Category Archives: Uncategorized

New Article 10 Mar 2023

New article just published: Dating the open /æ/ sound change in Southern British English In JASA Express Letters 3, 035205 (open access) Download from Publications/Journals menu

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Jack Windsor Lewis

A month ago we were saddened by the news of the passing of Jack Windsor Lewis. I never managed to meet him inperson, we always seemed to be a year or so out of phase, from Stockholm in the 1950s … Continue reading

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Dating the New Open TRAP Sound Change in Southeast England

  Figure 1. The earlier closer TRAP, with DRESS and KIT compressed towards FLEECE. RP informant B born around 1900. Figure 2. The new open TRAP; F1 completely higher than 600Hz; DRESS and KIT are no longer compressed towards Fleece. … Continue reading

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Is cardinal 4 front or central?

150th Anniversary of the Bell Vowel Model 4 September 2017 saw the 150th anniversary of Alexander Melville Bell’s vowel model.  Daniel Jones’ cardinal vowel system was a modification of Bell’s model, especially reducing Bell’s three low vowels to two. Was … Continue reading

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19th century sound change in Kent: GOAT

The distribution of GOAT pronunciations by the eight Kentish informants (each denoted by the place and year of birth). The timbre of GOAT was studied in the speech of eight informants, all born between 1865 and 1895. Seven informants exhibit … Continue reading

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19th century sound change in Kent: PRICE

The distribution of PRICE pronunciations by the seven informants. All but one had acquired the new pronunciation [ai] (N). The informant from Appledore in the south east still had the earlier pronunciation [ʌi] (O). The earlier 19th century popular pronunciation … Continue reading

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19th century sound change in Kent

This page traces ten sound changes that completely changed the character of the regional accent spoken in 19th century Kent Rural locations and years of birth of the seven SED Kentish informants and H G Wells (each in bold italics), … Continue reading

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Caroline Bowen Best

Congratulations to Caroline Bowen for winning the 2012 Edublog “Best Teacher Edublog” award for her Speech-Language-Therapy site. Top ©Sidney Wood and SWPhonetics, 1994-2013

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