Peter Ladefoged - Academic Career

Academic Career

At the same time, he began important research projects with Donald Broadbent, Walter Lawrence, Morris H. Draper, and David Whitteridge, with his first publications appearing in 1956. His 1957 paper with Donald Broadbent, "Information conveyed by vowels", was particularly influential.

Soon after moving to Los Angeles from Scotland to become an assistant professor at UCLA in 1962, Ladefoged had a brief career in Hollywood as the chief linguistic consultant on the 1964 film My Fair Lady. Director George Cukor wanted him to teach the film's star, Rex Harrison – who would win an Oscar for the role of Professor Henry Higgins – to behave like a phonetician. It is Ladefoged's voice that is heard producing the vowel sounds in the film.

Ladefoged was involved with the phonetics laboratory at UCLA, which he established in 1962. He also was interested in listening to and describing every sound used in spoken human language, which he estimated at 900 consonants and 200 vowels. This research formed the basis of much of The Sounds of the World's Languages. In 1966 Ladefoged moved from the UCLA English Department to join the newly established Linguistics Department.

Ladefoged's opinion on studying endangered languages was that linguists should record languages but not necessarily try to save them, even though he predicted that all but a handful of the world's 6,500 languages would disappear over the next thousand years. He argued that preserving languages could weaken national unity, encourage tribalism, and absorb scarce resources that might otherwise be used for development.

Ladefoged was also a member of the International Phonetic Association for a long time, and was involved in maintaining its International Phonetic Alphabet. He was also editor of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association. Ladefoged served on the board of directors of the Endangered Language Fund since its inception.

Ladefoged is a founding member of the Association for Laboratory Phonology.