Dr. Cong Zhang
cong.zhang at newcastle.ac.uk
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 |
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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. |
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
- ICPhSLanguage redundancy effects on F0: A preliminary controlled studyIn Proceeding of 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Oct 2023