LEIGH LISKER (1918—2006)

George Cardona
Comments on Leigh Lisker

Leigh Lisker was my friend and colleague for several decades. I first met him in 1960, when I joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. We both had offices in Bennett Hall, where Leigh also had a phonetics laboratory. At that time, Leigh had already done considerable work on Telugu and was interested in the languages of India in general. Since my major areas of study were even then Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian, common interests drew us together. Along with Henry Hoenigswald, Leigh offered me not only intellectual challenge and nurturing but also friendship and warmth, though I was much their junior. We maintained a close friendship over the next four decades, and I last spoke with Leigh the afternoon before he died.

Leigh was always a modest person, despite his major achievements in several areas, including music. He was also totally devoted to scholarship. This could be seen even in casual circumstances. We regularly had lunch together once a week or so, and Leigh would frequently use these occasions to test me for Spanish evidence concerning voicing onset, a topic that occupied him for a long time. He would also bring me and other colleagues into experiments on the perception of such contrasts as dental versus retroflex and “aspirated” versus unaspirated stops. Throughout, however, there was always Leigh’s humor and friendliness. These were even more in evidence at his home, where my wife and I dined many times with Leigh and Sara, an excellent cook and one of very few people one could know who smoked her own ducks.

Phonetics owes much to Leigh Lisker. We are fortunate to have had him for a friend and colleague.