Category: Publication

Collection of scholarly articles, research papers, and academic publications by the Language Development Lab.

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“Modeling the impact of prenatal audio attenuation on speech sound learning” published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 

We are pleased to share a new publication from Ivy, Frank and Youngah in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. The paper, titled “Modeling the impact of prenatal audio attenuation on speech sound learning,” examines how human infants appear to have substantial knowledge of the sound structure of their native language at birth, despite the fact that the uterine environment strongly limits auditory input to low-frequency sounds.

The study explores whether this prenatal low-frequency exposure may actually support later speech sound learning rather than hinder it. To address this question, the authors trained neural network models in two stages designed to simulate prenatal and postnatal learning. During the prenatal stage, models were exposed to speech that was either naturally low-pass filtered, artificially high-pass filtered, or unfiltered. After birth, all models were trained on full-frequency speech. Three different neural network architectures were examined, including a long short-term memory network, a convolutional neural network, and a residual neural network, to test whether the effects generalised across learning systems.

Across architectures, the results showed that prenatal exposure to low-frequency speech led to faster and more effective phonetic learning once full-frequency input became available. In contrast, exposure to high-frequency–only speech was less beneficial during prenatal learning. These findings suggest that the low-frequency sounds available before birth may provide a useful foundation that helps infants extrapolate to the richer speech input they encounter after birth, offering a computational explanation for early speech sound knowledge.

Zheng, S., Tan, F. & Do, Y. (2026). Modeling the impact of prenatal audio attenuation on speech sound learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Advance online publication. open_in_newDOI

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Sharing Our Work at SCiL 2026: Two Accepted Papers

Exciting news! Two papers from our lab have been accepted to this year’s SCiL!

Here are the titles and authors:

  1. “Roles of Predictability and Acoustic Distance in Sound Discrimination via Contrastive Learning” from Shuhao and Youngah.
  2. “The Development of Spectral and Temporal Encodings in Speech Sounds” from Frank and Youngah.

We’re thrilled to share our work with the computational linguistics community this summer—stay tuned for more updates!

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“Iconicity and semantic transparency in Hong Kong Sign Language: Evidence from ratings and three guessing paradigms” published in Language and Cognition

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 inferred by people with no knowledge of HKSL. The authors collected iconicity ratings for 972 HKSL signs from both Deaf native HKSL signers and hearing Cantonese-speaking non-signers, and examined how these ratings relate to performance in several meaning‑guessing tasks.

Results show that HKSL signs are rated as comparably iconic to signs in other well‑studied sign languages, including American Sign Language and Israeli Sign Language, with Deaf signers assigning higher iconicity ratings overall. Across tasks, signs rated as more iconic were also more likely to be guessed correctly by hearing non-signers. Importantly, the study shows that semantic transparency is not all‑or‑nothing: when contextual information is provided through multiple‑choice options, many signs become “translucent,” allowing accurate inference, whereas open‑ended guessing without context is much more difficult.

By combining large‑scale iconicity ratings with multiple guessing paradigms and cross‑linguistic comparisons, this work provides a new empirical baseline for studying iconicity and semantic transparency in HKSL and contributes to broader discussions about how form–meaning relationships are perceived across sign languages.

Thompson, A., Chik, A., Ngai, M., Chen, R., Ng, J., & Do, Y. (2026). Iconicity and semantic transparency in Hong Kong Sign Language: Evidence from ratings and three guessing paradigms. Language and Cognition, 18, Article e21. open_in_newDOI

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“Modeling Prosodic Development with Prenatal Audio Attenuation” published in the Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology.

We are pleased to share a new publication from Frank, Shuang, Ming, and Youngah in the Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology. The paper, titled “Modeling Prosodic Development with Prenatal Audio Attenuation,” investigates how the sound environment before birth may shape early prosodic learning—the ability to perceive patterns such as stress and tone in speech.

Preterm infants often experience delayed language development, and one contributing factor may be the reduced duration of prenatal auditory exposure. To better understand this, the authors used convolutional neural networks to simulate infants’ early learning environment. The models were first trained on low‑frequency audio, reflecting the kinds of sounds fetuses can hear in utero, before being exposed to full‑frequency speech that resembles postnatal auditory input.

The study shows that longer exposure to low‑frequency audio provides an initial advantage for learning stress and tone patterns, though this early benefit fades over time. Interestingly, the simulations also reveal that learning improves even more when models are trained on full‑frequency audio for the same duration, suggesting that infants may rely on a wider range of acoustic cues than previously assumed. These findings underscore the importance of both the quantity and quality of auditory input in early prosodic development.

Thompson, A., Chik, A., Ngai, M., Chen, R., Ng, J., & Do, Y (2026). Iconicity and semantic transparency in Hong Kong Sign Language: Evidence from ratings and three guessing paradigms. Language and Cognition, 2(1). open_in_newDOI

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“Investigating the Tone–Segment Asymmetry in Phonological Counting: A Learnability Experiment” published in the Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology.

We are pleased to announce a new publication by Jian, Hanna, Youngah and Jesse in the Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology. The paper, titled “Investigating the Tone-Segment Asymmetry in Phonological Counting: A Learnability Experiment,” examines how learners acquire rules that rely on counting either tones or segments, two fundamental components of spoken language.

Tone-segment asymmetry has long attracted attention in phonological theory, with many proposals suggesting that tones and segments behave differently in how they pattern across languages. This study provides the first experimental test of whether these typological differences are connected to how easily such patterns can be learned. Using an artificial-language learning paradigm, the authors compared learners’ ability to acquire a tonal counting rule with their ability to learn a structurally parallel segmental rule.

