Darius ADJONG
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
Thesis (working) title: A grammar of Buli
My research interests are primarily in grammatical description, linguistic typology and language documentation with a focus on the Gur and Kwa (Niger-Congo) languages spoken in Ghana and other parts of Africa.
Supervisor: Dr. Kofi Yakpo
Co-supervisor: Dr. Joe Perry
Email: darius20@connect.hku.hk
Antonia ALVARES
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
Thesis (working) title: Investigating Khatri as a Contact Language
Antonia is working towards writing a descriptive grammar of the Khatri/Pattegar language with the aim of situating it within contact linguistics. The Khatri/Pattegar language is spoken by a small community in India known as the Saojis.
Supervisor: Dr. Kofi Yakpo
Co-supervisor: Dr. Joe Perry
Email: tonia9@connect.hku.hk
Changhe CHEN
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
Research concentration: My research interests are phonetics and laboratory phonology. Currently I use articulatory methods (ultrasound and electroglottograph) and acoustic analysis to investigate different aspects of Chinese phonetics.
Supervisor: Dr. Jonathan Havenhill
Co-supervisor: Dr. Kofi Yakpo
Email: riverch8@connect.hku.hk
JIANG Tian
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
Research concentration: Cognitive and Neurological Mechanisms underlying Visual Reading in Chinese (Psycholinguistics/Neurolinguistics)
Supervisor: Dr. Wai Ting Siok
Email: mylily03@connect.hku.hk
Jonah Allan LACK
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
Research concentration: I am a PhD student researching L2 syntactic representations and morphosyntactic processing through EEG, and am specifically interested in the differences between syntactic representations in 1st and 2nd language processing and acquisition. My MA dissertation discussed structural priming in bilinguals, including current theories, methodologies, and trends. I’m heavily interested in L2 processing and acquisition broadly, and have been studying Korean and Mandarin since the start of my Bachelor’s degree with the goal of attaining fluency.
Supervisor: Dr. Yoonsang Song
Co-supervisor: Prof. Stephen Matthews
Email: jlack@connect.hku.hk
Hanbo LIAO
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
Thesis (working) title: The Formation of Lingnan Linguistic Traits: Typological Structures and Diachronic Issues.
Hanbo is conducting his Ph.D. study of the formation of the linguistics areal features in the Lingnan region of China in diachronic and typological perspectives. His field of study includes Historical and Comparative Linguistics, Phonology, Phonetics, Grammar, Tonology, Language Typology, Areal linguistics and Language Contact, Bilingualism/Multilingualism and Sociolinguistics, focusing on the Kra-Dai, Southern Sinitic, Austronesian, and Vietic languages. Before joining HKU, he has completed his MA study in Payap University, by conducting a study on tonal development of Tai languages. On that basic he has proposed a practical Tai tone-box scheme which claims to capture all tonal distinctions in any Tai language (Liao forthcoming). Hanbo also focuses on the bilingual development of Zhuang children, and from 2019, he has started to compile a Yang Zhuang-Chinese-English-Thai online dictionary and an introductory textbook of Yang Zhuang language, hoping to provide resources for children’s bilingual teaching of Zhuang-Chinese in the future.
In addition to his linguistic studies, Hanbo is also a philologist in Kra-Dai languages’ oral literature. Since 2008, he has been participating in the protection and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage in the Zhuang areas of China, and helped Jingxi City of Guangxi to successfully apply for the registration of Mot Lan, a Southern Zhuang melodious art, onto the list of the national intangible cultural heritage units in 2020.
Liao Hanbo. (forthcoming). An Integrated Tone Box Scheme for Determining Tones in Tai Varieties beyond Southwestern Tai: Diachronic and Synchronic Concerns. Folia Linguistica Historica.
