Practical Phonetics and Phonology

Prefaces and Acknowledgements

Preface to the First Edition

In the course of writing this book we have been helped in many different ways by colleagues, students, friends and family. Our thanks go out to them all, but especially to those mentioned below.

Ron Carter gave us much wise advice at the planning stage, and the series editor Peter Stockwell has provided us with valuable guidance from then on. Crucial help and support has come all along the way from the editorial staff at Routledge, successively from Louisa Semlyen, Christy Kirkpatrick, Kate Parker and Ruth Jeavons; a special note of gratitude for her efficiency, patience and cheerfulness under pressure goes to Margaret Aherne.

We want to thank all those colleagues who offered perceptive critical comments on preliminary drafts and the final manuscript. Most (though not all) of their suggestions have been acted upon, and we have ended up with a greatly improved book as a consequence. In this regard, we must make special mention of Philip Carr, Rias van den Doel, Jack Windsor Lewis, Robert Phillipson and Gilda Suárez de Nielsen. We also gained much from the detailed criticism contained in Paul Tench’s review of the penultimate version of the manuscript. Colin Ewen not only read and commented on the book in draft form, but also aided us in a very practical way by constructing and digitising all the vowel diagrams and intonation representations. Help with providing and checking language materials was given by Sarah Branci, Rolf Bremmer, Inès Brulard, Robert Druce, Gyde Hansen, Arnt Lykke Jakobsen, María Pilar Lorenzo, Vincent Phillips, Klaske van Leyden and Carol Williams. Useful feedback on many matters came from students at the Copenhagen Business School who allowed us to expose them to earlier versions of the text. We are also grateful to Jennifer Jenkins, who used portions of the material with her students at King’s College London. Finally, mention must be made of Arnold Warthog, who was constantly on hand to assist us in every aspect of our work.

For the audio CD, we benefited greatly from the technical expertise of Steve Hitchins, who assembled and edited the final version of the disk. In this connection, we also want to thank Vincent van Heuven for the use of recording facilities at Leiden University, and John Wells for permission to use a portion of the recording of the cardinal vowels made for University College London by the late A. C. Gimson. For the provision of recorded materials used in the collection of English accent varieties we are much indebted to Alastair Hamilton, Mia Overlade Hansen, Jen Hay, Gerry Knowles, Lesley Milroy, Debi Molnar, Tine Ditlev Nielsen, Kitt Spangbjerg Petersen, Yvonne Spuijbroek, Karen Stetting and Maria Vanlaeken-Kester. Finally, our thanks go out to all the anonymous recorded speakers for their time, trouble and goodwill.

Naturally, we do not wish to saddle any of those mentioned above with blame for whatever defects and errors remain in the book. That responsibility is ours alone.

This book is dedicated to the memory of I.M.’s mother, Birthe Mees, and B.C.’s sister, Beryl Adams.

Beverley Collins and Inger M. Mees

Leiden and Copenhagen, March 2003

Preface to the Second Edition

In this new edition, numerous changes, corrections and additions have been made throughout the text, including the introduction of several new maps and diagrams. The audio CD now contains examples of two more English pronunciation varieties – namely British Estuary English and New York English – both of which also feature in the revised text. In Section B, a complete new unit, intended for the non-native learner of English, has been introduced, covering English orthography and spelling-to-sound pronunciation guides. In Section D, there are two extra readings from leading figures in the fields of phonetics and sociolinguistics. John Wells discusses the problems associated with spelling reform, while Peter Trudgill covers current changes in the social perception of various British English regional and social varieties, ranging from traditional Received Pronunciation through to Estuary English and a selection of regional accents.

In producing this new version of our book, we have had help from many sources. First, at Taylor and Francis, we want to thank Peter Stockwell (series editor) for his advice and guidance, and Nadia Seemungal for her willingness to deal promptly with any problem thrown at her. We have had useful criticism and suggestions from a number of reviewers, who provided incisive assessment and criticism. In particular, we must mention Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, who not only reviewed the book in a most perceptive manner, but then, in response to our request, sent extra comments to us personally. Five anonymous peer reviewers also provided invaluable advice and suggestions. We are grateful to them all.

Help has also come in various ways from many friends and colleagues. We are especially grateful to Rias van den Doel for all the assistance he gave at the proofreading stage. In addition, we wish to express our gratitude to Inès Brulard, Philip Carr, Simon Cook, Anne Fabricius, Anne Margrethe Hauge, Christian Jensen, Klaske van Leyden, Catherine Meinertz-Nielsen, Lowell Melka-Teichroew, Talía Morris, Brian Mott, Jan Posthumus, Bert Schouten and Jack Windsor Lewis. In addition, we have had valuable feedback from many users of the book, and in particular our students at the Copenhagen Business School, Ghent University and the Université Catholique de Lille.

We need hardly say, as before, that any blame for remaining errors or omissions in the text should be laid solely at our door.

Beverley Collins and Inger M. Mees

Utrecht and Copenhagen, December 2007

Preface to the Third Edition

Although this third edition has several additional features, many corrections and much revision, nevertheless the overall structure of the book remains the same. We saw no reason to make radical changes to what appears on the whole to have been a successful formula.

We wish once more to express our gratitude to all those, acknowledged above, who have assisted us in the past, and to the reviewers, students and colleagues who have helped us with this edition. Special thanks go to Philip Carr, Andrew Kehoe, Petr Rösel and Jack Windsor Lewis. We also want to put on record our debt to Paul Carley, Marta Dura, Alex Rotatori and Masaki Taniguchi for their contributions to the new language descriptions in Section C. In addition, we have benefited from feedback from our students – especially from participants in the University College London Summer Course in English Phonetics (SCEP) in recent years. At Routledge, we have had much help and support, and we now want to thank Isabelle Cheng, Rachel Daw, Sarah May and, especially, for overseeing the whole operation, Nadia Seemungal.

Beverley Collins and Inger M. Mees

Utrecht and Copenhagen, November 2012

Acknowledgements

The authors and publishers wish to thank all mentioned below for permission to reproduce the following materials:

Abercrombie, D. (1991) ‘RP – R.I.P.?’. Reprinted from Fifty Years in Phonetics, 1991, Edinburgh University Press. © The Estate of David Abercrombie. Reproduced by kind permission.

Avery, P. and Ehrlich, S. (1992), ‘Teaching American English Pronunciation’. Reprinted from Oxford Handbook for Language Teachers: Teaching American English Pronunciation by Peter Avery and Susan Ehrlich. © Peter Avery and Susan Ehrlich, 1992. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.

Bradford, B. (1997) ‘Upspeak in British English’. Reprinted from English Today 51, 13.3: 33–6, 1997. © Cambridge University Press. Reproduced with permission.

Jones, D. (1935) originally entitled ‘Speech training: the phonetic aspect’. Reprinted from British Journal of Educational Psychology 5: 27–30. Reproduced by kind permission of John Wiley & Sons.

Trudgill, P. (2002) Sociolinguistic Variation and Change, pp 173–80. Reprinted courtesy of Edinburgh University Press, www.euppublishing.com.

Varney, M. (1997) ‘Forensic linguistics’. Reprinted from English Today 52, 13.4: 42–4, 46–7. © Cambridge University Press. Reproduced with permission.

Wells, J. C. (2003) ‘English accents and their implications for spelling reform’ from http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/accents_spellingreform.htm. Reproduced with kind permission of the author.

While every effort has been made to find the copyright holders of materials used in this volume, the publishers would be happy to hear from any they have been unable to contact and will make any necessary amendment at the earliest opportunity.