{{Short description|British phonetician (1938–2020)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox person |name=John Laver |honorific_suffix={{post-nominals|size=100|country=GBR|CBE|FBA|FRSE}} |birth_name=John David Michael Henry Laver |birth_date={{birth date|1938|1|20|df=y}} |birth_place=Nowshera, British India |death_date={{death date and age|2020|5|6|1938|1|20|df=y}} |death_place=Edinburgh, Scotland |occupation=Phonetician |notable_works={{Unbulleted list|''The Phonetic Description of Voice Quality'' (1980)|''Principles of Phonetics'' (1994)}} |website= }} '''John David Michael Henry Laver''', {{post-nominals|country=GBR|sep=,|CBE|FBA|FRSE}} (20 January 1938 – 6 May 2020) was a British phonetician. He was Deputy Principal & Deputy Vice Patron as well as Emeritus professor of speech sciences at Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University, and served as president of the International Phonetic Association from 1991 to 1995.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.qmu.ac.uk/about-our-staff/professoriate/professor-john-laver/|title=Professor John Laver|publisher=Queen Margaret University|accessdate=25 March 2018}}</ref>
==Life and career== Laver was born in Nowshera, British India,<ref name="rse">{{cite press release|url=http://rse.mtcserver6.com/130_RSEAwardsBicentenaryMedalsforDistinguishedService.html|title=RSE Awards Bicentenary Medals for Distinguished Service|publisher=Royal Society of Edinburgh|date=2 July 2004}}</ref> to a father who was in the Indian and later the British Army. He was raised in India for six years and spoke Hindustani and English and later lived in Egypt, Libya, Kenya and Cyprus until the age of ten.<ref name="laver2002">{{cite book|last=Laver|first=John|year=2002|chapter=John Laver|editor1-last=Brown|editor1-first=Keith|editor1-link=Keith Brown (linguist)|editor2-last=Law|editor2-first=Vivien|editor2-link=Vivien Law|title=Linguistics in Britain: Personal Histories|publisher=Blackwell|pages=139–154|isbn=0-631-23476-4}}</ref> After attending a boarding school in Hampshire, Laver entered the Royal Air Force College Cranwell to pursue a career as a military pilot, which he eventually gave up.<ref name="laver2002"/> He subsequently entered the University of Edinburgh in 1958 and graduated in 1962 with a degree in French language and French. At Edinburgh, he was introduced to phonetics and to the Department of Phonetics headed by David Abercrombie, under which he obtained a postgraduate diploma in 1963.<ref name="laver2002"/>
From 1963 to 1966, Laver was a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.<ref name="rse"/> Formally, his post at Ibadan lasted for three years, but in the second year he was substituted for by John Kelly while Laver returned to Edinburgh in exchange.<ref name="laver2002"/> In 1966, he was appointed a lecturer at Edinburgh,<ref name="rse"/> where he received a PhD in 1975, presenting the thesis ''"Individual features in voice quality"'' <ref>{{Cite journal|last=Laver|first=J. D. M. H.|date=1987|title=Individual features in voice quality.|url=https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/6732}}</ref> supervised by Abercrombie.<ref>{{cite thesis|last=Laver|first=John|year=1975|title=Individual features in voice quality|publisher=University of Edinburgh|hdl=1842/6732 |url=https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/6732}}</ref> In 1985, he was appointed Professor of Phonetics at Edinburgh, where he later received a Doctor of Letters.<ref name="asher">{{cite book|last=Asher|first=R. E.|authorlink=R. E. Asher|year=2005|chapter=Foreword|editor1-last=Hardcastle|editor1-first=W. J.|editor2-last=Beck|editor2-first=J. Mackenzie|title=A Figure of Speech: A Festschrift for John Laver|location=Mahwah, New Jersey|publisher=Lawrence Erlbaum Associates|pages=ix–xvi|isbn=0-8058-4528-3}}</ref> He was president of the International Phonetic Association from 1991 to 1995.<ref name="rse"/>
He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1990 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 1994.<ref name="asher"/> In the 1999 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to phonetics.<ref name="LG">{{London Gazette |issue= 55354 |date= 31 December 1998 |pages= 7-8 |supp= y }}</ref>
In 2013, Trinity College Dublin awarded him an honorary doctorate.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.tcd.ie/registrar/honorary-degrees/2013-14/|title=Registrar : Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, Ireland|website=www.tcd.ie|access-date=2020-01-27}}</ref>
With Ronald E. Asher, Laver served as general editor of ''The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Speech and Language'' for Wiley-Blackwell, which involved nearly 40 contributors and was completed in 2013 after about 25 years of preparation. During a period of Laver's illness, however, Wiley-Blackwell withdrew from the contract and reverted copyright to the contributors.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Laver|first1=John|last2=Mason|first2=Ian|year=2018|title=A Dictionary of Translation and Interpreting|url=https://www.academia.edu/37923697}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Handbook+of+Phonetic+Sciences%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9781405145909|title=The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences, 2nd Edition|publisher=Wiley|date=February 2010|accessdate=12 May 2020}}</ref>
