Another note on RP notation

Windsor Lewis's recent article (1972b) admirably summarizes the case for a Gimson-type transcription as a reference tool for EFL students. As he states, his own ‘CPD’ (Windsor Lewis, 1972a) transcription clearly—and sensibly—derives from the system established by Gimson (1962, 1970) in ‘the standard up-to-date description of Received Pronunciation’. On general principles, there is little that could usefully be added to Windsor Lewis's (1972b) comments on three other transcription types that are increasingly coming to be regarded as inappropriate for EFL purposes:(i) that used by Abercrombie (1964), which, as Windsor Lewis (1972b: 60–63) shows, has disadvantages in its choice of detail symbols (though in underlying philosophy this system is perhaps closer to ‘CPD’ than is the latter's acknowledged parent);(ii) the long-established ‘EPD’ (Jones, 1917) system, with its inconsistent treatment of the monophthong phonemes;(iii) the ‘simplified’ (Jones, 1956: 346 ff.) types of transcription first used in books by Scott (1942) and MacCarthy (1944, 1945) and taken up by Kingdon (West, 1965) and others, which although useful for the Ll speaker are grossly misleading for the EFL student in implying a solely quantitative distinction between such pairs as the vowels of seat and sit.This article will largely take for granted Windsor Lewis's comments on those types, and will concentrate on some aspects of the system discussed by Windsor Lewis (1972b) and applied in his CPD and the new third edition (1974) of the Advanced Learner's Dictionary.