The authors and some of the collaborators involved in the elaboration of the Multimedia Lab are active members of SCIMITAR (Santiago-Centred International Milieu for Interactional, Typological and Acquisitional Research). SCIMITAR was founded in 2000 as a forum for international cooperation among researchers orientated to the interdisciplinary study of the interface between language and discourse from a functionalist perspective, that is, assuming that the structure of language is adapted to its primary purpose: communication between human beings.

Although our main focus is the description of present-day English (phonetics, lexico-grammar, usage, discourse organization and pragmatics), we also investigate:

• The functional-cognitive space. We characterize the linguistic models which form part of this space, such as Systemic Functional Linguistics, Construction Grammars, Functional Discourse Grammar or Cognitive Linguistics, among others, in order to obtain optimum levels of descriptive and explanatory adequacy.
• Contrasts and comparisons between and among languages and cultures. We seek to show how aspects that are distinctive features of English (linguistic, cognitive and cultural) compare with other languages (e.g. Spanish, Galician, Dutch, French, German, German).
• Information processing. We explore the process whereby information is acquired, retained and used by speakers in specific contexts, resorting to the sensory registers that are placed in our short and long term memory by means of explicit and implicit linguistic and non-linguistic cues.
• Computational linguistics. We design algorithms and build systems which allow computers to effectively and efficiently perform human language-related tasks such as e.g. the computational analysis of text sentiment or the automatic tagging and annotation of texts.
• Language Variation. We study synchronic variation in English and other languages (e.g. accents, dialects, registers) in such areas as e.g. phonetics, lexis, grammar, conversational acts, and discourse, as well as diachronic variation, that is, how English and other languages have changed over time.
• Language acquisition. We are mainly, but not exclusively, interested in the difficulties that Spanish speakers find in the acquisition of English. Our aim is to develop teaching and learning materials that are specially devised to avoid or circumvent such problems thereby allowing higher levels of performance in this language. Our intention is to offer solutions to language-related real-life problems.

SCIMITAR has been coordinated since its inception by María de los Ángeles Gómez-González of the Department of English of the University of Santiago de Compostela and brings together experts (and their respective research institutes) from four other universities: VU University Amsterdam (Netherlands), University of Swansea (United Kingdom), Simon Fraser University (Canada) and the University of Almería (Spain). SCIMITAR has received funding for its research projects from various authorities and organizations, notably the European Regional Development Fund, the Spanish Ministry for Innovation and Science and the Xunta de Galicia (the Autonomous Government of Galicia).

For further details, please go to SCIMITAR'S web page.

We wish to acknowledge the help and support that many colleagues and students, as well as friends and family members, have given us in the process of preparing this book and its accompanying website. Special mention must be made of the following people and institutions.

To devise the Multimedia Lab, the website that supports this textbook, we benefited greatly from the technical expertise of Alejandro Carbajo, Isaac González and Santiago Fernández, as well as from the premises provided by A Casa do Rock, Cilenis™ and SERVIMAV, the Audiovisual Media Service of the University of Santiago de Compostela. Our gratitude also extends to Patrick Ashcroft, Eithne Keane, Charlotte Astley and Rachel Sammons, who allowed us to record and video-tape them as native speakers of British English. Likewise, our heartfelt thanks go to our colleague Susana María Doval Suárez, who has taken their time to assist us in the production of the contents of the website (information concerning the Spanish language). Special mention is also well-deserved by Alba Ágata Dias Fernández, who supported us in both the formatting and compilation of the material included in this book and the Multimedia Lab and Ana Gómez López,Lucía González Campos and Laia Dòria Calsina, who helped with revision. Lastly, we should also like to acknowledge the collaboration of the following scholars: Mark Huckvale, Mercedes Cabrera Abreu, Francisco Vizcaíno Ortega, Francisco Gallardo del Puerto, Rafael Monroy Casas and Mª Luisa García Lecumberri for having provided us with useful material on (acoustic) phonetics and on the acquisition of English pronunciation by Spanish-speaking learners, which contributed greatly to the completeness of these aspects of the manual; and last, but not least, J. Lachlan Mackenzie, Mike Hannay, Francisco Gonzálvez, Susana Doval Suárez, Elsa González Álvarez and Laura Alba Juez, to whom we are also much indebted for their suggestions and corrections on earlier versions of the book. We hereby thank these scholars for their input and absolve them of any responsibility for what follows.