Congratulations to Phonetics Lab grad students Yao Zhang and Fengyue Lisa Zhang who (along with fellow grad student Youngdong Cho) were awarded C.V. Starr Fellowships from the Cornell University East Asia Program.  These fellowships are awarded to Cornell graduate students whose work has an East Asia focus.  

C.V. Starr fellowships are awarded by the Starr Foundation - a charity started by insurance entrepreneur Cornelius Vander Starr.   The Starr foundation specializes in Asian arts and cultural philanthropy, but also makes grants in other areas, including education, medicine and healthcare, and public policy.

Ph.D. candidates Fengyue (Lisa) & Zhao and Yao Zhang presented their ongoing research at  TAI 2025 (the 3rd International Conference on Tone and Intonation), held in Herrsching near Munich, Germany (16–18 May 2025).

Fengyue (Lisa) presented a paper on research she conducted with Dr. Jennifer Kuo - the paper was titled:  "Distributional Learning Across Contexts:  Learning Cantonese Tones in Naturalistic Speech" 

Yao presented a poster titled "Tone adaptation in loanwords: from Mandarin Chinese to Nuosu Yi".

The Cornell Phonetics lab was well represented by eleven students, alumni, faculty, and research collaborators at TAI 2025 (the 3rd International Conference on Tone and Intonation), held in Herrsching near Munich, Germany (16–18 May 2025).  See the accompanying photo!

First row: Fengyue (Lisa) Zhao (Cornell Phonetics Lab grad student), Dr. Sireemas Maspong (post-doctoral researcher, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich), Dr. Draga Zec (Professor Emeritus, Cornell University), Dr. Elizabeth Zsiga (Georgetown University), Yao Zhang (Cornell Phonetics Lab grad student), Dr. Yiya Chen (Leiden University)

Second row: Dr. Simon Roessig (University of York), Dr. Marc Brunelle (University of Ottawa), Dr. Robert Ladd (Professor Emeritus, University of Edinburgh), Dr. Francesco Burroni (post-doctoral researcher at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich),  Dr. Pittayawat Pittayaporn (Chulalongkorn University).  

The TAI 2025 conference theme was "Variation and change in tone and intonation systems across space and time", with the aim to foster a more diverse and comprehensive understanding of tone and intonation by exploring variation in geographical as well as physical space, along with the dynamic evolution of tone and intonation across various timescales.

Eight Phonetics Lab researchers attended PHUNY 2 (the Second Annual Meeting of Phonetics/Phonology in Upstate New York), held at the University of Buffalo North Campus on Saturday, May 3rd, 2025.

PHUNY is a small and friendly one-day workshop for Upstate NY graduate students working on any aspect of phonetics and/or phonology. In addition to presenting and discussing current research, PHUNY seeks to build build community and provide a venue for practicing conference skills.

Cornell Phonetics lab researchers gave the following presentations: 

1. Yao Zhang; The Role of Native Tonotactics in Tone Adaptation: Evidence from Nuosu Yi
2. Leonaro Antonio Silva Teixeira; Using Envelope Mode Decomposition to Analyze Rhythm Development in Brazilian Learners of English-L2
3. Annabelle di Lustro, Sam Tilsen, Abby Cohn; The effect of syllabic vs. moraic structure on anticipatory vowel nasalization in Japanese
4. Fengyue Lisa Zhao, Jennifer Kuo; Distributional Learning Across Contexts: Learning Cantonese Tones in Naturalistic Speech
5. Jennifer Kuo, Plenary: Types of Statistical Knowledge in Alternation Learning: Insights from Artificial Grammar Learning