We were informed on the 28th of February of the passing away of our friend and colleague, Bob Port, longtime core faculty member of our department.
Bob came to I.U. as the phonetics person, taking over from Colin Painter in the 1970’s. He is perhaps most well-known for his skeptical probing of segmental models of phonological representations, providing valuable impetus for the discipline in moving toward functionally integrated models of linguistic structure.
His early empirical work examined temporal dynamics of differences in the speech signal used for communicating contrast, testing the use of normalization ratios and other methods for managing pervasive timing problems in phonetics. In the contrastive domain, he also was one of the first to bring the problem of incomplete neutralization to the attention of the discipline.
During the 1990’s and 2000’s, his persistent thinking about temporal dynamics brought in collaborative work with Fred Cummins and Keiichi Tajima in developing models of rhythmic structure utilizing coupled oscillators, providing the most compelling exposition of how rhythm and language interact, reflecting his intense involvement in many forms of music as a performer. This work is well expressed in a volume he edited with Timothy van Gelder, succinctly entitled Mind as Motion.
He’ll be remembered and missed for his repopularization of slinkies and all kinds of pendula in the phonetics classroom, along with vivid images of how speech coupling works. The door of his office long sported a cartoon of a really hoppin’ dance party with an engineer running a steam engine on the stage.
Bob defined so much of what it means to do linguistics at I.U.; anything to learn about how speech works. His irrepressible laughter will surely be missed.
The College of Arts