Richard John Lloyd

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

DLitt (1846-1906) was a British linguist and phoneticist. He researched the acoustics of vowel sounds and articulation, which he deemed “minute phonetics”. His field of work did not become popular until the late 20th century, around 100 years after his original work.

Life

He was born in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

on 14 October 1846, into the well-established family business of Richard Lloyd & Brothers. At first entering the family business, he only attended university later in life, graduating from the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

in 1875 with a BA. In 1890 the university awarded him an honorary doctorate (DLitt). In 1897 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

. His proposers were

John Gray McKendrick John Gray McKendrick FRS FRSE FRCPE LLD (12 August 1841 – 2 January 1926) was a distinguished Scottish physiologist. He was born and studied in Aberdeen, Scotland, and served as Regius Professor of Physiology at the University of Glasgow fr ...

, Alexander Buchan,

James Thomson Bottomley James Thomson Bottomley (10 January 1845 – 18 May 1926) was an Irish-born British physicist. He is noted for his work on thermal radiation and on his creation of 4-figure logarithm tables, used to convert long multiplication and division ca ...

and

Magnus Maclean Prof Magnus Maclean FRSE MIEE MICE LLD (1857-1937) was an electrical engineer who assisted Lord Kelvin in his electrical experiments and later became Professor of Electrical Engineering in Glasgow (one of the first to hold such a title). The Magnu ...

. He took a particular interest in

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

, and became vice-president of the

International Phonetic Association The International Phonetic Association (IPA; French: ', ''API'') is an organization that promotes the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical applications of that science. The IPA's major contribution to phonetics is the Interna ...

. Lloyd worked as a customs official and port gauger after he left the university. Lloyd was reported missing on 29 August 1906 while attending an Esperanto Congress in Geneva, and his body was found in the

Rhône The Rhône ( , ; wae, Rotten ; frp, Rôno ; oc, Ròse ) is a major river in France and Switzerland, rising in the Alps and flowing west and south through Lake Geneva and southeastern France before discharging into the Mediterranean Sea. At Ar ...

at Seyssel in France, close to the Swiss border. It was surmised he had fallen in while walking along the river's bank. His daughter Eirene Theodora married Thomas Jones.

Publications

*''Northern English: Phonetics, Grammar, Texts''

References

1846 births 1906 deaths Academics from Liverpool Alumni of the University of London Linguists from the United Kingdom Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh {{UK-linguist-stub

Life

Publications

Further reading

References