John Cunnison "Ian" Catford (26 March 1917 – 6 October 2009) was a Scottish linguist and phonetician of worldwide renown.
Biography
Catford was born in
Edinburgh, Scotland
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
. After his secondary and university studies, he studied phonetics. He taught English abroad (in
Greece, in
Palestine
__NOTOC__
Palestine may refer to:
* State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia
* Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia
* Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...
and in
Egypt), including during
World War II.
He met his wife, Lotte, while he was living in Jerusalem. Lotte was from
Vienna and spoke
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
. However, she had moved to Palestine and while she was young she learned other languages, such as
Hebrew,
English and
Arabic. This was one source of Catford's knowledge about languages and their phonetics.
Catford founded the School of Applied Linguistics at the
University of Edinburgh, as well as another department in the same university that undertook the mapping of different English dialects throughout
Scotland. Catford could identify where people were from exclusively through their speech.
His expertise – which included formal
phonetics, the aerodynamic and physiological production of speech, phonetic peculiarities in speech, and an astounding ability to reproduce words, and even speeches, backwards – led him to be invited to the University of Michigan. There, he headed the English Language Institute and the Laboratory of Communicative Sciences (current the Laboratory of Phonetics). He taught most of the Linguistics subjects in the same university.
He retired in 1985, but did not become inactive. On the contrary: he was invited to some of the most prestigious universities around the globe, including those in Istanbul, Jerusalem and California. He published numerous articles, participated in many conferences and continued to lecture and give presentations, especially at the
University of Michigan. Many of his original works are kept there. He advised many university students who wanted to follow a career in Linguistics.
Catford had two children from his marriage with Lotte: Lorna and Julian. He died, of old age, in October 2009 in
Shoreline, Washington, USA.
Works
Among his many articles, published essays and other works, it is worth highlighting the following:
*''A Practical Introduction to Phonetics'', 2nd. ed., Oxford University Press, 2002.
*''Fundamental Problems in Phonetics''
*''Word-stress and sentence-stress: a practical and theoretical guide for teachers of Basic English''
*''A Linguistic Theory of Translation''
*''Ergativity in Caucasian Languages''
References
Library Thing: Books by J. C. CatfordMemorial Websites: Remembering J. C. Catford67/68 year old Ian relates his life. Videos from 8 “lectures” given between Feb. 7 and Apr. 18, 1985. Altogether 6h 21m of storytelling.
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Catford, J C
2009 deaths
1917 births
Phoneticians
University of Michigan staff
British emigrants to the United States
British expatriates in Greece
British expatriates in Mandatory Palestine
British expatriates in Egypt