About LSPHIL

LSPHIL is an editorial publication about language. It runs seven desks: writing systems and orthography, learning and teaching, Philippine languages, translation and interpreting, research and academia, a general desk on games, risk and the words we use, and desks in languages other than English.

What the publication does is narrow and stated plainly. Every number, date, licence and quotation on the site comes from a source; where no source could be checked, the field is left out rather than filled in. Material is marked for what it is: editorial pieces, archive pages kept from the society that published on this domain before us, and paid placements.

LSPHIL is not the Linguistic Society of the Philippines. It does not speak for the society, award its membership or issue its certificates. The pages below are the society’s own, kept as a record.

To lead in the advancement of the scientific study of language in the Philippine context

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LSP Affiliates and Partners

• International Association of Applied Linguistics
• De La Salle University - Manila
• Philippine Social Science Council
• SIL Philippines
• International Association for World Englishes

About the LSP

In a country where more than one hundred languages are spoken, Filipino linguists have their job cut out for them. There are a number of linguists in the Philippines - linguists are those people who study and analyze languages scientifically and they should not be confused with polyglots, people who can speak many languages - and some 400 belong to the Linguistic Society of the Philippines.

The organization was the brainchild of Dr. Bonifacio Sibayan of the Philippine Normal College (PNC, now Philippine Normal University) and Dr. Ernesto Constantino of the University of the Philippines, two linguists who were working on their respective research projects in the Pacific and Asian Languages Institute of the University of Hawaii in 1968. Far away from home and very conscious of the linguistic work going on in the US, they had several discussions on the need for an organization of linguists that would do research and write on Philippine languages. 

The Linguistic Society of the Philippines (popularly known as the LSP) was formally organized in school year 1969-1970, with Teodoro Llamzon (Ateneo de Manila University) as President, Bonifacio Sibayan (PNC) as Vice-President, Edilberto Dagot (PNC) as Secretary, and Fe Otanes (PNC) as Treasurer. 

The organization was off to a rousing start, with a lecture series and a five-day seminar-workshop on linguistics and language teaching held in School Year 1969-1970, and with the LSP's journal called the Philippine Journal of Linguistics (or PJL for short) coming out in June 1970. The LSP also initiated discussions for a Consortium between the Ateneo de Manila University and Philippine Normal College that would offer a Ph.D. in Linguistics, with assistance from the Ford Foundation and the Asia Foundation. The first group of scholars in the Ateneo-PNC Linguistics Consortium started their program in SY1971-1972 and several completed their doctorates starting in SY1974-1975. 

Significant research on Philippine languages (including a frequency count and etymological dictionary of Filipino, a linguistic atlas of the Philippines, a dictionary of Cebuano Visayan), language planning in the Philippines, the implementation of the Bilingual Education Policy, and the Philippine variety of English has been conducted and published under the auspices of the LSP. 

Training has constituted an important part of the LSP's agenda. From practically the very founding of the organization, the LSP has sponsored in-service training programs, annual conventions, and regular lectures for its members and for all those interested in language. These training programs have been held with the assistance of such agencies as the Fund for Assistance to Private Education, the Philippine Social Science Council, the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS), the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), the British Council, the United States Information Agency, and in cooperation with other linguistic and language teaching organizations.    

The LSP has organized Summer Workshops for Teachers, Workshops for Senior Linguists, Summer Workshops in Translation, Roving Seminars on Language Teaching, Lecture Series, Annual Conventions, and has been able to invite distinguished scholars from all over the country and the world to speak at these public fora. With the assistance of the Fund for Assistance to Private Education, a group of 20 teachers completed their Master of Arts in Teaching English Language at De La Salle University through a summer program lasting four summers. 

The language situation in the Philippines being a very complex one, the LSP has been at the vanguard of groups that are trying to clarify positions and chart directions in the formulation of language policy. It has been involved in policy discussions on the national language and the medium of instruction. Several LSP members appeared before the Constitutional Convention of 1971 and again before the Constitutional Commission in 1986 to discuss the national language issue.

(Adapted from: http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/inside/organizations/lsp/default.asp)