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Overview
Overview
Drawing from both quantitative and qualitative approaches, I have combined methods from various subfields — phonetics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational/corpus linguistics — to answer questions about Asian American/Canadian speech, social speech perception, phonetic variation and change, monolingual/multilingual language experience, and more.
I am particularly interested in (a) understanding the uses, interpretations, and implications of the "native speaker" concept in language science research, and (b) understanding the sources of individual variation that we see in speech production, perception and processing, especially those relating to sociocognitive factors like ideology and awareness.
Broad Interests
Broad Interests
Sociophonetic cognition
Linguistic ideologies
Asian North American context
Speech production and perception
Sound change
Phonetic transfer and contact-induced change
Specific Topics
Specific Topics
"Native speaker" concept
Measuring language experience
Asian American/Canadian speech
Awareness and salience
Individual differences
Heritage/diaspora multilingualism
Cantonese
Production-perception link
Mergers-in-progress
Methods
Methods
Surveys & behavioral tasks
Text/speech corpora
Qualitative coding
Structured literature review
Exploratory data analysis (e.g., clustering)
Speech recordings, acoustic analyses, & ultrasound
Recent Projects
Recent Projects
Moving beyond "Native Speaker": Alternative approaches to language experience
Moving beyond "Native Speaker": Alternative approaches to language experience
In collaboration with Dr. Savithry Namboodiripad and many others at the University of Michigan and beyond, I critique the use of the "native speaker" construct, advocating for psycholinguists and language researchers broadly to take alternative approaches to conceptualizing, measuring and discussing language experience.
Papers
Cheng, L. S. P. & Namboodiripad, S. (2024). Native Speaker/Signer: An Ideologically Laden Proxy Variable. Reference Module in Social Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-95504-1.00164-2
To be published in H. Nesi and P. Milin (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (3rd ed.).
Cheng, L. S. P., Kramer, M. A., Upreti, R., & Namboodiripad, S. (2022). Moving past indirect proxies for language experience: ‘Native speaker’ and residential history are poor predictors of language behavior. In J. Culbertson, A. Perfors, H. Rabagliati & V. Ramenzoni (Eds.), Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1p59b35f [pdf (poster)]
GitHub Repository: https://github.com/lspcheng/langx
Cheng, L. S. P., Burgess, D., Vernooij, N., Solís-Barroso, C., McDermott, A., & Namboodiripad, S. (2021). The Problematic Concept of Native Speaker in Psycholinguistics: Replacing Vague and Harmful Terminology With Inclusive and Accurate Measures. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.715843
Presentations
Cheng, L. S. P. (2024, March) Going beyond good intentions: making EDI considerations concrete. Panelist at PsychoShorts 2024, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON (virtual)
Cheng, L. S. P., Burgess, D., Vernooij, N., Solís-Barroso, C., McDermott, A., & Namboodiripad, S. (2022, February). Problems with ‘native speaker’ in Psycholinguistics and what we can do about it. Presented at the University of Utah CLARG (Cognitive Language Aficionados Research Group) Speaker Series, Salt Lake City, UT (virtual). [pdf (slides)]
Ideology, awareness, and sociophonetic perception in Asian American and Canadian (AAC) speech
Ideology, awareness, and sociophonetic perception in Asian American and Canadian (AAC) speech
My dissertation project centered on ideologies of "sounding Asian" and how these affect the perception of Asian Americans and Canadians (AACs) and their speech. I first explored the phonetic features that may be used by speakers and listeners to index or interpret AAC identity in perceptual impressions via a YouTube corpus analysis and surveys. I then explored two potential AAC personae that fall along a continuum of ethnic orientation. Finally, I investigated AAC social speech perception through an experimental task, using this context to further understand the influence of sociolinguistic personae and awareness on sociophonetic cognition.
