Category: All

Categories
All Lab News

From Classroom to Lab: Exploring Language and the Mind

Our Lab was delighted to welcome a group of Form 2–4 students from Christian Alliance S. C. Chan Memorial College for a school visit co-organized with the Linguistics Society. The visit was designed to introduce students to the fascinating world of linguistics and offer them a hands-on learning experience in language studies and cognitive science.

During the visit, we demonstrated a Lexical Decision Task (LDT) experiment and introduced a priming effect study to illustrate how people process words and meanings. One student volunteered to take on the role of a participant, gaining first-hand experience of what it is like to be part of a research study, while the others observed, recorded data, and learned how to analyse the results from a researcher’s perspective.

The students also toured our lab and Sound Booth, gaining insight into the facilities and equipment used in linguistic research. They were enthusiastic throughout the visit, actively joining the discussion and asking many thoughtful questions. We truly enjoyed the warm and inspiring exchange, and we hope the students found the visit meaningful, rewarding, and enjoyable.

Categories
All Lab News

Shuhao and Ivy Share Their Work at the Annual Meeting on Phonology 2026

Shuhao and Ivy, presented their research at the Annual Meeting on Phonology (AMP) 2026, held from 9–11 October 2026 at the University of Maryland, College Park. The conference was hosted in person by the UMD Department of Linguistics and brought together researchers working on a wide range of topics in phonology and phonetics.

Ivy presented in the poster session on 9 October. Her poster, titled “Phonetic Substance in the Neural Network Implementation of Phonological Learning: The Case of Vowel Harmony and Vowel Disharmony,” was co-authored with Youngah.

Shuhao presented in the poster session on 10 October. His poster, titled “Discriminating Allophones: Impacts of Acoustic, Contextual, and Semantic Factors,” was co-authored with Youngah. Congratulations to Shuhao and Ivy on sharing their work at this international phonology conference!

The full conference schedule is available here: AMP2026 Program.

Categories
All Lab News

Empowering Deaf Voices: Connecting Hong Kong and the Philippines for Inclusive Change

On 9 October, HKUArts and De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde co-organised the online workshop “Empowering Deaf Voices: Connecting Hong Kong and the Philippines for Inclusive Change.” Held via Zoom, the event brought together Deaf educators, students, faculty, advocates, and industry professionals from both regions to exchange ideas on Deaf cultures, accessibility, and inclusion.

We were honoured to welcome Mr. Kai-fung Wang from the Hong Kong Sign Language Association, Ms. Wan-Ki Kong from the Professional Sign Language Training Centre, and Dr. Jerrel Leung, Co-Founder of Impact AI. The session was moderated by Professor Youngah Do from HKU’s School of Humanities (Linguistics), with HKSL–English interpretation provided.

The workshop highlighted the importance of accessible communication, cross-cultural collaboration, and empowering Deaf voices in education, advocacy, technology, and community life. Participants shared meaningful reflections on how Hong Kong and the Philippines can learn from one another to support inclusive change.

We sincerely thank all speakers, organisers, interpreters, and participants for making this event an engaging and inspiring exchange.

Categories
All Lab News Publication

“Tone contour identification from the perspective of production” published in Journal of East Asian Linguistics 

A new paper by Zhihao and Youngah, Tone contour identification from the perspective of production, has been published in the Journal of East Asian Linguistics.

The study addresses a recurring challenge in tone research: the same linguistic tone can sometimes be described as having different contour shapes across different sources. One reason is that a tone’s intended contour can be distorted when it is actually produced, making it difficult to determine whether its target shape is level, rising, or falling from the observed pitch pattern alone.

The results show that commonly used measurements such as pitch range and slope can sometimes be ambiguous, particularly when distinguishing level tones from rising or falling tones with relatively small pitch ranges. The study instead identifies three measures related to the “steadiness” of pitch movement that provide a clearer distinction between level and non-level contours. A case study applying the method to tones from the Xiangtan and Jian’ou Chinese dialects further demonstrates how these measures can help resolve ambiguous contour classifications.

The study provides a broader set of quantitative diagnostics for identifying tone contours from production data and offers a new perspective on why contour transcriptions may differ across descriptions of Chinese dialects. Future work can extend this production-based approach to more complex contours and potentially contribute to automatic classification of linguistic tone contours.

Wang, Z., & Do, Y. (2026). Tone contour identification from the perspective of production. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 35, Article 22. open_in_new DOI

Categories
All Lab News

A helping hand for the Deaf elderly by recognizing handshapes

Our lab will showcase our project at InnoCarnival 2026, focusing on supporting Hong Kong’s elderly Deaf community through advanced technology. This initiative employs cutting-edge AI-powered real-time handshape recognition to assist in preserving Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL), a vital element of our city’s cultural heritage.

Designed with elderly users in mind, the system allows individuals to form signs in front of a camera and receive immediate feedback: accurately identifying handshapes, displaying authentic video examples, and providing translations in both English and Cantonese, sourced from a comprehensive database of HKSL.

This project not only helps preserve an endangered language but also promotes greater inclusion for elderly members of the Deaf community, many of whom have limited access to spoken and written languages. By making advanced technology accessible, educational, and engaging for seniors, it fosters intergenerational understanding and strengthens community bonds. Ultimately, it exemplifies how AI can serve both cultural preservation and social empowerment, ensuring that no one is left behind.

