John Local,
BA,
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
(
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a public university, public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick un ...
) (born 1947), is a British
phonetician
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...
and Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at the
University of York
The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...
. He was one of the creators of the experimental Yorktalk non-segmental speech synthesis system (original computational implementation was by John Coleman) which employed techniques of Firthian Prosodic Analysis (FPA), an approach to phonology developed by
J.R. Firth and members of the
London School of linguistics. His book ''Doing Phonology'' written with
John Kelly provides a radical contemporary take on FPA. Arising out of work which combined detailed phonetic analysis and
Conversation Analysis (French and Local 1983) his recent research has explored the interactional functioning of phonetic detail and phonetic variation in talk-in-interaction (Local and Walker 2005). According to Ford and Couper-Kuhlen (2004), Local's work 'has been seminal in founding a phonology for conversation. ... his studies have revealed dimensions of patterned sound production in talk-in-interaction hitherto unfathomed' (2004:13).
References
* Ford, Cecilia and Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth (2004) ''Sound Patterns in Interaction''. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* French, Peter and Local, John (1983) Turn-competitive incomings. ''Journal of Pragmatics'' 7. 17–38.
* Kelly, John and Local, John (1989) ''Doing Phonology: observing, recording, interpreting''. Manchester University Press.
* Local, John and Walker, Gareth (2005) Methodological imperatives for investigating the phonetic organisation and phonological structures of spontaneous speech. ''Phonetica'' 62. 120–130.
External links
John Local's homepageJohn Local's staff pageGareth Walker's homepageJohn Coleman's homepage
1947 births
Living people
Academics of the University of York
Linguists from the United Kingdom
Linguists from England
Phoneticians
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