CONTACT Dr. Esling

John H. Esling is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Victoria, former Secretary of the International Phonetic Association (1995-2003), member of the IPA Council and of the Permanent Council for the Organization of International Congresses of Phonetic Science, former Editor of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association (2003-2011), and current President of the International Phonetic Association. He has an MA in Linguistics from the University of Michigan (1972), where he studied with Ian Catford and Kenneth Pike, and a PhD in Phonetics from the University of Edinburgh, where he worked with David Abercrombie, John Laver, and James (Tony) Anthony, and taught at the University of Leeds before moving to the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, in 1981. He is Director of the Phonetics Laboratory in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Victoria and Chair of the Department. His research is in auditory and articulatory phonetics, particularly the categorization of voice quality, of vocal register, and of the phonetic production and modelling of laryngeal and pharyngeal sounds. He is the Principal Investigator on two research projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: the Laryngoscopic Phonetic Research Project, to investigate speech articulation in the throat, and the Infant Speech Acquisition (InSpA) Project, an international collaboration based in Victoria with research teams in Canada, France, Morocco and China, to establish how infants first acquire the modality of phonetic speech-sound production. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he is the author of over 100 scholarly articles and chapters and of numerous conference presentations, compiler of the University of Victoria Phonetic Database, section editor for Phonetics of the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2006), an editor of the Handbook of the IPA (CUP 1999), and an editor of the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary (CUP, 2011). He has collaborated with Prof. Jerry Edmondson and Dr. Michael Ross MD (and with the late Jimmy G. Harris) in taking endoscopic videos to catalogue speech production in the larynx among the languages of the world. He trains the students in the BSc in Linguistics program in speech physiology, articulatory production, and auditory phonetic listening (most of whom continue to pursue Speech Pathology, Audiology or Speech Technology), and he supervises MA and PhD students in Phonetics.

 

Recent Works - click to view/hide

Selected Publications

Esling, John H. & Moisik, Scott R. (2012). Laryngeal aperture in relation to larynx height change: An analysis using simultaneous laryngoscopy and laryngeal ultrasound [Analiza regulacji otwarcia krtani wzgle∫dem jej wysokosååci z wykorzystaniem jednoczesnej laryngoskopii i ultradzåwie∫kowego obrazowania krtani]. In Dafydd Gibbon, Daniel Hirst & Nick Campbell (Eds.), Rhythm, melody and harmony in speech: Studies in honour of Wiktor Jassem [Speech and Language Technology, 14/15] (pp. 117-127). Poznanå: Polskie Towarzystwo Fonetyczne.
 
Zeroual, Chakir, Hoole, Phil & Esling, John H. (2011). Contraintes articulatoires et acoustico-perceptives liées à la production de /K/ emphatisée en arabe marocain. In Mohamed Embarki & Christelle Dodane (Eds.), La coarticulation : des indices à la representation (pp. 227-240). Paris: L’Harmattan.

Esling, John H. (2011). IPA. Oxford Bibliographies Online: Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0022

Hassan, Zeki Majeed, & Esling, John H. (2011). Investigating the emphatic feature in Iraqi Arabic: Acoustic and articulatory evidence of coarticulation. In Zeki Majeed Hassan & Barry Heselwood (Eds.), Instrumental studies in Arabic phonetics (pp. 217-234). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Zeroual, Chakir, Esling, John H. & Hoole, Philip. (2011). EMA, endoscopic, ultrasound and acoustic study of two secondary articulations in Moroccan Arabic: Labial-velarisation vs. emphasis. In Zeki Majeed Hassan & Barry Heselwood (Eds.), Instrumental studies in Arabic phonetics (pp. 277-297). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Jones, Daniel [Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling (eds.)]. (2011). The Cambridge English pronouncing dictionary, 18th Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 
Moisik, Scott R. & Esling, John H. (2011). Evaluating the vowel space effects of larynx height using laryngeal ultrasound. Canadian Acoustics, 39, 180-181.
 
Moisik, Scott R., Esling, John H., Bird, Sonya & Lin, Hua. (2011). Evaluating laryngeal ultrasound to study larynx state and height. Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 136-139). Hong Kong.

Esling, John H. & Moisik, Scott R. (2011). Multimodal observation and measurement of larynx height and state during pharyngeal sounds. Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 643-646). Hong Kong.
 
Hassan, Zeki Majeed, Esling, John H., Moisik, Scott R. & Crevier-Buchman, Lise. (2011). Aryepiglottic trilled variants of \?, ©\ in Iraqi Arabic. Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 831-834). Hong Kong.
 
Moisik, Scott R. & Esling, John H. (2011). The ‘whole larynx’ approach to laryngeal features. Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 1406-1409). Hong Kong.
 
Zeroual, Chakir, Esling, John H., Hoole, Philip & Ridouane, Rachid. (2011). Ultrasound study of Moroccan Arabic labial-velarization. Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 2272-2275). Hong Kong.

