Bert Vaux

Bert Vaux (born November 19, 1968, Houston, Texas; pronounced /vɒks/ ) teaches phonology and morphology at the University of Cambridge. Previously, he taught for nine years at Harvard and three years at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Vaux specializes in phonological theory, dialectology, field methodology, and languages of the Caucasus. Vaux was Editor of the journal Annual of Armenian Linguistics from 2001 to 2006 and is co-editor of the book series Oxford Surveys in Generative Phonology.

Professional history

Vaux's Law (as labelled by Avery & Idsardi 2001, Iverson & Salmons 2003), which he first formulated in a 1998 article in Linguistic Inquiry, states that laryngeally unspecified—i.e. voiceless--fricatives become [GW]/[sg] in systems contrasting fricatives without reference to [GW]/[sg]; thus they are to be aspirated or, more technically, to be pronounced with a spread glottis.