About
I am a PhD student at UCLA Linguistics, specializing in Psycholinguistics, Phonetics, and Phonology. My research focuses on how the structure and fine details of language are produced, perceived, acquired, and changed. I employ experimentation, formal analysis, and computational methods to investigate the questions. I worked on a number of projects on these topics with
Keith Johnson,
Alexandra Pfiffner,
Jonathan Havenhill, and
Yao Yao .
Current Projects
• Discourse coherence and null pronouns in the processing of Mandarin subjects
• Articulation and production of facial gestures in relation to central executives
• Contact induced variation in production and perception: Stops contrasts and pitch emergence in Korean
Publications & Presentations
Papers and Manuscripts
•
Du, B., Pfiffner, A. (Submitted). Cross-modality cue integration and weighting: Lip rounding and acoustic cues in the Mandarin sibilant merger.
•
Du, B., Pfiffner, A., Johnson, K. (2024). Visible articulatory variation as a cue to sound change: Lip rounding and lip protrusion variability in the Mandarin sibilant merger.
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 30.2 (Selected Papers from NWAV 51).
• Yu, X., Van Hoey, T., Tan, F.,
Du, B. & Do, Y. (2024). Tracking phonological regularities: exploring the influence of learning mode and regularity locus in adult phonological learning.
Linguistics Vanguard.
doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2023-0050
•
Du, B. (2023). An audio-visual account for synchronic sound changes towards sibilants merger in Taiwan Mandarin. In
Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Berkeley Undergraduate Linguistics Symposium 2023, University of California, Berkeley, CA.
•
Du, B. (2023).
The backfire effect in the perception and judgement of congruent and incongruent interpretation of political propaganda. Unpublished undergraduate thesis of political psychology. University of Hong Kong.
Workshops
• Du, B. (2023, Sep). Introduction to Advanced R Programming with RMarkdown. The Sociolinguistics Lab, University of California, Berkeley.
Conference Presentations
• Du, B., Pfiffner, A., Johnson, K. (2024, Jan). The role of visible articulatory variation in Mandarin sibilant contrast and merger. Talk given at 2024 LSA Annual Meeting (LSA2024), New York City, NY.
• Du, B., Pfiffner, A., Johnson, K. (2023, Dec). Consonant and vowel rounding: same acoustics, different visuals. Poster presented at ASA 185th Meeting (ASA185) Sydney, Australia.
• Havenhill, J., Du, B. (2023, Dec). Visual cues in sound change: A cross-modal perceptual account for the typological rarity of labial palatalization. Poster presented at ASA 185th Meeting (ASA185) Sydney, Australia.
• Du, B., Pfiffner, A., Johnson, K. (2023, Oct). Visible articulatory variation as a cue to sound change: Lip rounding and lip protrusion variability in the Mandarin sibilant merger. Talk given at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 51 (NWAV51), Queens College, New York City, NY.
• Du, B. (2023). Acoustic distance effect on the perception of sibilants mergers between retroflexes and alveolars in Taiwan Mandarin. Poster presented at ASA 184th Meeting (ASA184), Chicago, IL.
• Du, B. (2023). An audio-visual account for synchronic sound changes towards sibilants merger in Taiwan Mandarin. Talk given at Seventh Annual Berkeley Undergraduate Linguistics Symposium 2023, University of California, Berkeley, CA.
• Du, B. (2023). The backfire effect in the perception and judgement of congruent and incongruent interpretation of political propaganda: A pre-analysis plan. Poster presentation at Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program Poster Session: Student Research Posters, University of Hong Kong, HK.
Teaching
As Teaching Assistant
• POLI3148: Data Science in Politics and Public Administration (2024 Fall, Instructor: Haohan Chen)
Python Basics, data wrangling with Pandas, visulization with Seaborn, geospatial analysis with Geopandas, text analysis with SpaCy, regression and machine learning with scikit-learn, and advnaced topics in TM and ML with transformers. Full course available
here.