Esling, John H., & Edmondson, Jerold A. (2011). Acoustical analysis of voice quality for sociophonetic purposes. In Marianna Di Paolo & Malcah Yaeger-Dror (Eds.), Sociophonetics: A student’s guide (pp. 131-148). London & New York: Routledge.
 
Esling, John H. (2010). Phonetic notation. In William J. Hardcastle, John Laver & Fiona E. Gibbon (Eds.), The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences, 2nd ed. (pp. 678-702). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
 
Moisik, Scott R., Esling, John H., & Crevier-Buchman, Lise. (2010). A high-speed laryngoscopic investigation of aryepiglottic trilling. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 127(3), 1548-1559.
 
Esling, John H. (2009). The control of laryngeal constriction and the emergence of speech in infants in the first year of life. In Frontiers in Phonetics and Speech Science: Festschrift for Prof. Wu Zongiji’s 100th Birthday.
 
Esling, John H. (2008). [Review of Introducing phonetic science by M. Ashby & J. Maidment, CUP, 2005]. Language 84(2),401-403.

Moisik, Scott R. & Esling, John H. (2007). 3-D auditory-articulatory modeling of the laryngeal constrictor mechanism. In J. Trouvain & W.J. Barry (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 1 (pp. 373-376). Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.

Zeroual, Chakir, Hoole, Phil, Fuchs, Susanne, & Esling, John H. (2007). EMA study of the coronal emphatic and non-emphatic plosive consonants of Moroccan Arabic. In J. Trouvain & W.J. Barry (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 1 (pp. 397-400). Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.

Esling, John H., Zeroual, Chakir, & Crevier-Buchman, Lise. (2007). A study of muscular synergies at the glottal, ventricular and aryepiglottic levels. In J. Trouvain & W.J. Barry (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 1 (pp. 585-588). Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.

Grenon, Izabelle, Benner, Allison, & Esling, John H. (2007). Language-specific phonetic production patterns in the first year of life. In J. Trouvain & W.J. Barry (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 3 (pp. 1561-1564). Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.

Hassan, Zeki Majeed & Esling, John H. (2007). Laryngoscopic (articulatory) and acoustic evidence of a prevailing emphatic feature over the word in Arabic. In J. Trouvain & W.J. Barry (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 3 (pp. 1753-1756). Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.

Edmondson, Jerold A., Padayodi, Cécile M., Hassan, Zeki Majeed, & Esling, John H. (2007). The laryngeal articulator: Source and resonator. In J. Trouvain & W.J. Barry (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 3 (pp. 2065-2068). Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.

Benner, Allison, Grenon, Izabelle, & Esling, John H. (2007). Infants' phonetic acquisition of voice quality parameters in the first year of life. In J. Trouvain & W.J. Barry (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 3 (pp. 2073-2076). Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.

Esling, John H. (2007). Articulations in the pharynx: the laryngeal constrictor. In Jimmy G. Harris, Somsonge Burusphat, & James E. Harris (Eds.), Studies in Tai and Southeast Asian Linguistics (pp. 65-88). Bangkok: Ekphimthai.

Zeroual, Chakir, Fuchs, Susanne, Hoole, Phil, & Esling, John H. (2006). Kinematic study of Moroccan Arabic simple and geminate obstruents: Evidence from transillumination. Proceedings of ISSP 2006 7th International Seminar on Speech Production (paper 75). São Paulo: CEFALA.org.

Zeroual, Chakir, Esling, John H., & Crevier-Buchman, Lise. (2006). The contribution of supraglottic laryngeal adjustments to voice: Phonetic evidence from Arabic. Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology. DOI: 10.1080/14015430600576253.

Esling, John H., & Harris, Jimmy G. (2006). Some basic states of the glottis in Tai languages. In James E. Harris (Ed.), Readings in Articulatory Phonetics: Volume 1. Consonants and Phonation Types (pp. 9-22). Bangkok: Ekphimthai.

Catford, J. C. & Esling, John H. (2006). Articulatory phonetics. In K. Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd edn.), vol. 9 (pp. 425-442). Oxford: Elsevier.

Esling, John H. (2006). States of the glottis. In K. Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd edn.) vol. 12 (pp. 129-132). Oxford: Elsevier.

Esling, John H. (2006). Voice quality. In K. Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd edn.) vol. 13 (pp. 470-474). Oxford: Elsevier.

Edmondson, Jerold A., & Esling, John H. (2006). The valves of the throat and their functioning in tone, vocal register, and stress: laryngoscopic case studies. Phonology, 23(2), 157-191.

Esling, John H. (2005). There are no back vowels: The laryngeal articulator model. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 50, 13-44.

