John Laver


John David Michael Henry Laver, was a British phonetician. He was Emeritus Professor of Speech Sciences at Queen Margaret University, and served as President of the International Phonetic Association from 1991 to 1995.

Life and career

Laver was born in Nowshera, British India. His father was in the Indian and later British Army. He was raised in India for six years and spoke Hindustani and English, and later lived in Egypt, Libya, Kenya, and Cyprus up until the age of ten. 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. He subsequently entered the University of Edinburgh in 1958 and graduated in 1962 with a degree in French language and literature. 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.
From 1963 to 1966, Laver was a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Formally, his post at Ibadan lasted for three years, but in the second year he was substituted by John Kelly while Laver returned to Edinburgh in exchange. In 1966, he was appointed a lecturer at Edinburgh, where he received a PhD in 1975, supervised by Abercrombie. In 1985, he was appointed Professor of Phonetics at Edinburgh, where he later received a Doctor of Letters. He was President of the International Phonetic Association from 1991 to 1995.
He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1990 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1994. In the 1999 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to phonetics.
In 2013, Trinity College Dublin awarded him an honorary doctorate.
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, reverting copyright to the contributors.
He died in Scotland on 6 May 2020 after a long illness.

Personal life

Laver married his colleague Sandy Hutcheson in 1974.

Selected publications