Beatrice Honikman

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Beatrice Lilian Honikman (28 September 1905 – 22 March 1998) was a South African-born phonetician. She taught at SOAS, University of London, and later at the University of Leeds, focusing on the phonetics of African languages. After finishing school in South Africa, she studied phonetics in the late 1920s with Daniel Jones at University College London, and then worked at SOAS under J.R. Firth. She helped publish on the phonetics of Hausa and, when Lilias Armstrong died in 1937, edited and completed The Phonetic and Tonal Structure of Kikuyu, published in 1940. From 1955 to 1971 she lectured in the Phonetics Department at Leeds, under P.A.D. MacCarthy. Her best known work from that time concerned articulatory settings, or the basic ways people shape their mouths when speaking. Although she did not originate the idea, her article is widely cited. She died in Cape Town in 1998.