John Ohala
Encyclopedia
John Ohala is a Professor Emeritus in linguistics
at the University of California, Berkeley
. He specializes in phonetics
and phonology
.
He received his PhD
in Linguistics in 1969 from University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA); his graduate advisor was Peter Ladefoged
. He is best known for his insistence that many aspects of languages' phonologies (a.k.a. "sound patterns") derive from physical and physiological constraints which are independent of language and thus have no place in the "grammar" of a language, i.e., what speakers have to learn inductively from exposure to the speech community into which they are born.
He has also proposed that ethological principles (that is, Darwinian principles where behavior influences the "fitness" and thus survivability of the species) determine certain aspects of languages' prosodic patterns, sound symbolism, and facial expressions involving the lips.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. He specializes in phonetics
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
and phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
.
He received his PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in Linguistics in 1969 from University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
(UCLA); his graduate advisor was Peter Ladefoged
Peter Ladefoged
Peter Nielsen Ladefoged was an English-American linguist and phonetician who traveled the world to document the distinct sounds of endangered languages and pioneered ways to collect and study data . He was active at the universities of Edinburgh, Scotland and Ibadan, Nigeria 1953–61...
. He is best known for his insistence that many aspects of languages' phonologies (a.k.a. "sound patterns") derive from physical and physiological constraints which are independent of language and thus have no place in the "grammar" of a language, i.e., what speakers have to learn inductively from exposure to the speech community into which they are born.
He has also proposed that ethological principles (that is, Darwinian principles where behavior influences the "fitness" and thus survivability of the species) determine certain aspects of languages' prosodic patterns, sound symbolism, and facial expressions involving the lips.