Categories
All Lab News Publication

“Conservativity in the scope of phonological generalization learning” published in Linguistics Vanguard

We are pleased to share a new publication by Adam, Bingzi, and Youngah in Linguistics Vanguard: “Conservativity in the Scope of Phonological Generalization Learning.”

The study investigates how people learn phonological patterns, or regularities in the sound systems of languages. In many languages, sound changes known as phonological alternations occur when words combine with affixes, often reflecting broader restrictions on which sound sequences are allowed in the language. Because of this relationship, many theories of phonology assume that knowledge of alternations and knowledge of phonotactics (sound-pattern restrictions within words) are closely linked.

These findings suggest that learners are conservative when extending newly learned phonological generalisations to unfamiliar morphological contexts. Together with previous research, the results indicate that the relationship between phonological alternations and phonotactic knowledge may not be as tightly connected in learning as some theoretical models have proposed.

Chong, A. J., Yu, B., & Do, Y. (2026). Conservativity in the scope of phonological generalization learning. Linguistics Vanguard. open_in_new DOI

Categories
All Lab News Publication

“Exploring Substantive Bias Through Incidental Phonological Learning: Accuracy and Conscious Status of the Resultant Knowledge” published in Language and Speech

We are pleased to share a new publication by Xiaoyu, Yuyan, and Youngah in Language and Speech.

The paper, titled “Exploring Substantive Bias Through Incidental Phonological Learning: Accuracy and Conscious Status of the Resultant Knowledge,” investigates how substantive bias emerges in phonological learning by comparing the acquisition of phonetically natural patterns (vowel harmony) versus unnatural ones (vowel disharmony).

To address why many previous studies have struggled to find evidence for this bias, the team introduced a disguise task to minimize intentional learning. Moving beyond traditional accuracy rates, the study also comprehensively measured the conscious status of the participants’ resultant knowledge. The results showed that while overall learning rates were low across the board, participants exposed to the “unnatural” vowel disharmonic items actually had a higher likelihood of possessing conscious judgment knowledge compared to the harmonic group. The authors attribute this to the possibility that disharmonic items are perceptually more distinctive in a strictly incidental learning environment.

Overall, the findings demonstrate that substantive bias may not always manifest in basic accuracy rates, but rather through differences in knowledge consciousness, offering a fresh perspective on how we evaluate and understand the acquisition of phonological patterns.

Yu, X., Xue, Y., & Do, Y. (2026). Exploring substantive bias through incidental phonological learning: Accuracy and conscious status of the resultant knowledge. Language and Speech. open_in_new DOI

Categories
All Lab News

Congratulations to Xiaoyu on his Doctoral Degree

We are delighted to congratulate Xiaoyu on the successful completion of his Doctoral Degree. At the 217th Congregation on 15 July, Xiaoyu celebrated this significant academic milestone, marking the culmination of years of dedication, perseverance, and scholarly achievement.

We extend our warmest congratulations and wish him every success in his future research and professional endeavours!

Categories
All Lab News

Frank, Shuhao, and Youngah Presented New Research at SCiL 2026

Exciting news from ACL in San Diego last week! Frank, Shuhao, and Youngah presented their latest research at the Society for Computation in Linguistics (SCiL). Frank and Youngah had the opportunity to present their work titled “The development of spectral and temporal encodings in speech sounds” in person, while Shuhao, due to visa delays, joined us online to share his work.

You can check out two works here:

Tan, F. L. H., & Do, Y. (2026). The development of spectral and temporal encodings in speech sounds. Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 2026 (pp.113–126). Association for Computational Linguistics. open_in_new DOI

Zhang, S., & Do, Y. (2026). Roles of predictability and acoustic distance in sound discrimination via contrastive learning. Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 2026 (pp.477–487). Association for Computational Linguistics. open_in_new DOI

Categories
All Lab News Publication

“Roles of Predictability and Acoustic Distance in Sound Discrimination via Contrastive Learning” published in the Association for Computational Linguistics

We are pleased to share a new publication by Shuhao and Youngah examining how predictability shapes sound discrimination in speech perception. Their paper, “Roles of predictability and acoustic distance in sound discrimination via contrastive learning,” is published in the proceedings of SCiL 2026 of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

The study investigates how predictability affects sound discrimination using a supervised contrastive learning framework, a machine learning approach that learns to distinguish between similar inputs by comparing them. The authors vary levels of predictability to examine whether its impact on discrimination is gradual or categorical, and they also explore how this effect interacts with acoustic distance (the degree of difference between sounds) and the presence of additional contrasts in a language.

The results show that only fully predictable sound patterns significantly reduce discrimination performance, suggesting a categorical effect rather than a gradual one. However, this reduction in sensitivity diminishes as the acoustic distance between sounds increases. In addition, the presence of other sound contrasts that share the same acoustic dimension improves discriminability, highlighting the importance of broader linguistic context in shaping speech perception.

Zhang, S., & Do, Y. (2026). Roles of predictability and acoustic distance in sound discrimination via contrastive learning. In Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 2026 (pp.477–487). Association for Computational Linguistics. open_in_newDOI