John Laver

John David Michael Henry Laver, (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.

Life and career Laver was born in Nowshera, British India, 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. 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. 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.

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 and reverted 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