John Jerome Ohala (July 19, 1941[1] – August 22, 2020[2]) was a linguist specializing in phonetics and phonology.
He was a Professor Emeritus in linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
He received his PhD in linguistics in 1969 from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); his graduate advisor was Peter Ladefoged.
"sound patterns") derive from physical and physiological constraints which are independent of language and thus have no place in the "grammar" of a language, i.e. what speakers have to learn inductively from exposure to the speech community into which they are born.
[3] He also proposed that ethological principles influence certain aspects of languages' prosodic patterns, sound symbolism, and facial expressions, such as lip and brow movements.