Sociophonetic variation in Hong Kong and Heritage Cantonese: Understanding phonological representation and sound change in multilingual communities GRF 2023/2024 (PI Jonathan Havenhill)General Research Fund (GRF), University Grants Council (UGC), Hong KongAmount: 1,059,558 HKD AbstractAll languages exhibit variation, with multiple ways of saying the same thing (eg, walking vs. walkin’). No two people speak exactly the same way, nor does one person use the same speech patterns in all contexts. This type of variation is far from random, and does not reflect poor linguistic command or laziness. Rather, speakers make productive use of variation to convey social information, construct personal identities, and [...]

Perception and articulation of Cantonese vowel contrasts by native speakers of English and Mandarin ECS 2021/2022(PI Jonathan Havenhill)Early Career Scheme (ECS), University Grants Council (UGC), Hong KongAmount: 641,00 HKD AbstractThis project will investigate how native speakers of English and Mandarin produce and perceive the vowels of Cantonese. Previous work shows that perceiving and producing nonnative vowel contrasts can be challenging for second language learners, with the degree of difficulty depending on the similarity to vowels from the speaker’s native language. It remains unclear, however, whether nonnative speakers rely on acoustic similarity or articulatory similarity, with competing theories arguing for each. Notably, [...]

EEG investigation of morphologically complex word processing in a second language ECS 2022/2023 (PI Yoonsang Song, Co-I Youngah Do, Ouyang Guang and Nan Jiang)Early Career Scheme (ECS), University Grants Council (UGC), Hong KongAmount: 652,812 HKD AbstractThis electroencephalography (EEG) research explores whether there are notable qualitative and fundamental differences between first language (L1) and second language (L2) processing of bi- and multi-morphemic words. The current literature shows that the answer to this question remains far from settled, and thus, the PI proposes to conduct a series of experiments to address this gap. Specifically, this proposed research project focuses on the L2 development [...]

A neurolinguistic approach to second language processing of prosody–syntax interfaces GRF 2023/2024 (PI Yoonsang Song, Co-I Youngah Do, Ouyang Guang and Nan Jiang)General Research Fund (GRF), University Grants Council (UGC), Hong KongAmount: 901,461 HKD AbstractThis research explores one of the most understudied research topics in the field of second language (L2) acquisition and processing, namely, the interface between prosody and syntax. Specifically, we first examine whether L2 learners can successfully attain native-like L2 prosody when first language (L1) and L2 prosody fundamentally differ. We further investigate whether successful learners of L2 prosody can utilize prosodic information to facilitate syntactic processing (and [...]

Learning Biases in L2 Acquisition of Hong Kong Sign Language by Hearing Learners GRF 2022/2023(PI Youngah Do, Co-I Emmorey Karen, Sehyr Zed Sevcikova and Getzie Gabriel Paul)General Research Fund (GRF), University Grants Council (UGC), Hong KongAmount: 971,972 HKD AbstractWhen hearing individuals learn a second language, they rely on implicit knowledge from their first language in terms of sounds, words, grammar et cetera. But what happens when this knowledge does not apply? This is precisely the situation hearing individuals encounter when learning a sign language as a second language. Currently, there is no consensus on how people of primary linguistic experience with [...]

Exploring the learnability of ideophones through articulatory and manual gestures GRF 2020/2021(PI Youngah Do, Co-I Dingemanse Mark and Thompson Arthur Lewis)General Research Fund (GRF), University Grants Council (UGC), Hong KongAmount: 700,134 HKD Abstract Imitation is a core part of learning and expressing language. In order to understand certain words, we must know what makes them imitative. These ‘certain words’ are ideophones. Ideophones exist in all known spoken languages. They are known to be easily understood by non-native speakers due to their imitative nature. Studies show that if, for example, a Dutch speaker hears a Japanese ideophone, even with zero Japanese experience, [...]

Breaking down and rebuilding iconicity: machine learning verified by human learning GRF 2023/2024 (PI Youngah Do, Co-I Van Hoey Thomas Greta R., Coupe Christophe Dominique Michel and Baayen Harald)General Research Fund (GRF), University Grants Council (UGC), Hong KongAmount: 846,300 HKD Abstract An English speaker who hears the Cantonese word dang would be hard-pressed to guess the correct translation (“chair”) above chance level. Some words, however, are easy to guess, for example ideophones. Ideophones are words that depict sensory imagery and exist in every spoken language. An English speaker who hears the Japanese ideophone kira-kira is very likely to guess the correct [...]