First published in 1990, this collection celebrates the life and work of Professor A. C. Gimson, four years after his untimely death in 1985. A. C. Gimson, Professor of Phonetics at University College London, 1966-83, was the most distinguished and influential phonetician of his day concentrating specifically on English speech. This collection of essays on phonetics and phonology of English- written by linguists from all over the world - celebrates his life and work. The work is divided into five sections: prosody; phonology and phonetic description; accents of English and RP; other accents of English (focusing on those non-native speakers); and phonostylistics. The twenty-eight chapters cover a very wide range of topics and the contributors offer a stimulating variety of approaches, with the emphasis on data-based objectivity. Balancing description and theory with application, this volume provides a serious and coherent contribution to the academic study of English pronunciation.

1. A.C. Gimson and the pronunciation of English Susan Ramsaran Section I: Prosody 2. Nucleus placement and three classes of exception Alan Cruttenden 3. Focus and tone in English intonation J.A. Maidment 4. Tonal association domains and the prosodic hierarchy in English Carlos Gussenhoven 5. Intonation structures and pragmatic interpretation Jill House 6. Some notes on rhythm in english J.R. Baldwin Section II: Phonology and phonetic description of segmental aspects of English 7. Old English short voweld before nasals Niels Davidsen-Neilsen 8. Syllabification and allophony J.C. Wells 9. Derived phonological contrasts John Harris 10. Quantity and quality in British and American vowel systems Geoff Lindsey 11. Some vowel systems in American English William G. Moulton 12. The development of pronunciation in English language dictionaries Arthur J. Bronstein Section III: Accents of English: RP 13. 'Inverted v' in contemporary English André Martinet 14. HappY land reconnoitred: the unstressed word-final -y vowel in General British pronunciation J. Windsor Lewis 15. Generalisations on RP consonant clusters Michael G. Ashby and Patricia D.S. Ashby 16. RP: fact and fiction Susan Ramsaran 17. The social meaning of RP: and intergenerational perspective Howard giles, Nikolas Coupland, JKaren Henwood, Jim Harriman and Justine Coupland 18. Acceptable models for TEFL (with special reference to Nigeria) Titilayo Ufomata Section IV: Accents of English: native and non-native Section 19. The pronunciation of English in India R.K. Bansal 20. The pronunciation of English vowels by Shona speakers: problems and causes Alec J.C. Pongweni 21. Stress and intonation and the intelligibility of South African black English L.W. Lanham 22. Missingsch + English = Minglish (a North German variety of English) Hiltrud Martens 23. A 'standard' South African vowel system Roger Lass 24. Some rhythem, resonance and quality variations in urban Tyneside speech John Local Section V: Phonostylistics 25. The description of connected speech processes Francis Nolan and Paul E. Kerswill 26. An example of phonological reduction in english Wolf-Dietrich Bald 27. Pre-processing of anomalous text-strings in an automatic text-to-speech system John Laver, Mike McAllister and Jan McAllister 28. Phonotactics and phonæsthesia: the power of folk lexicology Katie Wales; References