Research

Research interests

My research has focused on phonological representations and
 constraints in the theoretical context of Non-linear Phonology/
Morphology and Optimality Theory, with particular interests in 
feature theory, moraic and syllabic structures, the phonology
-morphology interface, and phonetically-based phonology. More
 generally, I am also interested in sociolinguistics, phonetics, and
 cognitive science.

Most of my publications are articles and books on
(i) Chinese
 phonology and phonetics, and the segmental phonologies of various Chinese dialects;
(ii) segmental features, moraic and syllabic structures, and loanword phonology;
(iii) Piro (Arawakan) 
phonology and morphophonology.

Editorial positions

  • Co-editor, Lingua Sinica, an open access international journal on Chinese linguistics published by Springer (2013-2018) and Sciendo/Mouton de Gruyter (2019-present).
  • Associate editor, Language and Linguistics, published by John Benjamins and Institute of Linguistics at Academia Sinica (2014-present)

Selected Publications

Authored and Edited books

  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. In preparation. Chinese Affixal Phonology.
  • Huang, Chu-Ren, Yen-Hwei Lin, I-Hsuan Chen, and Yu-Yin Hsu, (eds.). Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics. (Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2007. The Sounds of Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge. University Press.  (Korean edition translated by Ik-sang Eom, Ok-joo Lee, Namho Sohn and Mikyung Lee. South Korea: YoukRack Publishing Co. 2010).
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. (ed.) 2004. Special Issue on Phonetics and Phonology, Language and Linguistics 5.4. Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. (ed.) 2004. NACCL-15: Proceedings of the 15th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics. University of Southern California.

Peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters

  • Yen-Hwei Lin. 2022. “The morphophonology of Chinese affixation,” In C. Huang, Y. Lin, I. Chen, & Y. Hsu (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics (Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics), pp. 223-244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Durvasula, Karthik, Mohammed Qasem Ruthan, Sarah Heidenreich &
    Yen-Hwei Lin. 2021. “Probing syllable structure through acoustic measurements: case studies on American English and Jazani Arabic.” Phonology.
  • Yeh, Chia-Hsin & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2018. “Tonal confusion between high-falling Tone and low-falling tone in Hai-lu Hakka,” Hakka Language and Literature Research in Taiwan, vol.5, 1-54. Taichung: Taiwan Hakka Language and Literature Association.
  • Yen-Hwei Lin. 2018 “Variation in prosody-syntax matching: the case of Mandarin tone 3 sandhi,” Studies in Prosodic Grammar, 3(2): 96-111.
  • Druvasula, Karthik, Ho-Hsin Huang, Sayako Uehara, Qian Luo & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2018. “Phonology modulates the illusory vowels in perceptual illusions: evidence from Mandarin and English.” Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology 9(1), 7. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.57
  • Yeh, Chia-Hsin & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2016 “Underapplication cases as variations in Hai-lu Hakka tone sandhi,” Hakka Language and Literature Research in Taiwan, edited by Chun-Lung Chiang, vol.4, 147-198. Taichung: Taiwan Hakka Language and Literature Association. (ISBN: 978-986-86862-3-6)
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2015. “The typology of Mandarin mid vowel assimilation,” Special Issue on the Theoretical Aspects of Chinese Phonology, Language and Linguistics 16(6): 769-789. (Sage Publications and Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica of Taiwan).
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2015. “Input underspecification and multiple outputs selection: variation in loanword adaptation,” Capturing Phonological Shades within and across Languages: Inspirations from the Theoretical Phonology Conferences, edited by Yuchao Hsiao & Lian Hee Wee, 320-341. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Yeh, Chia-Hsin & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2015. “Tonal change induced by language attrition and phonetic similarity in Hai-lu Hakka,” Prosody and Language in Contact, edited by Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie, 189-220. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2014. “音节与汉语音段音系 [The syllable and Chinese segmental phonology],” 当代语言学 [Contemporary Linguistics] 16.3: 328-345. (Journal of the Institute of Linguistics, The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2014. “Segmental phonology,” The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics, edited by C.-T. James Huang, Y. H. Audrey Li & Andrew Simpson, 400-421. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Wang, Chiung-Yao & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2013. “Variation in Mandarin tone 3 sandhi: the case of prepositions and pronouns,” Increased Empiricism: New Advances in Chinese Linguistics, edited by Zhuo Jing-Schmidt, 271-291. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2011. “Loanword adaptation in Standard Mandarin and phonological theory,” Current Issues in Chinese Linguistics, edited by Yun Xiao, Liang Tao & Hooi Ling Soh, 426-451. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2011. “Affricates,” The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, edited by Marc van Oostendorp, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth Hume & Keren Rice, Vol. 1, 367-390. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2008. “The morphophonology of Pingding er infixation: an OT analysis,” Interfaces in Chinese Phonology, Language and Linguistics Monograph Series, edited by Yuchau E. Hsiao, Hui-Chuan Hsu and Lian-Hee Wee, 161-182. Taipei, Taiwan: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2008. “Variable vowel adaptation in Standard Mandarin loanwords,” Special Issue on Loanwords, Journal of East Asian Linguistics 17.4: 363-380.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2007. “Ungrammatical affixed words in the Huojia dialect,” Taiwan Journal of Linguistics 5.1: 1-18.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2005. “Piro affricates: phonological edge effects and phonetic anti-edge effects,” The Internal Organization of Phonological Segments, edited by Jeroen van de Weijer and Marc van Oostendorp, 121-151. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2004. “Chinese affixal phonology: some analytical and theoretical Issues,” Special Issue on Phonetics and Phonology, Language and Linguistics 5.4: 1019-1046.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2002. “The front rounded glide in Mandarin mid vowel assimilation,” Chinese Phonology (special issue) 11: 29-48.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2002. “Mid vowel assimilation across Mandarin dialects,” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 11.4: 303-347.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2001. “An optimality-theoretic account of dialect variation in er-suffixation: a case study of Zhejiang Wu dialects,” Chinese Phonology in Generative Grammar, edited by De Bao Xu, 193-222. San Diego: Academic Press.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2001. “Toward a unified account of three classes of Huojia affixed words,” Chinese Phonology in Generative Grammar, edited by De Bao Xu, 223-240. San Diego: Academic Press.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2000. “Agreement and disagreement of vowel features: mid vowel assimilation in Yanggu,” Language and Linguistics 1: 139-159. Taipei, Taiwan: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2000. “On minor syllables,” Item Order in Language and Speech, Proceedings of LP’98 (International Linguistics and Phonetics Conference 1998), edited by Osamu Fujimura, Brian D. Joseph and Bohumil Palek, Volume II, 163-183. Prague: the Karolinum Press, Charles University.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 1999. “Dissimilation and the concealment function of Chinese secret languages,” Chinese Languages and Linguistics 5, 177-203. Taipei, Taiwan: Academia Sinica.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 1997. “Syllabic and moraic structures in Piro,” Phonology 14.3: 403-436.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 1997. “Cyclic and noncyclic affixation in Piro,” Phonology in Progress-Progress in Phonology, Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics Phonology Papers III, edited by Geert Booij and Jeroen van de Weijer, 167-188. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 1997. “A typology of Chinese affixation,” Chinese Languages and Linguistics 4, 405-424. Taipei, Taiwan: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 1996. “Surface vowels and markedness,” Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 26(1/2): 205-216.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 1993. “Degenerate affixes and templatic constraints: rime change in Chinese,” Language 69.4: 649-682.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 1992. “Vocalic underspecification in two Mandarin dialects: a case against radical underspecification,” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 1.3: 219-253.

Peer-reviewed papers in conference proceedings

  • Luo, Qian, Karthik Durvasula & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2016. “Inconsistent consonantal effects on F0 in Cantonese and Mandarin,” TAL 2016: Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages, 52-55. International Speech Communication Association.
  • Wang, Xiaomei & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2016. “Metrical structure and tone sandhi: evidence from Ei tonal reduction,” TAL 2016: Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages, 70-74. International Speech Communication Association.
  • Luo, Qian, Karthik Durvasula & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2015. “A perceptual Account for Cantonese vocative reduplication,” Proceedings of The 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVIII), P6.17, edited by the Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015.
  • Yeh, Chia-Hsin & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2015. “Variations and underapplication of Hai-lu Hakka tone sandhi,” Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Hakka Language and Literature Studies, 109-131. Taichung: Taiwan Hakka Language and Literature Association.
  • Yeh, Chia-Hsin & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2013. “The attrition of Hai-lu Hakka’s tonal system,” Proceedings of the International Conference on Phonetics of the Languages in China (ICPLC 2013), edited by Wai-Sum Lee, 46-49. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong.
  • Yeh, Chia-Hsin, Zhiqiang Tang & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2013. “Phonetic, phonological and lexical effects on speech perception of Zhenjiang falling tones,” Proceedings of the International Conference on Phonetics of the Languages in China (ICPLC 2013), edited by Wai-Sum Lee, 151-154. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong.
  • Yeh, Chia-Hsin & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2012. “The effect of tone sandhi on speech perception of Taiwanese falling tones,” Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages: Tonal Aspects across Tone and Non-Tone Languages, edited by Wentao Gu, P2-13. Nanjing, China: TAL 2012.
  • Wang, Chiung-Yao, Cristina Schmitt & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2012. “Children’s acquisition of Mandarin tone 3 sandhi in flat structures,” Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Speech Prosody, edited by Qiuwu Ma, Hongwei Ding and Daniel Hirst, 202-205. Shanghai, China: Tongji University.
  • Yeh, Chia-Hsin & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2011. “Phonetic and lexical effects on speech perception of falling tones,” Proceedings of The 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVII), edited by Wai-Sum Lee & Eric Zee, 2212-2215. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong.

