David Abercrombie and the changing field of phonetics

David Abercrombie (1909-1992) played an interesting role in the development of phonetics. Before his time the field was not considered to be a separate university subject in which one could get a degree. The notion of general phonetics as a discipline hardly existed until after World War II. Abercrombie helped define and shape the field. But by the time of his death two events had occurred that changed the role of phonetics: the Chomskyan revolution had made syntax rather than sound systems the major object of study in linguistics: and the needs of communication engineers had become more important than those of language teachers. Abercrombie's view of phonetics is now less central. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.