Supervisor: Prof. Stephen Matthews
Co-supervisor: Dr. Joe Perry
Email: lhb77610@connect.hku.hk
Personal webpage
Ming LIU
MPhil Candidate (Full-time)
I’m a Mphil student planning to work on phonetics and SLA. I’m interested in speech learning in second language acquisition as well as sound change in natural language contact, especially the interaction between Mandarin and Hakka.
Supervisor: Dr. Jonathan Havenhill
Co-supervisor: Dr. Youngah Do
Email: u3007723@connect.hku.hk
Ralph Chun Yin LIU
PhD (Full-time)
I have just graduated from my PhD studies and I am working currently as a post-doctoral fellow on the neuroscience of reading. I am interested in using neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI to probe into the mind and cognition. My research goal is to find out a unified theory of the brain network of reading and reading disorders. I am teaching LING2053 Language and the Brain and LING6022 Reading Acquisition and Developmental Dyslexia this year.
Supervisor: Dr. Wai Ting Siok
Email: yin2013@connect.hku.hk
Yue LYU
MPhil Candidate (Full-time)
Supervisor: Dr. Joe Perry
Co-supervisor: Dr. Youngah Do
Email: ymlyu98@connect.hku.hk
NI Wenjing
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
Supervisor: Dr. Christophe Coupé
Email: u3006222@connect.hku.hk
REN He
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
My research interest lies in syntax, semantics, and their interfaces. My current studies include (crosslinguistic) control constructions, logophoricity, and attitude embedment. I have completed my MA degree at University College London, and my BA degree at Nanjing University.
Supervisor: Dr. Joe Perry
Co-supervisor: Prof. Stephen Matthews
Email: u3006205@connect.hku.hk
Robert Marcelo SEVILLA
Phd Candidate (Full-time)
My research interests include the Xiang group, Sinitic typology, acoustics (of hesitation markers like uh and um in particular), and grammatical variation (of classifier constructions in particular). I'm also willing to chat about diachronic linguistics with anyone, rain or shine!
Supervisor: Prof. Stephen Matthews
Co-supervisor: Dr. Jonathan Havenhill
Email: u3545575@connect.hku.hk
Samuel Sui Lung SZE
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
Research concentration: Second language acquisition
Supervisor: Dr. Yoonsang Song
Co-supervisor: Dr. Youngah Do
Email: u3564255@connect.hku.hk
Qingchun WANG
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
Supervisor: Dr. Wai Ting Siok
Email: tun1015@connect.hku.hk
Zhihao WANG
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
Research Interest: Phonology, Phonetics, Language Contact
Supervisor: Dr. Youngah Do
Co-supervisor: Dr. Jonathan Havenhill
Email: wzhihaow@connect.hku.hk
Enoch Chi Lok WONG
MPhil Candidate (Full-time)
Research concentration: Computational Linguistics, sentiment analysis in speech, Machine Learning
Supervisor: Dr. Christophe Coupe
Co-supervisor: Dr. Jonathan Havenhill
Email: enochw@connect.hku.hk
Xiaoyu YU
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
Xiaoyu joined the PhD program in 2021. He is currently working on sound changes and phonological learning using experimental methods. His other research interests include sociophonetics, Middle Chinese phonology, and Chinese varieties.
Supervisor: Dr. Youngah Do
Co-supervisor: Dr. Jonathan Havehill
Email: xyu97@connect.hku.hk
Bingzi YU
MPhil Candidate (Full-time)
I am a second-year MPhil student working on phonology. I am currently interested in learning biases, which is about why certain sound patterns are preferred by humans and are more prevalent in typology data, and what kind of biases affect people’s choices and how they influence language change over generations.
Supervisor: Dr. Youngah Do
Email: iceyu@connect.hku.hk
Shuang ZHENG
PhD Candidate (Full-time)
Research interest: Phonology, phonology-morphology interface, varieties of Chinese
Supervisor: Dr. Youngah Do
Co-supervisor: Dr. Jonathan Havenhill
Email: ivyzheng@connect.hku.hk