• ISSN Print: 0265-0649
• ISSN Digital: 2977-845X

The Philological Society (PhilSoc) is a registered charity and, the oldest learned society in Great Britain devoted to the scholarly study of language and languages. It was established in its present form in 1842 ‘to investigate and promote the study and knowledge of the structure, the affinities, and the history of languages’. In pursuit of its charitable goals, PhilSoc supports research in linguistics and philology by publishing a series of original research monographs and edited volumes under the series Publications of the Philological Society, including those whose specialised topic may fall outside the remit of commercial publishers. Website: https://philsoc.org.uk/Monographs

Benjamin Franklin, Orthoepist and Phonetician Vol. 2: Colonial American Voices and London Norms: Franklin’s Quest for an Orthographic Reform

• Gary D. German

FORTHCOMING

Benjamin Franklin has been hailed as an inventor, scientist, printer, author, philosopher, diplomat, philanthropist and political activist and, especially, a founding father of the United States, but few are aware he was also a phonetician. This volume offers a groundbreaking exploration of Franklin’s little-studied linguistic legacy—his Reformed Mode of Spelling (1768/1779). In this short treatise, Franklin outlined a plan for a radical, phonetically-based modernization of the English spelling system that would simultaneously serve as a pronunciation guide for what he envisaged to be 'correct' English as well as a practical scheme allowing the unlettered and foreigners to learn to read and write ‘within a week’. The social and sociolinguistic reasons for its inception as well as what that model entailed linguistically are the focus of this book.

Benjamin Franklin, Orthoepist and Phonetician Vol. 1: Language, Literacy and Social Mobility in Franklin’s World

• Gary D. German

FORTHCOMING

This book offers a groundbreaking exploreation of Franklin's little-studied linguistic legacy – his Reformed Mode of Spelling (1768/1779).

• African Studies
• Linguistics

Grammar of Etulo: A Niger-Congo (Idomoid) Language

• Chikelu I. Ezenwafor-Afuecheta

This work provides the first detailed linguistic description of the grammar of Etulo, a language spoken in Nigeria by a minority group in Benue and Taraba states. This description establishes Etulo as a tone language characterised by a predominant SVO word order, non-inflectional morphology, prominent aspectual values, obligatory complement verbs and verb serialization, among other features. This grammar also serves as a foundation for further description of the Etulo grammar and for the development of pedagogical materials needed in Etulo language teaching.