He died in Scotland on 6 May 2020 after a long illness.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Ashby|first1=Michael|last2=Docherty|first2=Gerard|date=12 May 2020|url=https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/news/202005/professor-john-laver-1938%E2%80%932020|title=Professor John Laver (1938–2020)|publisher=International Phonetic Association|accessdate=12 May 2020}}</ref>
==Personal life== Laver married his colleague Sandy Hutcheson in 1974.<ref name="laver2002"/>
==Selected publications== *{{cite journal|last=Laver|first=John|year=1965|title=Variability in Vowel Perception|journal=Language and Speech|volume=8|issue=2|pages=95–121|doi=10.1177/002383096500800203|s2cid=141660044 }} *{{cite journal|last=Laver|first=John|year=1968|title=Voice Quality and Indexical Information|journal=British Journal of Disorders of Communication|volume=3|issue=1|pages=43–54|doi=10.3109/13682826809011440|pmid=5665923 }} *{{cite book|editor1-last=Laver|editor1-first=John|editor2-last=Hutcheson|editor2-first=Sandy|year=1972|title=Communication in Face-to-Face Interaction: Selected Readings|location=Harmondsworth|publisher=Penguin|isbn=0-14-080664-4}} *{{cite book|editor1-last=Jones|editor1-first=William E.|editor2-last=Laver|editor2-first=John|year=1973|title=Phonetics in Linguistics: A Book of Readings|location=London|publisher=Longman|isbn=0-582-52451-2}} *{{cite book|last1=Laver|first1=John|last2=Trudgill|first2=Peter|authorlink2=Peter Trudgill|year=1979|chapter=Phonetic and linguistic markers in speech|editor1-last=Scherer|editor1-first=Klaus R.|editor1-link=Klaus Scherer|editor2-last=Giles|editor2-first=Howard|editor2-link=Howard Giles|title=Social Markers in Speech|publisher=Cambridge University Press|pages=[https://archive.org/details/socialmarkersinspee0000_v0n5/page/1 1–32]|isbn=0-521-22321-0|url=https://archive.org/details/socialmarkersinspee0000_v0n5/page/1}} *{{cite book|last=Laver|first=John|year=1980|title=The Phonetic Description of Voice Quality|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=0-521-23176-0|url=https://archive.org/details/phoneticdescript0000lave}} *{{cite book|last=Laver|first=John|year=1981|chapter=The Analysis of Voice Quality: from the Classical Period to the Twentieth Century|editor1-last=Asher|editor1-first=R. E.|editor1-link=R. E. Asher|editor2-last=Henderson|editor2-first=Eugene J. A.|title=Towards a History of Phonetics|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|pages=[https://archive.org/details/towardshistoryof0000unse/page/79 79–99]|isbn=0-85224-374-X|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/towardshistoryof0000unse/page/79}} *{{cite book|editor1-last=Myers|editor1-first=Terry|editor2-last=Laver|editor2-first=John|editor3-last=Anderson|editor3-first=John|year=1981|title=The Cognitive Representation of Speech|publisher=North-Holland|isbn=0-444-86162-9|url=https://archive.org/details/cognitivereprese0000unse}} *{{cite book|editor-last=Laver|editor-first=John|year=1991|title=The Gift of Speech: Papers in the Analysis of Speech and Voice|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|isbn=0-7486-0313-1}} *{{cite book|last=Laver|first=John|year=1992|chapter=Voice quality|editor-last=Bright|editor-first=William|editor-link=William O. Bright|title=International Encyclopedia of Linguistics|volume=4|location=Oxford, England|publisher=Pergamon|pages=[https://archive.org/details/internationalenc00newy/page/231 231–232]|isbn=0-19-505196-3|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/internationalenc00newy/page/231}} *{{cite book|last=Laver|first=John|year=1994|title=Principles of Phonetics|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=0-521-45655-X}} *{{cite book|last=Laver|first=John|year=1994|chapter=Speech|editor1-last=Asher|editor1-first=R. E.|editor2-last=Simpson|editor2-first=J. M. Y.|title=Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics|volume=8|location=Oxford, England|publisher=Pergamon|pages=4101–4109|isbn=0-08-035943-4}} *{{cite book|editor1-last=Hardcastle|editor1-first=William J.|editor2-last=Laver|editor2-first=John|year=1997|title=The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|isbn=0-631-18848-7}} *{{cite book|last=Laver|first=John|year=2000|chapter=Phonetic evaluation of voice quality|editor1-last=Kent|editor1-first=Raymond D.|editor2-last=Ball|editor2-first=Martin J.|editor2-link=Martin J. Ball|title=Voice Quality Measurement|location=San Diego|publisher=Singular|pages=37–48|isbn=1-56593-991-3}} *{{cite book|last=Laver|first=John|year=2001|chapter=Linguistic Phonetics|editor1-last=Aronoff|editor1-first=Mark|editor1-link=Mark Aronoff|editor2-last=Rees-Miller|editor2-first=Janie|title=The Handbook of Linguistics|url=https://archive.org/details/handbooklinguist00aron_948|url-access=limited|publisher=Blackwell|pages=[https://archive.org/details/handbooklinguist00aron_948/page/n167 150]–179|isbn=0-631-20497-0}}
==References== {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Laver, John}} Category:Phoneticians Category:Linguists from the United Kingdom Category:Academics of the University of Edinburgh Category:Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Category:Fellows of the British Academy Category:People from Nowshera District Category:1938 births Category:2020 deaths Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:Academics of Queen Margaret University Category:Academic staff of the University of Ibadan