ABSTRACT
When An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English first appeared in 1962, Gimson observed at §7.10 (3) that for example 'in certain kinds of London and Australian English in unaccented final positions /ɪ/ was 'sometimes replaced by' /i:/. It was only in his final revision of 1980 (pace Wells 1982: 258) that he substituted for that comment the remark that /ɪ/ is 'increasingly replaced in the speech of the younger generations by a short variety of ' /i:/. Since vowels of unaccented syllables are naturally usually relatively short this was obviously a non-committal hint at the presence of a phonological distinction. The remark echoes one made by Jones (1932) about a set of vowels which often behave rhythmically like the word-final unaccented -y vowels. At §§470-72 of Jones (1932) 'shortened' was specified for unstressed occurrences of me, he, she and we. Ward (1929) had also remarked that 'some speakers' had a 'very short' /i: / in such words in unaccented syllables.
