To John Ohala on the occasion of the opening of the San José Phonology Laboratory
December 2007

I’ve never had the opportunity to introduce John Ohala before, so pardon me if I’m a bit effusive. My own professors at UCLA, especially Donca Steriade and Peter Ladefoged, have had a huge influence on my thinking, but 400 hundred miles up the 101 at Berkeley, John Ohala’s research program has been the most important of all. I don’t mean only as an influence on my work, but much more importantly, in terms of reminding the linguistics community at large what are the real questions that we should be asking, and where we should be looking for the answers.

John’s research program sees phonology as possessing elements of both the natural sciences and the social sciences. This is nothing new, of course. What is new, is that John actually appeals to research in both the natural and social sciences in his search for explanations in phonology. This may actually sound common-sensical, but for those of you who haven’t been reading the linguistics literature for the last half-century or so, trust me, linguistics has desperately needed this good dose of common sense that John is providing.

John’s research on the phonetic explanations for phonological sound patterns would have provided a huge benefit to the philologists and historical linguists of previous eras, who could have tested their linguistic reconstructions and proposed sound changes against their articulatory and acoustic phonetic plausibility.

His use of the laboratory as a time machine—that is, showing how real-world slow-acting sound changes can be sped up under the proper laboratory conditions—continues to provide remarkably fertile ground for researchers in phonetics, phonology, and historical linguistics.

His theories on the social and psychological mechanisms of sound change properly recognize that linguistic sound structure is unambiguously influenced by the social setting in which language is used. His proposal that sound change begins in the low-level variation common to all speech, and may take root in the misattributions of listeners, was often bandied about by earlier scholars, but John was the first to actually show how and why this is such a compelling explanation for many sorts of sound changes.

I can’t think of anyone who is better suited to discuss the uses that a phonetics and phonology lab can be put to by students of language, and so it’s my sincere pleasure to be introducing John to you all today at this, the official opening of our phonology lab here at San José State.