Dr Gerry Knowles
Gerry Knowles worked in Linguistics and English Language until September 2007.
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Senior Lecturer
Degree: MA (Cambridge), PhD (Leeds).
Research Interests
Gerry has a range of academic interests:
Spoken English
His Phd was entitled 'Scouse: the urban dialect of Liverpool ' (Leeds, 1975) and carried out the first systematic investigation of the phonetics and phonology of Liverpool English, including rhythm and intonation. He is author of Patterns of Spoken English, (Longman, 1987), and he was involved in the compilation and prosodic annotation of the Lancaster/IBM Spoken English Corpus. His current interest is in the developing Englishes of Asia, in the design of appropriate corpora to study them, and in the development of new strategies for the teaching of English in Asia.
The history of the English language.
Gerry published a prize-winning A Cultural History of the English Language (Edward Arnold, 1997), and is currently working on a new critical history of the language.
Asian Linguistics
The emphasis here is on developing computational solutions for real world problems, particularly in connection with the growing economies of Asia . The aim is to create integrated computer-based language systems to support speech and language technologies. Gerry has a long-standing interest in Arabic linguistics, but since 2001 has been concentrating on the MALEX programme.
Teaching
Gerry teaches the following courses:
Undergraduate
- 133: Historical Background to Modern English
- 203: English Language: Past and Present (Spoken English, term 2)
Postgraduate
- MA: Investigating Spoken English (not 2005-6)
- 491: The History of English (weeks 11 and 14 only)