John Ohala

John Ohala
Born	July 19, 1941 Chicago, Illinois
Died	August 23, 2020(2020-08-23) (aged 79) Berkeley, California
Spouse	Manjari Agrawal (m. 1969)
Academic background
Alma mater	University of California, Los Angeles (PhD)
Thesis	Aspects of the control and production of speech (1969)
Doctoral advisor	Peter Ladefoged
Academic work
Discipline	linguistics
Sub-discipline	phonology
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley
Doctoral students	John Kingston

John Jerome Ohala (July 19, 1941 – August 22, 2020) was a linguist specializing in phonetics and phonology. He was a Professor Emeritus in linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Career

He received his PhD in linguistics in 1969 from the 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 also proposed that ethological principles influence certain aspects of languages' prosodic patterns, sound symbolism, and facial expressions, such as lip and brow movements.

Further reading

• Johnson, Keith (2020). "In Memoriam: John J. Ohala (1941–2020)". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 50 (3): 452–455. doi:10.1017/S0025100320000316.