May Pik Yu Chan

陳碧瑜 [tsʰɐn˨ pɪk˥ jy:˨˩]

May Chan

PhD student in linguistics

Hello! I am a third-year PhD student in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. My main research interests are in phonetics and phonology. I am particularly interested in articulatory and acoustic aspects of performative speech (such as singing), and their mapping to listeners' perception. My advisors are Jianjing Kuang and Mark Liberman. I am primarily affiliated with the Penn Phonetics Laboratory and a member of the Language Variation and Cognition Lab. Additionally, I am a MindCORE Graduate Student affiliate.

Before coming to Penn, I completed my B.A. at the University of Hong Kong, double majoring in Linguistics and Music, with a minor in German. At HKU, I was affiliated with the Language Development Laboratory.

Education

  • 2020-Present
    PhD, Department of Linguistics
    University of Pennsylvania

    Advisors: Dr. Jianjing Kuang, Dr. Mark Liberman

  • 2016-2020
    BA, Faculty of Arts
    The University of Hong Kong

    General Linguistics (major), Music (major), German (minor)

    Graduation GPA: 4.06/4.3 (First Class Honours)

    Fellow of Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program

  • 01-06/2019
    Undergraduate study abroad, Department of Music
    University of California, Davis

    GPA: 4.0/4.0

Experience

  • Spring 2022
    Teaching Assistant
    University of Pennsylvania, Department of Linguistics

    LING001 - Introduction to Linguistics

    Instructor: Dr. Helen Jeoung

  • Fall 2021
    Teaching Assistant
    University of Pennsylvania, Department of Linguistics

    LING125 - The Phonetics of Singing and Music

    Instructor: Dr. Jianjing Kuang

  • 10/2018-07/2020
    Student Research Assistant
    The University of Hong Kong, Language Development Lab

    Department of Linguistics

    PI: Dr. Jonathan Havenhill

  • 11/2018-06/2019
    Student Research Assistant
    The University of Hong Kong, Knowledge Exchange Program

    School of Modern Languages and Cultures

    PI: Dr. Li Chong

  • 02/2018-05/2018
    Student Research Intern
    The University of Hong Kong, Multimodal Speech-Language Lab

    Division of Speech and Hearing Science

    PI: Dr. Puisan Wong

Papers

  • In prep. May Pik Yu Chan and Jianjing Kuang. Spectral cue integration in pitch perception by Cantonese listeners.
  • In prep. May Pik Yu Chan and Jianjing Kuang. Gradient Vowel Harmony in Sakha.
  • In prep. May Pik Yu Chan and Mark Liberman. Voice Projection by Public Speakers.
  • To appear. June Choe, Yiran Chen, May Pik Yu Chan, Aini Li, Xin Gao and Nicole Holliday. Language-specific Effects on Automatic Speech Recognition Errors. Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics.
  • 2022. May Pik Yu Chan, June Choe, Aini Li, Yiran Chen, Xin Gao and Nicole Holliday. Training and typological bias in ASR performance for world Englishes. Proceedings of Interspeech 2022.
  • 2022. Jianjing Kuang, May Pik Yu Chan, Nari Rhee, Mark Liberman and Hongwei Ding. The mapping between syntactic and prosodic phrasing in English and Mandarin. Proceedings of Interspeech 2022.
  • 2022. Jianjing Kuang, May Pik Yu Chan and Nari Rhee. The effects of syntactic and acoustic cues on the perception of prosodic boundaries. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2022.[Link]
  • 2022. May Pik Yu Chan and Mark Liberman. An acoustic analysis of vocal effort and speaking style. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics.[Link]
  • 2021. May Pik Yu Chan and Youngah Do. Vowel Modification (Aggiustamento) in Soprano Voices. Music and Science.[Link]
  • 2021. May Pik Yu Chan. Bei2 as a causative and passive marker in Cantonese. In: ICU Working Papers in Linguistics, volume 15.[Link]
  • 2020. Pik Yu Chan. Vowel modification in sopranos: COG as an acoustic measure for vowel changes at high pitches. In: The Undergraduate Library, The Global Undergraduate Awards. [Link]
  • 2020. Pik Yu Chan. Acoustics and perception of sopranos’ vowels: the relationship between pitches and vowel formants and its effect on vowel intelligibility. In: ICU Working Papers in Linguistics, volume 9. [Link]

