Gašper Beguš, Maksymilian Dąbkowski, Ronald L. Sprouse, David F. Gruber, Shane Gero; The phonology of sperm whale coda vowels. Proc Biol Sci 1 April 2026; 293 (2069): 20252994. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.2994 Sperm whales (Physeter macro­cephalus) communicate using series of clicks known as codas. In previous research, sperm whale codas have been shown to resemble human vowels acoustically. Based on the number of formants, two different coda quality categories have been described: a-codas and i-codas. In the present paper, we demonstrate that sperm whale codas not only resemble human vowels acoustically but also pattern like them along several linguistic dimensions. First, traditional count- [...]

Linguistics seminar – From Linguistic Input to Neural Representation: How the Brain Learns Language Date: 16 Apr 2026 (Thursday) Start Time: 4:00 pm Speaker: Prof. Feng Gangyi (Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages at The Chinese University of Hong Kong) Venue: CPD LG.08, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU  

“Iconicity and semantic transparency in Hong Kong Sign Language: Evidence from ratings and three guessing paradigms” published in Language and Cognition By HKU Linguistics Post date 2026-04-02 We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article in Language and Cognition by Arthur, Aaron, Mavies, Rachel, Judy and Youngah, titled Iconicity and semantic transparency in Hong Kong Sign Language: Evidence from ratings and three guessing paradigms. This study investigates how strongly signs in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) are perceived to resemble their meanings, a property known as iconicity, and how this relates to how easily meanings can be [...]

Thoughts on morphological spread Date: 9 Apr 2026 (Thu) Time: 4:00 pm Venue: CPD LG.08 Centennial Campus

Big questions, little data: exploiting NLP methods for language variation and change Date: 26 Mar 2026 (Thu) Time: 4:00 pm Venue: CPD LG.08 Centennial Campus

Outermost wins in Dinka and the theory of nonconcatenative morphology Date: 12 Mar 2026 (Thu) Time: 4:00 pm Zoom: https://hku.zoom.us/j/97684494584?pwd=beh8mFIFjrVVB2DMaSTj57UlveXCub.1 Meeting ID: 976 8449 4584 Password: 899952

“Bottom-up modeling of phoneme learning: Universal sensitivity and language-specific transformation” published in Speech Communication We are pleased to announce the publication of a new paper titled “Bottom-up modeling of phoneme learning: Universal sensitivity and language-specific transformation” in the journal Speech Communication. This study was conducted by Frank and Youngah. The research investigates the emergence and development of universal phonetic sensitivity during early phonological learning using an unsupervised modeling approach. The authors trained autoencoder models on raw acoustic input from English and Mandarin to simulate bottom-up perceptual development, focusing on phoneme contrast learning. The results demonstrate that phoneme-like categories and feature-aligned [...]

Cross-linguistic perceptual evidence for the suffixing preference Date: 6 Nov 2025 (Thu) Time: 4:00 pm Join Zoom link: https://hku.zoom.us/j/98370566345?pwd=FHgSMHHyYrjCka4XRAOOw6uuOXiRiE.1 MEETING ID: 983 7056 6345 PASSWORD: 104306

Phonological optimization for sight and sound: Disentangling visual-articulatory and auditory-acoustic factors in phonetic enhancement and hyperarticulation General Research Fund Award (GRF), 2025-28 Principal investigator: Jonathan Havenhill Amount: 941,184 HKD Abstract Sound is arguably the primary (and often only) medium by which spoken language is conveyed. This allows communication to proceed when the speaker is obscured, whether over the phone, in the dark, at a distance, or when wearing a face mask. At the same time, vision and other types of non-auditory perception are also important. Spoken language is often accompanied by facial expressions and manual gestures, and the ability to [...]