Frank R. Palmer

Robert Frank Palmer
Born	9 April 1922 England
Nationality	English
Fields	Linguistics
Known for	Systemic functional linguistics
Influences	J.R. Firth

Robert Frank Palmer (born 9 April 1922) is a British linguist, linguistic researcher and former lecturer.

As a child Palmer lived with his parents in Kendleshire (South Gloucestershire ). Palmer took his first school lessons at the Hambrook School (Hambrook), enrolling there on 30 August 1926, as recorded in the Admission Register 1922–1946. On 2 September 1932 he went to Bristol Grammar School. Later, Palmer was educated at New College, Oxford.

In the 1940s, Palmer was a member of the British Army, he attained a military rank of a Lieutenant. After the end of World War II, in the fifties, Palmer acquired the position of a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. From 1950 to 1960 he was Lecturer in SOAS, University of London.John Rupert Firth encouraged there a number of his disciples and colleagues, many who later became well known linguists, to carry out research on a number of African and Oriental languages. Firth was the Head of Department at the time and was a major influence on Terence Frederick Mitchell worked on Arabic and Berber languages, Palmer on Ethiopean languages, Michael Halliday on Chinese and Richard Keith Sprigg who specialised in the phonology of Asian languages.

His wife, Jean Elizabeth Palmer, and he had their first child in 1950.

In 1952 he undertook an exploring journey to Ethiopia for one year to research into the local languages. His scientific interests had been the Ethiopian languages for instance Tigre, Bilin, Amharic languages and the language of the Agaw people from the group of the Cushitic languages.

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