Department of Linguistics · UC Santa Barbara

Sherry Chien簡慧宇

Phonetician and laboratory phonologist studying how speakers use prosody — pitch, timing, and articulation — to mark focus, organize rhythm, and shape meaning, from Taiwan Mandarin tone to second-language English.

H* L+H* L* H*+L
Santa Barbara, CA [email protected]
Focus

About

I'm a phonetician and laboratory phonologist — a PhD candidate in Linguistics at UC Santa Barbara — studying how prosody organizes speech and conveys meaning. My work asks how speakers mark focus, how prosodic boundaries interact with that marking, and how linguistic rhythm emerges from the interplay of syllables, feet, and phrases. I approach these questions with electromagnetic articulography (EMA), acoustic analysis, corpus methods, and perception experiments, across typologically diverse languages including Taiwan Mandarin, Estonian, and Tokyo Japanese.

Before UCSB, I completed an MA in Linguistics at National Taiwan University and a BA in English at National Kaohsiung Normal University, where I trained and worked as an EFL teacher — a thread that still runs through my interest in second-language prosody.

Dissertation (working title) The Interaction between Focus Structure and Prosodic Structure in Taiwan Mandarin
Passed PhD Candidacy Qualifying Exam with Distinction
Program

Research

My research asks how speakers use prosody to mark focus, organize utterances into constituents, and build linguistic rhythm — and how those systems are acquired in a second language. Four threads run through this work.

Focus and the Tone–Intonation Interaction
In tonal languages, pitch already carries lexical meaning, so marking focus means layering phrase-level intonation on top of lexical tone without erasing it. Using EMA data from Taiwan Mandarin, I ask whether focus is a distinct layer of structure or an emergent effect of tone-intonation interaction, and whether the hierarchy of focus types documented in stress languages like English and German also holds in a tone language.
Prominence and Boundary as a Unified System
Prominence and boundary marking are usually treated as separate parts of prosody. A second EMA study of Taiwan Mandarin tests whether they instead arise from one coupled dynamical system — whether the location of focus shapes where a prosodic boundary falls, and whether boundary placement can itself signal focus.
Linguistic Rhythm
With Argyro Katsika and Matthew Gordon, I'm re-examining the classic stress-timed / syllable-timed rhythm typology across 272 genetically and areally diverse languages. The pattern so far: rhythm isn't set by any single level like the syllable or foot, but by how syllable, foot, word, and phrase interact. Related EMA work traces how moraic structure governs phrase-final lengthening in Tokyo Japanese, and how vowel length and metrical structure interact in Estonian.
Second Language Prosody
How do L1 Taiwan Mandarin speakers acquire the prosody of L2 English — and which patterns are L1 transfer versus a more general developmental path? Mandarin speakers tend to mark focus in English by lengthening and raising pitch across the whole word rather than just the stressed syllable, a signature of L1 transfer. Meanwhile, accent acquisition follows a broader trajectory: salient, categorical features like nuclear accents are learned before finer phonetic detail like pitch alignment.
Looking ahead Building the articulatory evidence for how tone and intonation combine, testing the prominence–boundary hypothesis directly, and connecting prosodic typology to L2 learning trajectories — eventually extending into discourse, turn-taking, and naturalistic conversation using EMA, ultrasound, EGG, and eye-tracking.
Record

Publications

  • 2026submitted
    Distinct Articulatory Effects of Tone and Focus in Taiwan Mandarin
    Chien, S. & Katsika, A. — Speech Prosody 2026
  • 2026submitted
    How Quantity and Stress Shape the Kinematics of Foot Structure in Estonian
    Katsika, Asu, Gordon, Lippus, Malmi, Qu & Chien — Speech Prosody 2026
  • 2024
    Phonetic Realization of Focus in English by Taiwan Mandarin Speakers
    Chien, S. — Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Speech Prosody, pp. 527–531 · DOI 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2024-107
  • 2023
    The Domain of Boundary-Related Lengthening in Tokyo Japanese, a Mora-Timed Language
    Chien, S., Tsai, K. & Katsika, A. — Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), pp. 1524–1528
  • 2023
    Speech Rhythm Metrics: A Typological Survey
    Gordon, M., Katsika, A., Chien, S., Jang, J. & Lai, R. K.-Y. — Proceedings of ICPhS 2023, pp. 1479–1483
  • 2020
    On the Learnability of Nuclear and Prenuclear Accents — Using Taiwan Mandarin Learners of English as an Example
    Chien, S. & Fon, J. — Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2020, pp. 886–889 · DOI 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-181
  • 2019
    Are Nuclear Accents Easier to Acquire than Prenuclear Accents? — Using Peak Alignment in Advanced Mandarin EFL Learners as an Example
    Chien, H.-Y. & Fon, J. — Proceedings of ICPhS 2019, pp. 2856–2860
Voice