Papers
Cheng, L. S. P. (2024). Ideology, awareness, and sociophonetic perception in Asian American and Canadian speech. [Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan]. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/194604
Presentations
Cheng, L. S. P. (2024, June). Ideology and Sociophonetic Representations: Investigating the Role of Awareness and Personae in Asian American/Canadian Speech. Paper presented at LabPhon 19, Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea
Cheng, L. S. P. & Kramer, M. A. (2022, January). Exploring Asian North American English: A YouTube Corpus-based Approach. Poster presented at the LSA 2022 Annual Meeting (virtual). [pdf (slides)]
GitHub Repository: https://github.com/lspcheng/GUAva
Variation in Asian & Pacific Islander North American (APINA) English
Variation in Asian & Pacific Islander North American (APINA) English
The English language practices of Asian and/or Pacific Islander North Americans have historically been underrepresented in variationist sociolinguistic research, though this is changing in recent years. Dr. Andrew Cheng, Dr. Pocholo Umbal, Dr. Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales and I co-organized a Special Session at the Linguistic Society of America's 2021 Annual Meeting to discuss current research on variation and change in Asian American and Canadian speech communities. Building off of that, we then sought to quantify the current state of APINA underrepresentation with a structured review of the literature with the goal of providing guidance for future APINA research directions.
Papers
Cheng, A., Cheng, L. S. P., Gonzales, W. D. W., & Umbal, P. (2024). Variation in Asian and Pacific Islander North American English: What the patterns of scholarship demonstrate about race in sociolinguistics. Asia-Pacific Language Variation. https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.23009.che
Presentations
Cheng, A., Cheng, L. S. P., Gonzales, W. D. W., & Umbal, P. (2022, October). A comprehensive survey of variation in Asian and Pacific Islander North American English. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 50, Stanford, CA. [pdf (slides)] [supplementary materials]
Cheng, A., Cheng, L. S. P., Gonzales, W. D. W., & Umbal, P. (2021, January). VariAsian: Contact and Change in Asian North American Speech Communities (with Sheydaei, I., Zheng, M., Namboodiripad, S., Tse, H., and Umbal, P.). Workshop at the LSA 2021 Annual Meeting (virtual).
Social cognition and individual variation in sociophonetic perception & processing
Social cognition and individual variation in sociophonetic perception & processing
My qualifying research project, co-advised by Dr. Andries Coetzee and Dr. Jonathon Brennan, investigated the role of individual-level salience/awareness and cognitive processing style on sociophonetic perception. My testing ground for this used social priming experiments of /au/-raising, a stereotyped feature of Canadian English, in Michigan listeners. In doing so, I examined the generalizability of social priming results from various angles, and consider the implications for sociophonetic cognition.
Papers
Cheng, L. S. P. (2021). Individual variability in sociophonetic (stereotype) perception: The role of sociolinguistic awareness and sociocognitive processing style. [Master's Thesis, University of Michigan]
Presentations
Cheng, L. S. P. (2021, June). Social priming or not? Investigating generalizability via individual variation. Lightning Round Presentation at the 180th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America: Acoustics in Focus (virtual). [pdf]
Cantonese consonant mergers in Hong Kong and Vancouver, Canada
Cantonese consonant mergers in Hong Kong and Vancouver, Canada
In my honours thesis project, I investigated Cantonese speakers' production and perception of the /n/~/l/, /ŋ̩/~/m̩/ and /ŋ/~null mergers in both Hong Kong and Vancouver, in collaboration with Dr. Molly Babel, Dr. Yao Yao, and others. We use this data to examine various topics including the production-perception link, bilingual contact influences and the progression of sound change in diaspora communities.
