Cornell Phonetics Lab researchers brought their latest work to LabPhon 20, held June 26-28, 2026 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where they presented the following seven papers and posters.

Top photo - Sam Tilsen discusses the articulatory evidence for ambisyllabicity

Bottom Photo -  - Fengyue Lisa Zhao (on the right) presents a poster on laryngeal elevation in lexical tone production

===> Presentations:

*Articulatory evidence for ambisyllabicity: a modern approach to an old question (presentation)
 - Sam Tilsen, Cornell University

*Labial control and postural targets of labial and non-labial consonants - Peter Krause (California State University Channel Islands); Sam Tilsen (Cornell University)

*Low-tone faithfulness and high-tone markedness in Nuosu Yi tone adaptation - Yao Zhang (Cornell University)

*The role of prosody in distinguishing meaning in English since-when questions - Youngdong Cho; Fengyue Lisa Zhao; Chloe Dokyung Kwon (Cornell University)

*Ventricular abduction observed using transverse ultrasound of the larynx - Mark Tiede (Yale University); D. H. Whalen (CUNY Graduate Center); Laura Koenig (Adelphi University); Lisa Fengyue Zhao; Sam Tilsen (Cornell University)

==> Posters:

*Laryngeal elevation in native and non-native lexical tone production - Fengyue Lisa Zhao; Sam Tilsen (Cornell University); Mark Tiede (Yale University)

*Prosodically-conditioned temporal variation in whispered vs. normal speech - Annabelle di Lustro; Sam Tilsen (Cornell University)

The Cornell Phonetics Lab was very well represented at LabPhon 20, held June 26-28, 2026 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  Sixteen alumni, faculty, and current students attended and/or presented research (see list below).

The conference Plenary event - titled "40th Anniversary of LabPhon - Looking back and Looking Forward" -  highlighted Cornell's prominence in Phonetics and Phonology research.  The Plenary featured  and Myriam Lapierre (see top picture)  and they discussed how laboratory phonology has grown and evolved. 

Three of these four - Robert Ladd, Iona Chitoran, Sam Tilsen - are either Cornell Linguistics alumni or current Cornell faculty, and LabPhon itself was first organized in 1987 by  John Kingston (then a Cornell faculty member) and Phonetics Lab alumnus Mary Beckman (PhD 1983).

Cornell alumni/faculty/students in the bottom picture from left:

• Alice Turk  (PhD 1993), Professor of Linguistics, Edinburgh University
• Marisabel Cabrera (BA Linguistics 2021),  PhD Candidate at UCLA
• Marc Brunelle (PhD 2005), Professor of Linguistics, University of Ottawa
• Simon Roessig (Post-Doctoral Fellow, 2022-2023), Junior Professor of Linguistics, University of Cologne
• Ioana Chitoran (PhD 1997), Professor of Linguistics, Universite Paris Cite
• Robert Ladd, (PhD 1978), Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, Edinburgh University
• Abby Cohn (Professor of Linguistics)
• Sam Tilsen (Professor of Linguistics)
• Francesco Burroni (PhD 2023), Post-Doctoral Researcher, LMU Munich; special lecturer, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
• Fengyue (Lisa) Zhao (PhD candidate)
• Sireemas Maspong (PhD 2023), Post-Doctoral Researcher, LMU Munich
• Annabelle di Lustro (PhD candidate)

Not shown in picture: 

• Chelsea Sanker, (PhD 2016) Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor, Wellesley College
• Chloe (Dokyung) Kwon (PhD 2026), Post-Doctoral Researcher, McMaster University
• John Kingston, (Asst. Professor of Modern Languages & Linguistics, 1986-1990), Professor  of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts
• Yao Zhang (PhD Candidate)

Recent P-Lab graduate Chloe (Dokyung) Kwon (Ph.D 2026) will join McMaster University (Ontario, Canada) as a PostDoctoral researcher for Prof. Christian Brodbeck in the Department of Computing and Software. 

Chloe will work on a collaborative research project with Adderbee Research Labs, who have developed a cognitive architecture that using symbolic computation and continuous learning to model human cognition.  The joint project will improve Adderbee's natural language understanding by applying both cognitive and linguistics principles.

On June 5th, Ph.D. candidate Annabelle di Lustro and Professor Sam Tilsen gave a presentation titled "Voiceprints and Voice Disguises" to a packed and enthusiastic audience of Cornell alumni who were attending Cornell's Reunion 2026 celebration. 

Annabelle described her recent research on vocal disguise with whispered speech.  To illustrate her work, she played voice samples derived from her sound booth experiments. 

These samples consisted of paired whispered and paired normal voice samples.  She then asked the audience to guess if each pair was from one person or from two different people. 

For the easy pairs, the audience was almost unanimously correct, and for the most difficult pairs, the audience was evenly split - results that tracked with Annabelle's experimental results.