Esling, John H., Fraser, Katherine E., & Harris, Jimmy G. (2005). Glottal stop, glottalized resonants, and pharyngeals: a reinterpretation with evidence from a laryngoscopic study of Nuuchahnulth (Nootka). Journal of Phonetics, 33, 383-410.

Edmondson, Jerold A., Esling, John H., Harris, Jimmy G., & Huang Tung-chiou. (2005). A laryngoscopic study of glottal and epiglottal/pharyngeal stop and continuant articulations in Amis - an Austronesian language of Taiwan. Language and Linguistics, 6, 381-396.

Zeroual, Chakir, Esling, John H., & Crevier-Buchman, Lise. (2005). Physiological study of whispered speech in Moroccan Arabic. Interspeech 2005 Proceedings (pp. 1069-1072). Lisbon.

Esling, John H. (2005). How the pharyngeal resonator is controlled articulatorily. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117, 2489.

Esling, John H., & Harris, Jimmy G. (2005). States of the glottis: An articulatory phonetic model based on laryngoscopic observations. In W. J. Hardcastle & J. Beck (Eds.), A Figure of Speech: A Festschrift for John Laver (pp. 347-383). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Edmondson, Jerold A., Esling, John H., Harris, Jimmy G., & Wei, James. (2004). A phonetic study of Sui consonants and vowels. Mon-Khmer Studies, 34, 47-66.

(2004). Carlson, Barry F., Esling, John H., & Harris, Jimmy G. A laryngoscopic phonetic study of Nlaka'pamux (Thompson) Salish glottal stop, glottalized resonants, and pharyngeals. In D. B. Gerdts & L. Matthewson (Eds.), Studies in Salish linguistics in honor of M. Dale Kinkade, Occasional Papers in Linguistics No. 17 (pp, 58-71). Missoula: University of Montana Press.

(2004). Esling, John H., Benner, Allison, Bettany, Lisa, & Zeroual, Chakir. Le contrôle articulatoire phonétique dans le prébabillage. In B. Bel & I. Marlien (Eds.), Actes des XXVes Journées d'Étude sur la Parole (pp. 205-208). Fès: AFCP.

(2004). Zeroual, Chakir, Crevier-Buchman, Lise, & Esling, John H. Ajustements laryngaux durant les consonnes gutturales et l'emphatique [S] simples et géminées de l'arabe marocain. In B. Bel & I. Marlien (Eds.), Actes des XXVes Journées d'Étude sur la Parole (pp. 469-472). Fès: AFCP.

(2004). Zeroual, Chakir, Esling, John H., & Crevier-Buchman, Lise. Ajustements supralaryngaux durant les consonnes gutturales et l'emphatique [S] simples et géminées de l'arabe marocain. InB. Bel & I. Marlien (Eds.), Actes des XXVes Journées d'Étude sur la Parole (pp. 473-476). Fès: AFCP.

(2004). Esling, John H. Vowel systems and voice setting in the Survey of Vancouver English. Journal of English Linguistics. In G. D. de Wolf, M. Fee & J. McAlpine (Eds.), The Survey of Vancouver English: A sociolinguistic study of urban Canadian English. Strathy Language Unit, Occasional Papers no. 5 (pp. 253-288). Kingston, ON: Queen's University.

(2003). Carlson, Barry F., & Esling, John H. Phonetics and physiology of the historical shift of uvulars to pharyngeals in Nuuchahnulth (Nootka). Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33, 183-193.

(2003). The laryngeal sphincter as an articulator: How register and phonation interact with vowel quality and tone. WECOL, 14, 68-86.

(2003). Esling, John H., & Harris, Jimmy G. An expanded taxonomy of states of the glottis. Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 1, pp. 1049-1052. Barcelona: UAB.

(2003). Esling, John H. Glottal and epiglottal stop in Wakashan, Salish and Semitic. Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 2, pp. 1707-1710. Barcelona: UAB.

(2003). Gao Man, & Esling, John H. Articulatory features of tones in whispered Chinese. Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 3, pp. 2629-2632. Barcelona: UAB.

(2002). Esling, John H. Laryngoscopic analysis of Tibetan chanting modes and their relationship to register in Sino-Tibetan. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, vol. 2 (pp. 1081-1084). Adelaide: Causal Productions.

(2002). Esling, John H. Articulations produced in the pharynx. In K. N. Reddy & A. R. Fatihi (Eds.). Studies in phonetics and phonology - with reference to Indian languages. New Delhi: ESS Publications, Aligarh and Creative Publications.

(2002). Esling, John H., & Edmondson, Jerold A. The laryngeal sphincter as an articulator: Tenseness, tongue root and phonation in Yi and Bai. In Angelika Braun & Herbert R. Masthoff (eds.), Phonetics and its applications: Festschrift for Jens-Peter Koster on the occasion of his 60th birthday (pp. 38-51). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

(2001). The aryepiglottic folds and voice quality in the Yi and Bai languages: Laryngoscopic case studies (with Edmondson, Lama, Harris & Li). Mon-Khmer Studies, 31, 83-100.

