition co-authored with Nicholas Allott, 2016). The Twitter Machine: Reflections on Language (Wiley-Blackwell, 1991) is in the same vein, its apparently prescient title notwithstanding.

Neil was an instrumental figure in the development of the discipline at a national level, serving not only on the Society’s Council but also as a member of the Linguistics panels of the SSRC and ESRC. He was President of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain from 1980 to 1986, and President of the Association of Heads and Professors of Linguistics from 1993 to 1994. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1999, and an honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America in 2000.

He was married to Saras (née Keskar, d. 2018) and together they endowed the Neil and Saras Smith Medal, awarded annually by the British Academy for lifetime achievement in the study of linguistics. He is survived by two sons and two grandsons.

It has been Henry Bradley’s fate to be remembered as ‘only’ the second Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, always overshadowed by James Murray. This event aims both to celebrate and recontextualize his achievements – not just as a lexicographer, but as a writer, historian, and scholar in a variety of contexts. When he died in 1923, his former OED assistant J. R. R. Tolkien paid tribute to him, in Old English, as a sméaþoncol mon (a ‘man of subtle thought’). One hundred years after his death we offer a long-overdue reappraisal of his life and scholarship in a series of papers.

The event will be chaired by Professor Simon Horobin and will be followed by questions and discussion.

Speakers include:

• Charlotte Brewer, Professor of English (Hertford College, Oxford), and Dr Stephen Turton, Research Fellow in English (Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge): ‘Henry Bradley from his Letters’.
• Dr Peter Gilliver, Executive Editor (Oxford English Dictionary): ‘Henry Bradley: a lexicographer and more’.
• Lynda Mugglestone, Professor of the History of English (Pembroke College): ‘The Making of English’: Bradley, the OED, and the Text Behind the Text’.
• Tania Styles, Senior Editor (Oxford English Dictionary): ‘Henry Bradley: Greatest of English Place-Name Scholars’.
• Simon Horobin, Professor of English, (Magdalen College, Oxford).

The event will take place at the Weston Library, Oxford, on Friday, 17 November 2023, 3–6pm. Talks and discussion will be followed by a reception in Blackwell Hall. Registration via Eventbrite is required.

This event is supported by the Philological Society.