Stylistic coherence in speech perception: from human speech to AI voices Date: 12 Nov 2026 (Thursday) Start Time: 2:00 pm Speaker: Dr. Aini Li (Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Translation at City University of Hong Kong) Venue: CPD LG.08, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Discourse origins of tonal person marking Date: 5 Nov 2026 (Thursday) Start Time: 2:00 pm Speaker: Prof. Eric W. Campbell (Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara) Venue: CPD LG.08, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Welcome everyone! Please be informed that we have launched a new webpage for the Formal Linguistics Forum (FLorum) to share news, updates, and upcoming events: https://florum.linguistics.hku.hk/ For any enquiries regarding FLorum, please feel free to contact the Coordinator, Dr. Maksymilian Dąbkowski, at dabkowsk@hku.hk. Thank you very much.

The Complementizer-Subjunctor Asymmetry Hypothesis: A formal and functional perspective Date: 29 Oct 2026 (Thursday) Start Time: 2:00 pm Speaker: Prof. Jesús Olguín-Martinez (Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics, The University of Hong Kong) Venue: CPD LG.08, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU  

Submitting your HKU Undergraduate Admission application Please click "Apply"

Empowering Deaf Voices: Connecting Hong Kong and the Philippines for Inclusive Change This workshop is jointly organized by HKUArts and De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Philippines for HKU and De La Salle students to take part in it. It delves into the vibrant deaf cultures and transformative social movements in Hong Kong and the Philippines, sharing insights from deaf educators, students, faculty, advocates, and industry leaders committed to advancing inclusion and accessibility across both regions. Date: October 9, 2026 (Fri) Time: 1:00 – 2:30 PM Format: Zoom Speakers Mr. Kai-fung Wang | Executive Director, Hong Kong Sign Language Association [...]

Syntactic limits of A’ingae’s phonological dominance Date: 24 Sep 2026 (Thursday) Start Time: 4:00 pm Speaker: Dr. Maksymilian Dąbkowski (Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics, HKU) Venue: Rm 7.58, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Formal Linguistics Forum (FLorum) Director: Dr. Maksymilian Dąbkowski Description: What kinds of algorithms can capture how natural language sound systems work? What is the best way to represent the structure of words and sentences? What is the relationship between formal logic and the meanings of those words and sentences? What insights can theoretical models afford into the structure of conversations? These and other questions are discussed at the Formal Linguistics Forum (or FLorum, for short), a working group that advances cutting-edge research in theoretical linguistics. The group’s interdisciplinary scope encompasses formal approaches to any aspect of language structure (including phonology, [...]

Prof. Jesus Olguin-Martinez has been invited to teach a course at the LSA Summer Institute. The Institute will be held at the University of Oregon Linguistics Department in 2027. It is the largest and most prestigious summer school for linguistics in the world and has been held since 1928. It is run under the auspices of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) and is designed as an intensive, short-course summer school format that brings together leading scholars across many subfields. Prof. Jesus Olguin-Martinez will teach the following course: Morphosyntax beyond the simple clause: Formal and functional perspectives Although formal and [...]

“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 [...]

“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 [...]

Clarifying when-constructions: Conversation, morphosyntax, lexicon, and mode and their interactions in language use Abstract: The present study investigates clarifying when-constructions (e.g., when I say more, I don’t mean that we should consume more, but really it’s about creating a rich life) in a sample of 971 examples from The Corpus of Contemporary American English. In this construction, a phrase or clause from a different or the same turn is repeated in a when-clause to provide clarification through the main clause, often accompanied by a refining clause. The present research centers around identifying configurations of variables that are correlated with whether [...]

HKU Linguistics Seminar 2026-27 Please feel free to disseminate this message to your friends, colleagues, and students who are interested in the topic, and contact us at linguist@hku.hk if you have any queries. Best wishes, Department of Linguistics The University of Hong Kong

Prof. Kofi Yakpo of HKU Linguistics received a prestigious Overseas Research Fellowship Scheme Award (ORFS) of the University Grants Committee of the Government of Hong Kong to investigate dynamics in the expansion of Swahili (East Africa) and Lingala (Central Africa). He will collaborate with the Universidade Agostinho Neto (Luanda, Angola) and Kenyatta University (Nairobi, Kenya) between August 2026 and January 2027.