(2001). Nuuchahnulth (with B.F. Carlson & K. Fraser). Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 31, 275-279.

(2000). Spokane (with B.F. Carlson). Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 30, 101-106.

(2000). The aryepiglottic folds and voice quality in Yi and Bai languages: Laryngoscopic case studies. (with J.A. Edmondson, Li Shaoni, J.G. Harris & Lama Ziwo). Minzu Yuwen, 2000(6), 47-53 (in Chinese).

(2000). Crosslinguistic aspects of voice quality. In R.D. Kent & M.J. Ball (Eds.), Voice quality measurement (pp. 25-35). San Diego: Singular Publishing Group.

(2000). The transcription of voice quality (with M.J. Ball & B.C. Dickson). In R.D. Kent & M.J. Ball (Eds.), Voice quality measurement(pp. 49-58). San Diego: Singular Publishing Group.

(1999). The IPA categories "pharyngeal" and "epiglottal": Laryngoscopic observations of pharyngeal articulations and larynx height. Language & Speech, 42, 349-372.

(1999). Laryngoscopic analysis of pharyngeal articulations and larynx-height voice quality settings (with J.A.W. Clayards). In A. Braun(Ed.), Advances in Phonetics (Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik, Beiheft 106) (pp. 22-33. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag).

(1999). University of Victoria Phonetic Database (version 4.0). Victoria: Speech Technology Research Ltd.; and Lincoln Park, NJ: Kay Elemetrics Corp.

(1999). A multimedia approach to learning phonetic transcription (with J. Clayards & M. Holmes).Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 2 (pp. 1133-1136). Berkeley: University of California. 4032

(1999). Voice quality settings of the pharynx. Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 3 (pp. 2449-2452). Berkeley: University of California.

(1999). Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (Edited with F.J. Nolan). Cambridge University Press.

(1998). Laryngoscopic analysis of pharyngeal articulations and larynx-height voice quality settings. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, vol. 2 (pp.543-546). Sydney: ASSTA.

(1998). Quantification of pharyngeal articulations using aryepiglottic angle measurements from laryngoscopic images (with J.A.W. Clayards, J.A. Edmondson, F-Y. Qiu & J.G. Harris). Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, vol. 7 (pp. 3091-3094). Sydney: ASSTA.

(1998). Everyone has an accent except me. In L. Bauer & P. Trudgill (Eds.), Language myths (pp. 169-175). Penguin Books.

(1998). The teacher's ear: Phonetics in the classroom. TESOL Matters,8(5), 21.

(1997). Character codes and computer readable alphabets (with C. Draxler & J. Wells). In D. Gibbon, R. Moore & R. Winski (Eds.), Handbook of standards and resources for spoken language systems (pp.654-683). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

(1996). Pharyngeal consonants and the aryepiglottic sphincter. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 26, 65-88.

(1996). Computer-assisted development of spoken language skills (with M.C. Pennington). In M.C. Pennington (Ed.), The power of CALL (pp. 153-189). Houston: Athelstan.

(1995). The VoQS system for the transcription of voice quality(with M.J. Ball & B.C. Dickson). Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 25, 71-80.

(1995). Open vowel backing in Canadian English (with H.J. Warkentyne). Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 3 (pp. 700-703). Stockholm: KTH and Stockholm University.

(1995). Pharyngeal phonetics: Larynx height, tongue root, and pitch dependence. Chicago Linguistic Society, 31, 143-152.

(1995). The low vowels of Vancouver English (with H.J. Warkentyne). In J. Windsor Lewis (Ed.), Studies in general and English phonetics: Essays in honour of Prof. J.D. O'Connor (pp. 395-400). London: Routledge.

(1994). Effets sur le signal vocal de changements délibérés de qualité globale en anglais et français (with B. Harmegnies, V. Delplancq & M. Bruyninckx). Revue de Phonétique Appliquée, 111, 139-153.

(1994). Some perspectives on accent: Range of voice quality variation, the periphery, and focusing. In J. Morley (Ed.), Pronunciation pedagogy and theory: New views, new directions (pp. 49-63). Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

(1994). Analysis of pitch dependence of pharyngeal, faucal, and larynx-height voice quality settings (with L.M. Heap, R.C. Snell & B.C. Dickson). ICSLP 94 (pp. 1475-1478). Yokohama: Acoustical Society of Japan.

(1994). Real-time processing of electroglottographic waveforms for the evaluation of phonation types (with B.C. Dickson & R.C. Snell). ICSLP 94 (pp. 647-650). Yokohama: Acoustical Society of Japan.

(1994). Voice quality. In R.E. Asher & J.M.Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (pp. 4950-4953). Oxford: Pergamon Press.