Phonetics Lab alumnus John R. Starr (PhD 2026) has accepted a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University, where he will work with Dr. Jennifer Hu at the Glint (Group for Language & Intelligence) Lab. 

At Johns Hopkins, John will continue his work on computational models of language, human language processing, and how they interact.

Phonetics Lab researchers Annabelle di Lustro, Fengyue (Lisa) Zhao, and Chloe (Dokyung) Kwon presented four posters/papers at the 190th Meeting the Acoustical Society of America, held May 11-15, 2026 in Philadelphia, PA.  Their presentation and poster titles are listed below.

And following the ASA meeting, we learned that Chloe was awarded the Early Career Presenter Award in Computational Acoustics!

This prize recognizes excellent research and presentations skills from early-stage acousticians during the Technical Committee on Computational Acoustics sessions, and comes with a $250 USD prize. 

Photos:

Top - Chloe (Dokyung) Kwon. 

Middle from left:  Annabelle di Lustro, Annabelle di Lustro & Fengyue (Lisa) Zhou; Fengyue (Lisa) Zhou

Bottom from left:  Annabelle di Lustro, Fengyue (Lisa) Zhou

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ASA Paper:

Temporal localization of morphologically-conditioned stop categories in Korean: A computational approach, by Chloe D. Kwon and Fengyue (Lisa) Zhao (Cornell University) - Presented as a Contributed Paper at the Computational Acoustics: General Topics in Computational Acoustics Session.

ASA Posters:

Laryngeal devoicing gestures observed using transverse-oriented ultrasound, by Dr. Mark Tiede (Yale University), Fengyue (Lisa) Zhao, Dr. Sam Tilsen (Cornell University), Dr. Laura Koenig (Adelphi University) and Dr. D. Whalen (CUNY Graduate Center).  Presented at the Speech Communication: Production & Articulation Poster Session (which was chaired by Phonetics Lab Alumnus Dr. Margaret Renwick of Johns Hopkins University)

Laryngeal elevation in native and non-native lexical tone production, by Fengyue (Lisa) Zhao and Dr. Sam Tilsen (Cornell University) and Dr. Mark Tiede (Yale University)
Presented at the Speech Communication: Acoustics Voice Quality and Prosody Poster Session.

Prosodically-conditioned temporal variation in whispered versus normal speech, by Annabelle Rose di Lustro and Dr. Sam Tilsen (Cornell University)
Presented at the Speech Communication: Acoustics Voice Quality and Prosody Poster Session.

On Friday, May 8, 2026, PhD Candidate John Starr successfully defended his dissertation:  Dynamic Interaction of Linguistic Streams During Processing - see the abstract below.

John is shown here with his dissertation committee -from the left, chair Dr. Marten van Schijndel, John Starr,  and committee members Dr. Jennifer Kuo, Dr. Helena Aparicio, and on zoom Dr. Draga Zec.

Abstract:

It is well-established that people construct representations at multiple levels when processing linguistic input: for example, during and after reading "Where is my Capybara?", people develop phonological, syntactic, semantic, and discourse representations of the sentence and its components.

The primary focus of this thesis is understanding how people contextually use and prioritize these levels of representations, or streams, during both on-line and off-line processing. Through experiments on three phenomena (phonotactic distinctions, word order preferences for binomials, and rhyme), I show how these streams interface with one another, focusing on how phonological information is incorporated with linguistic structures that are more commonly studied in the sentence processing literature.

Broadly, my findings support a model of sentence processing that allows for dynamic, incremental interactions between levels of linguistic structure.

On March 24, 2026 PhD Candidate Chloe Dokyung Kwon successfully defended her dissertation:   Korean word-medial stops and compound tensification: Acoustic and perceptual studies - see the abstract below. 

Chloe is shown here with her dissertation committee - co-chairs Drs. Sam Tilsen and Abby Cohn, and committee member Dr. John Whitman on Zoom.

Abstract:

This dissertation investigates word-medial stop realization in Korean through the lens of compound tensification — a process whereby a plain stop at the onset of the second noun in a noun-noun compound often surfaces as tense — through a production study of 32 speakers and a perception study of 94 listeners.

Acoustic analyses reveal that derived tense stops converge categorically on underlying tense stops rather than approximating them gradually, and that word-medial stop contrasts are maintained primarily through closure duration rather than the F0 and voice quality cues that predominate word-initially, suggesting a redistribution of acoustic correlates rather than positional weakening or merger. Listeners likewise rely on closure duration when categorizing medial stops; confidence ratings suggest sensitivity to phonological context, though this does not alter cue weighting.

Together, these findings disentangle categoriality and gradience in phonetic realization from variability, demonstrate that individual speaker variation is highly systematic and likely tracked by listeners, and suggest that positional differences in stop realization reflect differences in gestural timing relations rather than weakening or neutralization.