Lilias Eveline Armstrong (29 September 1882 – 9 December 1937) was an English phonetician. She worked at University College London, where she attained the rank of reader. Armstrong is most known for her work on English intonation as well as the phonetics and tone of Somali and Kikuyu. Her book on English intonation, written with Ida C. Ward, was in print for 50 years. Armstrong also provided some of the first detailed descriptions of tone in Somali and Kikuyu.
Armstrong grew up in Northern England. She graduated from the University of Leeds, where she studied French and Latin. She taught French in an elementary school in the London suburbs for a while, but then joined the University College Phonetics Department, headed by Daniel Jones. Her most notable works were the 1926 book A Handbook of English Intonation, co-written with Ward, the 1934 paper "The Phonetic Structure of Somali", and the book The Phonetic and Tonal Structure of Kikuyu, published posthumously in 1940 after she died of a stroke in 1937 at age 55.
She was the subeditor of the International Phonetic Association's journal for more than a decade, and was praised in her day for her teaching, both during the academic term and in the department's summer vacation courses. Jones wrote in his obituary of her that she was "one of the finest phoneticians in the world".
Early life
Lilias Eveline Armstrong was born on 29 September 1882 in Pendlebury, Lancashire, to James William Armstrong, a Free Methodist minister, and Mary Elizabeth Armstrong, née Hunter. Her upbringing led to her speech having certain Northern English characteristics. Armstrong studied French and Latin at the University of Leeds, where she was a king's scholar. She received her B.A. in 1906, and she was also trained as a teacher.
After graduating from Leeds, Armstrong taught French in East Ham for several years; she had success in this line of work, and was well on her way to becoming headmistress by the time she left this position in 1918. While she was Senior Assistant Mistress, she began studying phonetics in the evenings part-time at the University College Phonetics Department in order to improve her teaching of French pronunciation. In 1917, Armstrong received a Diploma with Distinction in French Phonetics; she got a Diploma with Distinction in English phonetics the following year.
Academic career
Teaching and lecturing
Employment history
Armstrong first taught phonetics in 1917 in Daniel Jones's summer course for missionaries; even before then, Jones had planned to give Armstrong a full-time position at the University College Phonetics Department. Those plans were temporarily put on hold when London County Council decided against a budgetary increase for the department in October, but in November 1917, Jones nominated Armstrong to receive a temporary, part-time lectureship, which she started in February 1918. She was finally able to work full-time at the start of the 1918–1919 academic year, becoming the Phonetics Department's first full-time assistant. Armstrong became lecturer in 1920, senior lecturer in 1921, and reader in 1937. Her promotion to readership was announced in The Times and The Universities Review. Armstrong also occasionally taught at the School of Oriental Studies. When Jones had to take a leave of absence the first nine months of 1920, Armstrong became acting head of the department in his stead. During this time, she interviewed and admitted students into the department. Other positions she held at University College were Chairman of the Refectory Committee and Secretary of the Women Staff Common Room. Learned societies Armstrong belonged to included the International Phonetic Association, the Modern Language Association, and the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.
Courses and lectures
Armstrong taught classes on the phonetics of French, English, Swedish, and Russian, and, alongside Daniel Jones, a class on speech pathology titled "Lecture-demonstrations on Methods of Correcting Defects of Speech". Armstrong also led ear-training exercises, which were an important part of teaching at the University College Department of Phonetics.