The results reveal that an unattested segmental counting pattern is significantly more difficult for learners than its tonal equivalent. This asymmetry in learnability suggests that cognitive biases may contribute to the distribution of tone‑ and segment‑based counting patterns observed cross‑linguistically.

Cui, J., Shine, H., Do, Y., & Snedeker, J. (2026). Investigating the tone-segment asymmetry in phonological counting: A learnability experiment. Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology, 2(1). open_in_newDOI

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“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 representational spaces can emerge from context-free acoustic exposure alone. The study reveals that universal phonetic sensitivity is a transient developmental stage that varies across contrasts and gradually gives way to language-specific perception, mirroring infant perceptual development. Different featural contrasts remain universally discriminable for varying durations over the course of learning. These findings support the view that universal sensitivity is not innately fixed but emerges through learning, and that early phonological development proceeds along a mosaic, feature-dependent trajectory.

Tan, F. & Do, Y. (2025). Bottom-up modeling of phoneme learning: Universal sensitivity and language-specific transformation. Speech Communication. open_in_newDOI

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“Attention-LSTM autoencoder simulation for phonotactic learning from raw audio input” published in Linguistics Vanguard

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new paper by Frank Lihui Tan and Youngah Do in the journal Linguistics Vanguard. The paper, titled “Attention-LSTM autoencoder simulation for phonotactic learning from raw audio input,” explores a novel approach to phonotactic learning using an attention-based long short-term memory (LSTM) autoencoder trained on raw audio input.

Unlike previous models that rely on abstract phonological representations, this study simulates early phonotactic acquisition stages by processing continuous acoustic signals. The research focuses on an English phonotactic pattern, specifically the distribution of aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops. The model implicitly acquires phonotactic knowledge through reconstruction tasks, demonstrating its ability to capture essential phonotactic relations via attention mechanisms. The findings suggest that the model initially relies heavily on contextual cues to identify phonotactic patterns but gradually internalizes these constraints, reducing its dependence on specific phonotactic cues over time.

This study provides valuable insights into both computational modeling and infants’ phonotactic acquisition, highlighting the feasibility of early phonotactic learning models based on raw auditory input.

Tan, F. & Do, Y. (2025). Attention-LSTM autoencoder simulation for phonotactic learning from raw audio input. Linguistics Vanguard. open_in_newDOI

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“Tonal Assignment of Chinese Lettered Words” published in Journal of Chinese Linguistics

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new paper by Zhihao Wang and Youngah Do in the Journal of Chinese Linguistics. The paper, titled “Tonal Assignment of Chinese Lettered Words,” explores the complex patterns of tonal assignment in Chinese lettered words, particularly in Beijing Mandarin.

The study reveals that Chinese lettered words display a clear stress-to-tone match pattern, with additional rules of phonetic contrast maximization and a default rule also playing a role in tonal assignment. The findings suggest that the complex patterns previously reported in studies of ordinary Chinese loanwords are influenced by external factors related to the Chinese writing system.

This research provides valuable insights into the inherent strategies of tonal assignment in the Chinese language and contributes to our understanding of the phonological adaptation of loanwords.

Wang, Z., & Do, Y. (2025). Tonal assignment of Chinese lettered words [Preprint]. Journal of Chinese Linguistics. open_in_newDOI

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“Iconic hand gestures from ideophones exhibit stability and emergent phonological properties” published in CogLing

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new paper by Arthur, Thomas (joint first authors), Aaron, and Youngah in the journal Cognitive Linguistics.

The paper, titled “Iconic hand gestures from ideophones exhibit stability and emergent phonological properties: an iterated learning study,” explores the stability and phonological properties of iconic hand gestures associated with ideophones. Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory imagery and are usually considered iconic by native speakers. The study investigates how these gestures are transmitted across generations using a linear iterated learning paradigm.

The findings reveal that despite noise in the visual signal, participants’ hand gestures converged, indicating the emergence of phonological targets. Handshape configurations over time exhibited finger coordination reminiscent of unmarked handshapes observed in phonological inventories of signed languages. Well-replicated gestures were correlated with well-guessed ideophones from a spoken language study, highlighting the complementary nature of the visual and spoken modalities in formulating mental representations.

Thompson, A. L., Van Hoey, T., Chik, A. W. C., & Do, Y. (2025). Iconic hand gestures from ideophones exhibit stability and emergent phonological properties: An iterated learning study. Cognitive Linguistics. open_in_newDOI

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“Bilinguals’ advantages in executive function” published in Second Lang. Res.

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new paper by Samuel, Xiaoyu, Thomas, Bingzi, and Youngah. The paper, titled “Bilinguals’ Advantages in Executive Function: Learning Phonotactics and Alternation,” has been published in Second Language Research.

This study investigates the relationship between phonotactics and alternation in phonological acquisition and explores whether bilingual speakers have an advantage in learning alternation patterns that are not fully supported by phonotactics. Phonotactics refers to the legal sequences and structures within a language’s phonology, while alternation involves context-sensitive changes in morphemes. The research predicts that bilinguals, due to their enhanced executive function and multitasking abilities, will outperform monolinguals in handling multiple independent phonological pattern learning tasks simultaneously.

The findings reveal that bilingual participants successfully learned alternation patterns regardless of their consistency with stem-internal phonotactic patterns. In contrast, monolinguals only acquired alternation patterns with full phonotactic support. This suggests that bilingualism may confer advantages in managing phonotactics and alternation learning tasks simultaneously.

Sze, S. L., Yu, X., Van Hoey, T., Yu, B., & Do, Y. (2025). Bilinguals’ advantages in executive function: learning phonotactics and alternation. Second Language Research. open_in_new DOI