Ke Lin

I’m a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate (ABD) studying Linguistics at Georgetown University. Currently, I am working on my dissertation project, assessing Mandarin-English bilinguals and Russian-English bilinguals’ implicit and explicit perceptual adjustments on VOT boundaries as a function of perceived talker’s native language status. This dissertation is advised by Elizabeth Zsiga, Lourdes Ortega, Lacey Wade, and Sarah Phillips.

Before coming to Georgetown, I earned an MA in Slavic Linguistics at The Ohio State University, where I also indepedently taught Russian language courses for two years. My master’s thesis investigated the social perceptions of non-native accents in Russian.

Broadly, my research centers on the field of sociophonetics. As a sociophonetician, I explore the intricate relationship between social cues and their impact on both speech perception and production. I am also interested in the phenomenon of speech convergence, the process through which speakers align their speech patterns at various phonetic levels.

Here are some of my other ongoing research projects/interests, varying in scope and development. I welcome proposals for collaboration or discussions on these topics:

Socially modulated perception & production among/by L2 speakers;
Accessible & affordable eye-tracking methods;
Individual (cognitive) differences in bilingual speech processing
Semantic clusters and distributions of Russian prepositions

news

Jan 09, 2025	Attending LSA2025 Annual Meeting Jan. 9th to Jan. 12th in Philadelphia! Come check out my poster on Sunday or chat about experimental design in social speech perception!
Dec 01, 2024	Ran my first marathon race with 2024 EOD from Georgetown!
Nov 07, 2024	Presented two projects at NWAV52: a talk assessing bilinguals’ speech processing via VAS and a project launch poster on eye-tracking implicit social speech perception!
Jul 09, 2024	Presented a poster on socially conditioned voicing contrast perception at IClaVE12in Vienna, Austria!
Jun 20, 2024	Presented a paper on the Linguistic Landscape of DC-based Uyghur restaurants at LL15.

selected publications

PWPL

Perceived L1 Status on VOT convergence: Evidence for Enhanced Convergence towards the Non-native Speaker

Ke Lin

Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 31.1: Proceedings of PLC 48, 2024

Bib

@article{lin2024,
  title = {Perceived L1 Status on VOT convergence: Evidence for Enhanced Convergence towards
  the Non-native Speaker},
  author = {Lin, Ke},
  journal = {Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 31.1: Proceedings of PLC 48},
  volume = {31.1},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {PWPL},
  category = {article},
}

ICPhS
Can L2 Speakers perceive sociopragmatic nuances at the sound level? Exploring Chinese listeners’ perceptions of (ING)

Ke Lin

The 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciens, Aug 2023

Abs Bib PDF

The variation between the alveolar and velar forms (ING) has been widely used in conveying social meanings for native speakers in many English varieties. L2 speakers’ perception of (ING), however, remains unknown. The presented study employs a matched guise task exploring Chinese listeners’ mental representations of the (ING) variable, and a social network questionnaire, assessing how their associations interact with the levels of integration in the host society. Results from multivariate analysis show that (1) listeners with higher social network strengths perceived the speakers to be less educated,regardless of the (ING) variant; (2) the velar variant was perceived as more educated; (3) speakers’mgender, and regional background had greater impacts on listeners’ ratings than the (ING) guise.
@article{lin2023, title = {Can L2 Speakers perceive sociopragmatic nuances at the sound level? Exploring Chinese listeners’ perceptions of (ING)}, author = {Lin, Ke}, month = aug, year = {2023}, journal = {The 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciens}, category = {article}, }