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This paper reports on a phonetic and phonological study of /t/-affrication in spontaneous British English Received Pronunciation. The study is motivated by the uncertainty surrounding plosive affrication in the literature on lenition and fortition. We suggest that a decision as to the status of a given pattern involving affrication in terms of lenition or fortition should be based on thorough phonetic and phonological analysis. We present a phonetic and phonological account of /t/-affrication, which takes into consideration the temporal and spectral characteristics of the sounds involved, as well as their distribution across phonological environments. Crucially, we compare affricated instances of /t/ with aspirated and fricated ones in the same dataset – the former arguably unmarked in this variety, the latter uncontroversially the result of lenition. We argue that the phonetic and phonological characteristics of /t/-affrication presented in this paper are consistent with an account in terms of fortition rather than lenition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a sketch of the life and work of J. R. Firth, the first professor of general linguistics in Great Britain and President of the Philological Society from 1954 to 1957, based on a study of existing biographical literature and commentary, Firth’s publications, and various hitherto unpublished archive materials. The article sheds new light on matters such as Firth’s entry into the fledgling field of linguistics in Britain, his relationships with colleagues such as Daniel Jones and Arthur Lloyd James, and his alleged attempts to present a book-length exposition of his views on linguistics and phonetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]