News

LST postgraduate student has been awarded the 2025 LSHK Outstanding Thesis Award

Dr. Weng Yi, a PhD graduate from LST, has been awarded the Outstanding Thesis Award for 2025 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK). This award acknowledges exceptional theses that make significant contributions to any field within linguistics, including MA, MPhil, PhD, and Doctorate theses. Under the guidance of chief supervisor Prof. Peng Gang from LST, Dr. Weng’s thesis, titled “Audiovisual Speech Perception in Tonal Language Speakers: Evidence from the McGurk Paradigm”, showcases the high-quality research nurtured within our department. Dr. Weng is scheduled to present her thesis at the LSHK's 2025 Annual Research Forum on December 6, 2025. You can review Dr. Weng's thesis via this link.

Dialogue @ RCLCN - The Evolution of Human Beings and Language

[Dialogue @ RCLCN] The Evolution of Human Beings and Language Talk 1: The Evolution of Brain and Cognition Keynote Speaker: Prof. P. Thomas Schoenemann Talk 2: Vowel Emergence Based on Vocal Tract Evolution Keynote Speaker: Prof. KONG Jiangping Discussant: Prof. William S-Y. WANG (Department of Language Science and Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

Context and POS in action: A comparative study of Chinese homonym disambiguation in human and language models

Context and POS in action: A comparative study of Chinese homonym disambiguation in human and language models Speaker: Dr. Xie Chenwei (Research Associate Department of Language Science and Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

A delegation from the Institute of Linguistics, CASS (中国社会科学院语言研究所)

A delegation from the Institute of Linguistics, CASS (中国社会科学院语言研究所)

The impact of L2 proficiency on the time course of morphological activation: an incremental primed lexical decision study

The impact of L2 proficiency on the time course of morphological activation: an incremental primed lexical decision study Speaker: Miss HU Longyun (PhD Student Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

Distinguishing Cerebellum Violation and Automatic Processing in Artificial Language Learning

Distinguishing Cerebellum Violation and Automatic Processing in Artificial Language Learning Speaker: Miss LIU Zhuoya (PhD Student Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

Human vs. LLM Chinese Homonym Disambiguation: Contextual, Syntactic, and Developmental Influences Across the Lifespan

Human vs. LLM Chinese Homonym Disambiguation: Contextual, Syntactic, and Developmental Influences Across the Lifespan Speaker: Dr XIE Chenwei (Research Associate Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

Variation in real-time lexical tone processing: A psycholinguistic perspective

Variation in real-time lexical tone processing: A psycholinguistic perspective Speaker: Dr ZHANG Caicai (Associate Professor Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University) Abstract: Variation is ubiquitous in human speech. A speech sound has different acoustic realizations when produced by different speakers or surrounded by different speech sounds, posing a challenge for fast and consistent speech perception in the listener’s brain. Beyond acoustic variation, there are systematic phonological alternations, where the context-specific phonological form must be selected in a super-fast manner prior to articulation in the speaker’s mind. However, how variation is accommodated in speech perception or planned in speech production is not well understood. In this talk, I will focus on variation on a short timescale, i.e., a few hundred milliseconds of real-time speech perception and production, probed via the lens of a highly variable phonological entity – lexical tone. I will present evidence showing that listeners deploy multiple cues, including contextual acoustic cues, population F0 knowledge, and their own vocal F0 cues, to achieve fast and accurate tone perception, especially when the stimuli are variable, ambiguous, or acoustically degraded. On the production side, our studies on Mandarin Third Tone sandhi show that speakers encode the abstract tonal category at an earlier phonological encoding stage and the surface, context-specific tonal form at a later phonetic encoding or motor preparation stage before articulation. These neural processes appear to be largely similar across lexicality (real vs. pseudowords) and word frequency (high vs. low frequency) conditions. These findings have implications for advancing speech perception and production theories. Psycholinguistic methods are instrumental in understanding basic mental processes in real-time lexical tone processing, highlighting that the human speech system is fast, flexible, and multi-pronged.

Joint Postgraduate Student Symposium on Language, Culture and Cognition (JPSS2025)

Joint Postgraduate Student Symposium on Language, Culture and Cognition (JPSS2025) Speaker: Mr Wang Wenbo & Miss Hu Longyun (PhD Student Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University) Overview: The Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University is pleased to announce the Joint Postgraduate Student Symposium on Language, Culture and Cognition (JPSS2025). The symposium provides an inter-institutional forum for postgraduate research students from the Asia Pacific Region and beyond to present their research, exchange ideas, and share experiences. Talk 1: Contextual Influence on Chinese Homonym Disambiguation in Large Language Models: Evidence from Angular Distance Analysis Mr Wang Wenbo 11:00am - 11:20am (Hong Kong time (GMT +8)) Talk 2: Segmentation and Morphological Activation in L1 and L2 Derived Word Recognition Miss Hu Longyun 3:20pm - 3:40pm (Hong Kong time (GMT +8))

ISBI 2025 - The influence of handedness on white matter microstructure: Investigation of quantitative anisotropy based on the Human Connectome Project

[ISBI 2025] The influence of handedness on white matter microstructure: Investigation of quantitative anisotropy based on the Human Connectome Project Speaker: Miss NG Sheung Wa Xavreila (Research Assistant Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)