Recent papers in abstract-refereed conference proceedings

  • Du, Naiyan & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2021. “Post-lexical tone 3 sandhi domain-building in Huai’an Mandarin: Multiple domain types and free application ”Proceedings of the 44th annual Penn Linguistics Conference. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 27: Issue. 1 , Article 6.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2019. “Yanggu Diminutive Er Affixation Revisited,”
    NACCL-30: The Proceedings of the 30th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics, Volume 1: 34-45. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University.
  • Ho-Hsin Huang & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2019. “Variation of Nasal Gemination in Standard Mandarin Loanwords: Corpus, Experimental and Theoretical Perspectives,” NACCL-30: The Proceedings of the 30th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics, Volume 2: 356-369. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University.
  • Ruthan, Mohammed, Karthik Durvasula & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2019. “Temporal coordination and sonority of Jazani Arabic word-initial cluters,” AMP 2018: Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology 2018. Linguistic Society of America.
  • Ho-Hsin Huang & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2019. “Vowel quality cues to variable nasal adaptation in Mandarin loanword phonology,” AMP 2018: Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology 2018. Linguistic Society of America.
  • Xu, Chenchen, Yen-Hwei Lin & Karthik Durvasula. 2018. “Sonority bias in Rugao disyllabic syllable contraction,” Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting 2018, vol 3: 28,1-13
  • Yeh, Chia-Hsin. & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2017. “Tonal Confusion Between High-Falling Tone and Low-Falling Tone in Hai-lu Hakka, ” In Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Hakka Language and Literature Studies, 147-172. Taoyuan: Taiwan Hakka Language and Literature Association.
  • Wang, Xiaomei & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2017. “A unified approach to Tianjin trisyllabic tone sandhi: Metrical conditions and tonal complexity,” Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America vol. 2, 19:1-13.
  • Wang, Xiaomei & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2017. “No more conflicting directionality: metrical conditions on Tianjin Chinese trisyllabic tone sandhi, ” AMP 2016: Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Linguistic Society of America.
  • Huang, Ho-Hsin & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2016. “To epenthesize or not: adaptations of English coda [m] in Standard Mandarin loanwords,” AMP 2015: Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Linguistic Society of America.
  • Huang, Ho-Hsin & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2016. “When unnecessary repairs become necessary: the case of nasal insertion in Standard Mandarin loanwords,” AMP 2014: Proceedings of the 2014 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Linguistic Society of America.
  • Uehara, Sayako, Karthik Durvasula & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2016. “Japanese and English speakers are not sensitive to the sonority sequencing principle in word segmentation,” Proceedings of the 18th Annual International Conference of the Japanese Society for Language Sciences (JSLS2016), 78-81. Tokyo, Japan
  • Wang, Xiaomei & Yen-Hwei Lin. 2015. “Tone patterns in Ei disyllabic sequences,” NACCL-27: The Proceedings of the 27th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics, edited by Hongyin Tao et al, Vol. 2: 348-358. UCLA.

Encyclopedia entries

  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. To appear. “补偿性延长 (compensatory lengthening),” in 中國大百科全書 (The Encyclopedia of China) 3rd edition. Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, China.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. To appear. “不可变动性 (inalterability),” in 中國大百科全書 (The Encyclopedia of China) 3rd edition. Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, China.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. To appear. “局部合取 (local conjunction),” in 中國大百科全書 (The Encyclopedia of China) 3rd edition. Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, China.
  • Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2016. “Érhuà 兒化 [Rhoticization],” The Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, edited by Rint Sybesma (general editor), Wolfgang Behr, Gu Yueguo, Zev Handel, C.-T. James Huang & James Myers, vol 2: 183-188. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers.