Dr. Cong Zhang

cong.zhang at newcastle.ac.uk

prof_pic.jpg

张聪

Lecturer in Phonetics and Phonology

Newcastle University

Hi! I’m Cong Zhang ([tsʰʊŋ tʃɑŋ], each with a high-level tone (tone number 55, more about my name). I am a Lecturer in Phonetics and Phonology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University, UK.

My research mainly focuses on aspects of speech prosody (e.g. intonation, lexical tone, rhythm), using a variety of approaches including:

  • Phonetics and Phonology (Laboratory Phonology)
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Computational linguistics
  • Language Acquisition

I received a DPhil degree from the Language and Brain Lab, University of Oxford. My DPhil thesis, supervised by Professor Aditi Lahiri, was about the intonational tunes in a tonal language — Tianjin Mandarin (More about my DPhil project).

I did my Master’s in Linguistics and Language Acquisition from the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University (UK). There, I worked on a number of projects including child language acquisition, second language acquisition, Mandarin lexical tone perception, etc.

For my undergraduate degree, I studied Translation and Interpreting at Beijing Foreign Studies University (China). I am therefore also interested in studies about translation and interpreting.

Following my DPhil, I worked as a TTS linguist (Linguistics Engineer) in A-Lab at Rokid Inc. One of my major projects was Singing Synthesis (text-to-singing). After this, I came back to academia and worked on the ERC project SPRINT (i.e. Speech Prosody in Interaction: The form and function of intonation in human communication, ERC-ADG-835263 ) and further looked into the aspects of English and Greek intonation in speech production.

News

Oct 1, 2024 📑 New paper: Zhang, C., Jepson, K. & Chuang, Y., (2024) “Investigating differences in lab-quality and remote recording methods with dynamic acoustic measures”, Laboratory Phonology 15(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/labphon.10492 📑 New paper: Xu, C. & Zhang, C. (2024) “A cross-linguistic review of citation tone production studies: Methodology and recommendations”. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 October 2024; 156 (4): 2538–2565. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0032356
Aug 10, 2024 🏆 Our knowledge exchange event Wey aye, man - Think you know a North-East accent when you hear one? has been funded by ESRC to take part in Festival of Social Sciences on 2nd November at Farrell Centre!
Jun 19, 2024 🏆 I have just won the Second Prize of Newcastle University’s Open Research Awards!
Mar 27, 2024 📑 New paper: Zhang, C., Jepson, K., & Chuang, Y. (in press). Investigating differences in lab-quality and remote recording methods with dynamic acoustic measures. Laboratory Phonology. Preprint: (Link)
Aug 30, 2023 📑 New paper: Zeng, B., Williams, E. M., Owen, C., Zhang, C., Davies, S. K., Evans, K., & Preudhomme, S. R. (2023). Exploring the acoustic and prosodic features of a lung-function-sensitive repeated-word speech articulation test. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. (Open-access link)
Jul 21, 2023 📑 New paper: Kim, Y., Kogan, V. V., & Zhang, C. (2023). Collecting Big Data Through Citizen Science: Gamification and Game-based Approaches to Data Collection in Applied Linguistics. Applied Linguistics, amad039. (Free-access link)
Mar 21, 2023 🏆 I was awarded a Pioneer Award by the Institute of Social Sciences, Newcastle University.
Oct 3, 2022 💼 Started my job at Language and Speech Sciences, Newcastle University as a Lecturer (tenured Assistant Professor equivalence) in Phonetics and Phonology.
[News archive]

Education

  • 2018
    DPhil
    University of Oxford, UK
    • General Linguistics and Comparative Philology
  • 2012
    M.A.(distinction)
    Newcastle Univeristy, UK
    • Linguistics & Language acquisition
  • 2011
    B.A. (with Excellent Graduate Award)
    Beijing Foreign studies University, China
    • English Language and Literature (Translation and Interpreting)

Employement

  • 2022-
    Lecturer in Phonetics and Phonology
    Newcastle University, UK
    • School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences
  • 2019-2022
    Postdoctoral Research Associate
    University of Kent, UK (2019-2020) & Radboud University, Netherlands (2020-2022)
    • Speech Prosody in Interaction -- The form and function of intonation in human communication (ERC-ADG-835263)
  • 2018-2019
    Text-to-Speech Linguist / Linguistics Engineer
    Algorithm-Lab, Rokid Inc. (Beijing, China)

Selected publications

  1. tone
    A cross-linguistic review of citation tone production studies: Methodology and recommendations
    Chenzi Xu, and Cong Zhang
    The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Oct 2024
  2. remote
    Investigating differences in lab-quality and remote recording methods with dynamic acoustic measures
    Cong Zhang, Kathleen Jepson, and Yu-Ying Chuang
    Laboratory Phonology, Oct 2024
  3. aphasia
    Prosody of speech production in latent post-stroke aphasia
    Cong Zhang, Tong Li, Gayle DeDe, and Christos Salis
    In Interspeech 2024, Oct 2024
  4. gamification
    Collecting Big Data Through Citizen Science: Gamification and Game-based Approaches to Data Collection in Applied Linguistics
    Yoolim Kim, Vita V Kogan, and Cong Zhang
    Applied Linguistics, Oct 2024
  5. BigTeam
    Multidimensional signals and analytic flexibility: Estimating degrees of freedom in human speech analyses
    Ste Coretta, Joseph V Casillas,  ..., Cong Zhang,  ..., and Timo B Roettger
    Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Sciences, Oct 2023
  6. ICPhS
    Language redundancy effects on F0: A preliminary controlled study
    Cong Zhang, Catherine Lai, Ricardo Souza, Alice Turk, and Tina Bögel
    In Proceeding of 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Oct 2023
  7. EMNLP Findings
    Bootstrapping meaning through listening: Unsupervised learning of spoken sentence embeddings
    Jian Zhu, Zuoyu Tian, Yadong Liu, Cong Zhang, and Chia-wen Lo
    Findings of Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, Oct 2022
  8. rhythm
    Task effect on L2 rhythm production by Cantonese learners of Portuguese
    Yuqi Sun, and Cong Zhang
    DELTA: Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada, Oct 2022
  9. Interspeech
    ByT5 model for massively multilingual grapheme-to-phoneme conversion
    Jian Zhu*, Cong Zhang*, and David Jurgens [* equal contribution]
    In Interspeech 2022, Oct 2022
  10. Interspeech
    Synchronising Speech Segments with Musical Beats in Mandarin and English Singing
    Cong Zhang, and Jian Zhu
    In Interspeech 2021, Oct 2021
  11. JASA
    Comparing acoustic analyses of speech data collected remotely
    Cong Zhang, Kathleen Jepson, Georg Lohfink, and Amalia Arvaniti
    The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Oct 2021
  12. Speech Prosody
    Segment Duration and Proportion in Mandarin Singing
    Cong Zhang, and Xinrong Wang
    In Proc. Speech Prosody 2020, Oct 2020
  13. tone-intonation
    Stacking and Unstacking Prosodies : The Production and Perception of Sentence Prosody in a Tonal Language
    Cong Zhang
    In Proceeding of 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Oct 2019
  14. Speech Prosody
    Chanted Call Tune in Tianjin Mandarin: Disyllabic Calls
    Cong Zhang
    In 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2018, Oct 2018