Yiya Chen

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Yiya Chen is a linguist and phonetician specializing in speech prosody. She is professor of phonetics at Leiden University as well as senior researcher at the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition. [1] [2]

Contents

Education and career

Chen began her studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, where she earned her BA in 1992. Her graduate studies were carried out at Stony Brook University, from which she received an MA in 1999 and a PhD in 2003. The topic of her doctoral thesis was the phonetics and phonology of contrastive focus in Mandarin Chinese, investigated using experimental methods. [1] [3]

Prior to taking up her current position at Leiden University in 2007, Chen had short-term teaching and research positions at the University of Edinburgh, Radboud University Nijmegen, the University of Colorado Boulder, Cornell University and New York University. [1]

Research

Chen's research is in phonetics and laboratory phonology, with a focus on aspects of speech prosody and melody. [4] Her research aims to shed light on prosodic variation and universality, and how these can inform general linguistic and psycholinguistic theories of processing and representation. [5] She deploys multiple phonetic, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic methods in service of these goals, including acoustic analyses, eye tracking, event-related potential studies and reaction-time experiments. [1] [4]

Her areal expertise is in Chinese, especially Mandarin and Wu Chinese, with interests in other Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages. Outside these families she has also carried out experimental work on speakers of Zulu, Ewe, Kedang and Selayarese. [6]

Honors and awards

In 2008 she was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant to study the representation and processing of pitch variation in tonal languages. [7] [8] In 2020 she was awarded an NWO Vici grant [9] entitled Melody in Speech. [10]

In 2022 she was elected a Member of the Academia Europaea. [11]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their phones or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a particular language variety. At one time, the study of phonology related only to the study of the systems of phonemes in spoken languages, but may now relate to any linguistic analysis either:

The close-mid front unrounded vowel, or high-mid front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨e⟩.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Close-mid central unrounded vowel</span> Vowel sound represented by ⟨ɘ⟩ in IPA

The close-mid central unrounded vowel, or high-mid central unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɘ⟩. This is a mirrored letter e and should not be confused with the schwa ⟨ə⟩, which is a turned e. It was added to the IPA in 1993; before that, this vowel was transcribed ⟨ë⟩. Certain older sources transcribe this vowel ⟨ɤ̈⟩.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Near-open central vowel</span> Vowel sound represented by ⟨ɐ⟩ in IPA

The near-open central vowel, or near-low central vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɐ⟩, a rotated lowercase double-barrelled letter a.

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ToBI is a set of conventions for transcribing and annotating the prosody of speech. The term "ToBI" is sometimes used to refer to the conventions used for describing American English specifically, which was the first ToBI system, developed by Mary Beckman and Janet Pierrehumbert, among others. Other ToBI systems have been defined for a number of languages; for example, J-ToBI refers to the ToBI conventions for Tokyo Japanese, and an adaptation of ToBI to describe Dutch intonation was developed by Carlos Gussenhoven, and called ToDI. Another variation of ToBI, called IViE, was established in 1998 to enable comparison between several dialects of British English.

The mid front unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound that is used in some spoken languages. There is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the exact mid front unrounded vowel between close-mid and open-mid, but it is normally written ⟨e⟩. If precision is required, diacritics may be used, such as ⟨e̞⟩ or ⟨ɛ̝⟩. In Sinology and Koreanology, ⟨ᴇ⟩ is sometimes used, for example in the Zhengzhang Shangfang reconstructions.

Jennifer Sandra Cole is a professor of linguistics and Director of the Prosody and Speech Dynamics Lab at Northwestern University. Her research uses experimental and computational methods to study the sound structure of language. She was the founding General Editor of Laboratory Phonology (2009–2015) and a founding member of the Association for Laboratory Phonology.

The mid back rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. While there is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the exact mid back rounded vowel between close-mid and open-mid, it is normally written ⟨o⟩. If precision is desired, diacritics may be used, such as ⟨o̞⟩ or ⟨ɔ̝⟩, the former being more common. There was an alternative IPA symbol for this sound, ⟨ꭥ⟩. A non-IPA letter ⟨ⱺ⟩ is also found.

Carlos Gussenhoven is a professor of linguistics at Radboud University Nijmegen. He specializes in phonetics and phonology.

Janet Fletcher is an Australian linguist. She completed her BA at the University of Queensland in 1981 and then moved to the United Kingdom and received her PhD from the University of Reading in 1989.

Heather Goad is a Canadian linguist. Her research explores areas of phonology and language acquisition, especially investigating the shapes of phonological systems, including contrasts in English, French, Korean, Portuguese, Italian and Nepali, as well as the developmental paths of acquiring speech sounds by first and second language learners.

Lisa Cheng is a linguist with specialisation in theoretical syntax. She is a Chair Professor of Linguistics and Language at the Department of Linguistics, Leiden University, and one of the founding members of the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition.

Dwight Robert Ladd Jr, FBA, is a linguist and retired academic specialising in phonetics and phonology. From 1997 to 2011, he was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.

Marina Nespor is a Professor of linguistics at the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati in Trieste, Italy, and senior researcher in the ERC PASCAL Project, a project investigating language acquisition and the nature of the biological endowment that allows humans to learn language. Much of Dr. Nespor's research focuses on the interaction of phonology and syntax: what the prosodic structure of an utterance communicates about its grammatical structure.

Shanley E. M. Allen is a professor of linguistics working at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern. Her research is primarily in the area of psycholinguistics and language acquisition, studying both monolingual and multilingual speakers. She is also a specialist on the Inuktitut language.

Laura J. Downing is an American linguist, specializing in the phonology of African languages.

Mirjam Ernestus is professor of psycholinguistics and scientific director of the Centre for Language Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Academia Europaea: Yiya Chen CV" . Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  2. ↑ "Yiya Chen". Leiden University. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  3. ↑ "Doctoral Degree Recipients | Department of Linguistics". www.stonybrook.edu. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  4. 1 2 "Yiya Chen". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  5. ↑ "Sprint Project: Yiya Chen" . Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  6. ↑ "Leiden University: Yiya Chen" . Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  7. ↑ "CORDIS: Representation and Processing of Pitch Variation in Tonal Languages" . Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  8. ↑ "European Research Council ERC Starting Grant Winner Dr. Yiya Chen Leiden University Center for Linguistics Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (The. - ppt download". slideplayer.com. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  9. ↑ "NWO Talent Programme | NWO". www.nwo.nl. 2023-03-07. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  10. ↑ "Melody in Speech | NWO". www.nwo.nl. 2020-01-01. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  11. ↑ "Academia Europaea: Yiya Chen" . Retrieved 23 September 2022.
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