Papers
Cheng L. S. P., Babel, M., & Yao, Y. (2022). Production and perception across three Hong Kong Cantonese consonant mergers: Community- and individual-level perspectives. Laboratory Phonology, 13(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/labphon.6461
Presentations
Cheng, L., Chung, S., & Babel, M. (2019, June). Cantonese consonant mergers-in-progress in Hong Kong and Vancouver, BC. Poster presented at the 5th Workshop on Sound Change (WSC5), Davis, CA. [pdf]
Cheng, L., Babel, M., Liu, C. & Yao, Y. (2017, April). Mergers-in-progress in Cantonese-English bilinguals. Poster presented at the 4th Workshop on Sound Change (WSC4), Edinburgh, UK. [pdf]
Cheng, L., Babel, M., Liu, C. & Yao, Y. (2017, February). Does bilingual influence from English motivate Cantonese sound mergers? A perception study. Paper presented at the Language Sciences Undergraduate Research Conference (LSURC), Vancouver, BC. [pdf]
Past Projects
Past Projects
LingTube: YouTube data processing tools for linguistic analysis
LingTube: YouTube data processing tools for linguistic analysis
In collaboration with Mathew A. Kramer (U-M), I developed the LingTube pipeline, a set of Python scripts to help linguistics researchers automate the collection and processing of speech data from YouTube. Along with contributing to general purpose tools for scraping YouTube and screening YouTubers, I led creation of the YouSpeak branch of tools for audio-speech processing and phonetic analysis.
Link to GitHub Repository: https://github.com/Narquelion/LingTube
Cheng, L. S. P. & Kramer, M. A. (2021, October) Introducing LingTube: An open-source toolkit for linguistic analysis of YouTube data. Poster presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 49 (virtual). [pdf]
Language contact in Cantonese heritage bilinguals
Language contact in Cantonese heritage bilinguals
Several of my projects have revolved around the topic of bilingual linguistic systems in Cantonese-speaking heritage bilinguals. At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, I investigated the early development of tone in a corpus of Cantonese heritage bilinguals under Peggy Mok (CUHK). After returning to Vancouver, I led follow-up experimental data collection of both production and perception in young heritage Cantonese children at UBC, together with Peggy Mok and Molly Babel. In a separate project at UBC, I also worked on investigating word familiarity across different speakers of Cantonese, together with Khia Johnson and Molly Babel.
Cheng, L., Johnson, K.A., & Babel, M. (2018, November). Bilingual word familiarity in Cantonese and English. Poster presented at the 176th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Victoria, BC. [pdf]
Mok, P., Luo, I. J., & Cheng, L. (2017, December). Length and Tone Contrasts of Cantonese Heritage Speakers. Paper presented at the 22nd International Conference on Yue Dialects, Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Ultrasound technology in teaching and learning Cantonese
Ultrasound technology in teaching and learning Cantonese
In this project, I helped to create ultrasound videos for pedagogy purposes and tested the efficacy in the Cantonese language program at UBC, in collaboration with Heather Bliss, Murray Schellenberg, Zoe Lam, Raymond Pai, and Bryan Gick.
Cheng, L. & Lam, Z. (2018, June). Ultrasound Technology in Teaching and Learning. Special Demo Session presented at the 4th Workshop on Innovations in Cantonese Linguistics (WICL-4), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. [pdf]
Bliss, H., Cheng, L., Lam, Z., Pai, R., Schellenberg, M., & Gick, B. (2016, August). Ultrasound Technology and its Role in Cantonese Pronunciation Teaching and Learning. Paper presented at the Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching (PSLLT), Calgary, AB. [pdf]
Lateral bracing across languages
Lateral bracing across languages
Working under Bryan Gick and Murray Schellenberg (UBC), I led an ultrasound study examining the extent to which lateral bracing occurs during speech cross-linguistically.
Cheng, L., Schellenberg, M., Jones, C., & Gick, B. (2017, October). Cross-linguistic evidence for lateral bracing in speech. Poster presented at Ultrafest VIII, Potsdam, Germany. [pdf]
Cheng, L., Schellenberg, M. & Gick, B. (2017). Cross-linguistic bracing: A case study of six languages. Canadian Acoustics, 45(3), 186-187.
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