Presentations

  • 2022. May Pik Yu Chan and Jianjing Kuang. Comparing the effect of spectral cues on pitch perception in musical instruments and speech. Paper to be presented at the sixth biennial conference of IMSEA (The Regional Association for East Asia of the International Musicological Society) (IMSEA 2022), 21-23 October 2022, Daegu, Korea.
  • 2022. June Choe, Yiran Chen, May Pik Yu Chan, Aini Li, Xin Gao and Nicole Holliday. Language-specific Effects on Automatic Speech Recognition Errors. Paper to be presented at the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2022), 12-17 October 2022, Gyeongju, Korea.
  • 2022. May Pik Yu Chan, June Choe, Aini Li, Yiran Chen, Xin Gao and Nicole Holliday. Training and typological bias in ASR performance for world Englishes. Paper presented at Interspeech 2022, 18-22 September 2022, Incheon, Korea.
  • 2022. Jianjing Kuang, May Pik Yu Chan, Nari Rhee, Mark Liberman and Hongwei Ding. The mapping between syntactic and prosodic phrasing in English and Mandarin. Paper presented at Interspeech 2022, 18-22 September 2022, Incheon, Korea.
  • 2022. May Pik Yu Chan and Jianjing Kuang. Cue integration in speech and music. Poster presented at CogSci 2022, 27-30 July, 2022, Toronto, Canada. (Hybrid Conference)
  • 2022. May Pik Yu Chan and Jianjing Kuang. The Effect of Formant-Harmonic Crossovers on Vowel Perception. Paper presented at The Voice Foundation’s 51st Annual Symposium, 1-5 June, 2022, Philadelphia, PA, USA. (Hybrid Conference)
  • 2022. Jianjing Kuang, May Pik Yu Chan and Nari Rhee. The effects of syntactic and acoustic cues on the perception of prosodic boundaries. Paper presented at Speech Prosody 2022, 23-26 May 2022, Lisbon, Portugal.
  • 2022. May Pik Yu Chan and Jianjing Kuang. Cue selection in the perception of pitch in music and speech. Paper presented at the 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), 23-27 May 2022, Denver, Colorado.
  • 2022. May Pik Yu Chan. Emphatic (‘Type-C’) reduplication in Sakha. Paper presented at the 46th Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC46), 18-20 March 2022, Philadelphia, PA, USA. (Virtual Conference)
  • 2022. May Pik Yu Chan and Jianjing Kuang. Gradient vowel harmony in Sakha. Paper presented at the 96th annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA 2022), 6-9 January 2022, Washington, DC, USA. (Hybrid Conference) [Download Slides]
  • 2021. May Pik Yu Chan and Jianjing Kuang. Spectral cue integration in pitch perception by Cantonese listeners. Poster presented at the 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI), 6-9 December 2021, Sonderborg, Denmark. (Hybrid Conference) [Download Poster]
  • 2021. May Pik Yu Chan. Free Relative Clauses in Cantonese. Paper presented at the Annual Research Forum of LSHK 2021 (LSHK-ARF 2021), 4 December 2021, Linguistics Society of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. (Hybrid Conference)
  • 2021. May Pik Yu Chan and Mark Liberman. Acoustic analysis of vocal effort and speaking style. Poster presented at the 181st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), 29 November-3 December 2021, Seattle, Washington USA. [Download Poster]
  • 2021. May Pik Yu Chan and Mark Liberman. Acoustic analysis of vocal effort in public speakers. Paper presented at the Linguistics Association of Great Britain Annual Meeting 2021 (LAGB 2021), 6-9 September 2021, Linguistics Association of Great Britain, UK. (Virtual Conference) [Download Slides]
  • 2021. May Pik Yu Chan. Bei2 as a causative and passive marker in Cantonese. Paper presented given at The 5th Asian Junior Linguists conference, 15-16 January 2021, International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan. (Virtual Conference)
  • 2020. Pik Yu Chan. Acoustics and perception of sopranos’ vowels: the relationship between pitches and vowel formants and its effect on vowel intelligibility. Paper presented at The 4th Asian Junior Linguists conference, 5-6 December 2019, International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan.

Skills

Languages

Cantonese
Native
English
Fluent
Mandarin
Fluent
German
Conversational

Experimentation/Analysis

Praat
Audacity
Articulate Assitant Advanced
Qualtrics
R / R Studio
ELAN
LaTeX
MATLAB/Octave
PsychoPy