Talks & Presentations

  • Dec 2025
    Acoustic and articulatory encoding of focus structure in Taiwan Mandarin: evidence from EMA
    Chien, S. & Katsika, A. — 6th joint ASA/ASJ meeting, Honolulu
  • May 2025
    From lexical tones to pitch accents: how Taiwan Mandarin speakers realize focus in L2 English
    3rd International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI 2025), Herrsching, Germany
  • Jan 2025
    The acquisition of different types of focus in English among Taiwan Mandarin speakers
    101st Annual Meeting of the LSA, Philadelphia
  • Jan 2025
    The rhythm class hypothesis: towards an expanded typology
    Chien, S., Gordon, M., Katsika, A., Lai, R.K.-Y. & Lashchev, Y. — LSA 2025, Philadelphia
  • Feb 2020
    Do L2 speakers follow a gender-dependent path to reach their L1 prosody norm?
    NTU–UT Linguistics Festa, National Taiwan University
  • Oct 2018
    The realization of nuclear and prenuclear accents in Mandarin learners of English
    Joint Conference — IsCLL-17 & LDC-9
  • Jan 2025
    The acquisition of different types of focus in English among Taiwan Mandarin speakers
    Linguistics Colloquium, UCSB
  • May 2024
    Learning L2 prosody: the phonetic realization of focus in English by Taiwan Mandarin speakers
    Applied Linguistics Spring Colloquium, UCSB
  • Nov 2023
    English focus phonetic realization by Taiwan Mandarin speakers — a preliminary analysis
    Phonetics Circle, Department of Linguistics, UCSB
  • Jan 2022
    Are nuclear accents easier to acquire than prenuclear accents?
    Phonetics Circle, Department of Linguistics, UCSB
  • Jul 2025
    Prosody in Second Language Acquisition
    Language and Linguistics (Instr. Kris M. Ali), UCSB
  • Feb 2025
    Tuning into a Second Language: the Role of Prosody in L2 Learning
    Introduction to Bilingualism (Instr. Dr. Guillem Belmar Viernes), University of Oregon
  • Mar 2024
    From Acoustics to Perturbation Theory
    Articulatory Phonetics (Instr. Dr. Argyro Katsika), UCSB
  • May 2022
    Teaching Language to Nonhumans: Can It Be Done?
    First Language Acquisition (Instr. Dr. Brendan Barnwell), UCSB
Current work

Current Projects

Rhythm Typology Project Leader of undergraduate RAs · 2022–present
PI: Dr. Matthew Gordon & Dr. Argyro Katsika, UCSB. Leading and instructing 38 undergraduate RAs on Praat segmentation across recordings of 75+ genetically and areally diverse languages from JIPA; running weekly project meetings.
Kinematic Signatures in Estonian Prosodic Structure Research Assistant · Fall 2025–present
PI: Dr. Argyro Katsika, UCSB. Labeling Estonian articulatory data in MATLAB; assisting with data postprocessing and organization.
Prosody and Memory in L1 Cantonese Speakers of L2 English Research Assistant · 2024–present
PI: Dr. Laurel Brehm, UCSB. Eye-tracking training and experiments; consulting on L2 prosody and tonal-language expertise.
Mandarin and Cantonese Prosody Project Research Assistant · Fall 2022–present
PI: Dr. Argyro Katsika, UCSB. Leading a study on Taiwan Mandarin L1 prosody and its transfer to L2 English, including experimental design, stimuli creation, and participant recruitment.
In the classroom

Teaching

Instructor of record
  • LING 145 — Articulatory Phonetics · Summer 2025
  • LING 106 — Introduction to Phonetics · Fall 2023
Teaching assistant, UCSB
  • LING 146 — Auditory Phonetics · Winter 2026 & Spring 2024
  • LING 106 — Intro to Phonetics · Fall 2025, 2022, 2021
  • LING 145 — Articulatory Phonetics · Winter 2024
  • LING 137 — First Language Acquisition · Spring 2022
  • LING 70 — Language in Society · Winter 2022
Recognition

Grants, Awards & Fellowships

2025
Carol Genetti Graduate Mentoring Award
Nominated by students for excellence in mentoring undergraduate RAs · Graduate Division, UCSB
2025
Dissertation Fellowship
For academic standing and a promising dissertation proposal · Graduate Division, UCSB
2025
Conference Travel Grant
To present at LSA 2025 · Graduate Student Association, UCSB
2024
Graduate Student Research Award
Center of Taiwan Studies, UCSB
2023–24
Dorothy M. Chun & Joseph Polchinski Applied Linguistics Fellowship
Included an invited colloquium talk · Gevirtz School of Education, UCSB
2024
Doctoral Student Travel Grant
To present at Speech Prosody 2024 · Academic Senate, UCSB
2024
Humanities & Social Sciences Research Grant
Graduate Division, UCSB
2023
Departmental Conference Travel Grant
To present at ICPhS 2023 · Department of Linguistics, UCSB
2020–22
Chancellor's Fellowship (multiple years)
Graduate Division, UCSB
2020
Department of Linguistics Fellowship
To support relocation and program entry · UCSB
2019
Research Project Travel Grant
To present at ICPhS 2019 · Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan
2013–17
Academic Excellence Scholarship (7×) & Academic Achievement Award
National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan — graduated Summa Cum Laude, President's List every semester
Beyond research

Service

  • Program Commissioner, NATSA 2026 — North American Taiwan Studies Association: planning events, drafting the call for abstracts, coordinating keynote speakers
  • Graduate Student Representative — Department of Linguistics, UCSB (2023–24): liaison between students and faculty, Undergraduate Studies Committee
  • Abstract reviewer — LISO 2025, WAIL24–27
  • Elementary School Science Nights — Santa Barbara, CA (2022–present): outreach exhibits on writing systems and speech technology with UCSB Linguistics
Toolkit

Skills

Languages
Taiwan Mandarin — native English — advanced Taiwan Southern Min — intermediate
Research software
Praat VoiceSauce Rezonator ELAN
Coding & typesetting
R MATLAB Praat script LaTeX