Research Projects

Dr. Lin's major research interests are

(1) Second language acquisition of the phonetic and phonological systems. In layman’s terms, this area explores how a person acquires the pronunciation of a second language.

Her current research projects include (1) a book on Chinese learners learning English pronunciation and English learners learning Chinese pronunciation. 2) the rhythm of language and how it is acquired when the language is learned as a second language; (3) how learners learn second language onsets and codas; one particular project is on how Mandarin speakers acquire English consonants such as /l/ in post-vocalic positions.

(2) Chinese linguistics, especially Chinese phonetics and phonology

Dr. Lin has worked extensively on Chinese linguistics, and has made significant contributions. For example, her phonological model of Mandarin tone and tone sandhi which she developed in 1992 which consists of “the Tonal Element Theory” (“调素论“), and “the Edge Toneme Truncation Theory” (“边缘调素脱落论”) and “Constraint on Low Tones” ( “低调制约规则“) was immediately embraced by scholars working in computer science developing Text-to-speech synthesis, when it was first published in China in 1998. In a number of review articles on Chinese phonological research, her model was listed as one of the major tonal theories developed during the last 30 years. The following citation from Song, Yidan (2006) entitled “The retrospect and prospect of the research on Chinese tones” published in Language Research, a prestigious linguistics journal in China (《汉语声调实验研究回望》（语文研究, 2006 年第1 期)gives a more detailed description of the impact of Dr. Lin’s theory.

“语言学的研究成果往往成为言语工程学的理论基础和实践指南,同时,言语工程学又在实践的基础上反过来修正和充实现有理论。例如,林华在《“调素论”与普通话连读变调》(中国语文,1998 - 1) 一文中将变调和时长因素结合起来考虑,提出了普通话变调的理论模型。这一理论很快在言语工程学领域得到运用和拓展,涌现了郑新春等《“调素”论与普通话合成自然度的提高》(中文信息学报,2000 - 3) 和《语音拼接合成中基于“调素”论的时长标尺修改》(计算机工程,2001 - 3) 以及王萌等的《一个实用的汉语文语转换系统》(电子计算机,2001 - 4) 等文章。这些文章论述了“调素论”对言语合成自然度的贡献,并在实践的基础上修正和补充了“调素论”的相关内容,使得这一理论有了科学实验的支撑和更为深入的发展。” (p. 44)

She has explored the phonemic systems, tonal systems, syllables, stress patterns, words, word structure and syntactic structure of Chinese dialects, especially Mandarin, the official dialect/language of China, Taiwan and Singapore. She has conducted historical studies of the language, and has examined a popular type of Chinese versification called shunkouliur. She has done research on teaching and learning Chinese as a second language, the teaching and learning of English by native Chinese speakers, and bilingual education in China. In the area of Chinese linguistics, she has published three books, including A Grammar of Mandarin Chinese, which is a linguistic account of the sound, word and sentence structures of Mandarin Chinese. This book which has been used as a textbook in a number of Chinese Linguistics courses in universities such as University of Victoria (Linguistics, and Pacific and Asian Studies); University of North Carolina (Asian Studies), and University of Alberta (Asian Studies) also includes a chapter on the history and dialects of the Chinese language. Other contributions she has made to Chinese linguistics studies include the organization of the Ninth North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (1997), and services on the Executive Committee of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics.

Dr. Hua Lin, Associate Professor

Department of Linguistics, University of Victoria, Canada

This page is under construction. The words below which I copied from the Linguistics website are but place holders for more detailed descriptions of my research projects.

Research 林华博士的科研