Regine Lai
Biographic Data
| ID | 3851329 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Regine Lai |
| GIVEN NAMES | Regine |
| FAMILY NAME | Lai |
| SIGNATURE | LAI R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3764-5892 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Consonant, vowel, and tone cues in early wordform recognition: Evidence from Cantonese-learning infants
Phonological biases in word recognition vary across languages, however, most work has examined consonant and vowel information, with little attention to how lexical tones contribute to word recognition in tone-language learners. The present study asked how consonants, vowels, and tones are weighted using a familiar-wordform recognition task in 11-month-old Cantonese-learning infants. In a baseline experiment (Experiment 1), infants listened longe…
Cross-talker lexical tone discrimination in infancy
This study investigated how infants deal with cross-talker variability in the perception of native lexical tones, paying specific attention to developmental changes and the role of task demands. Using the habituation-based visual fixation procedures, we tested Cantonese-learning infants of different age groups on their ability to discriminate Cantonese Tone 1 (high level) and Tone 3 (mid level) produced by either multiple talkers or a single talk…
Prosodic interaction in Cantonese-English bilingual children’s speech production
This corpus-based study investigates intonation patterns in the production of Cantonese by Cantonese-English bilingual children. We examine the intonation patterns in eight simultaneous bilingual children acquiring a tonal (Cantonese) and an intonational language (English) from 2;0 to 3;0. Two intonation patterns are observed in all the bilingual children studied: high pitch followed by a fall (including H_H*L% and H_L*L%) and low pitch followed …
The tone atlas of perceptual discriminability and perceptual distance: Four tone languages and five language groups
Some prior investigations suggest that tone perception is flexible, reasonably independent of native phonology, whereas others suggest it is constrained by native phonology. We address this issue in a systematic and comprehensive investigation of adult tone perception. Sampling from diverse tone and non-tone speaking communities, we tested discrimination of the three major tone systems (Cantonese, Thai, Mandarin) that dominate the tone perception…
The ability to use contextual cues to achieve phonological constancy emerges by 14 months
The ability to map similar sounding words to different meanings alone is far from enough for successful speech processing. To overcome variability in the speech signal, young learners must also recognize words across surface variations. Previous studies have shown that infants at 14 months are able to use variations in word-internal cues (i.e., acoustic cues within the target word) to form phonological categories and to learn words. The present s…
Variation in phonological bias: Bias for vowels, rather than consonants or tones in lexical processing by Cantonese-learning toddlers
Lexical and Prosodic Pitch Modifications in Cantonese Infant-directed Speech
The functions of acoustic-phonetic modifications in infant-directed speech (IDS) remain a question: do they specifically serve to facilitate language learning via enhanced phonemic contrasts (the hyperarticulation hypothesis) or primarily to improve communication via prosodic exaggeration (the prosodic hypothesis)? The study of lexical tones provides a unique opportunity to shed light on this, as lexical tones are phonemically contrastive, yet th…
Learnable vs. Unlearnable Harmony Patterns
The present study provides empirical evidence for Heinz's (2010) Subregular Hypothesis, which predicts that some gaps found in the typology of phonotactic patterns are due to learnability-more specifically, that only phonotactic patterns with specific computational properties are humanly learnable. The study compares the learnability of two long-distance harmony patterns that differ typologically (attested vs. unattested) and computationally (Str…
Learnable vs. Unlearnable Harmony Patterns
The present study provides empirical evidence for Heinz's (2010) Subregular Hypothesis, which predicts that some gaps found in the typology of phonotactic patterns are due to learnability-more specifically, that only phonotactic patterns with specific computational properties are humanly learnable. The study compares the learnability of two long-distance harmony patterns that differ typologically (attested vs. unattested) and computationally (Str…
Learnable vs. Unlearnable Harmony Patterns
The present study provides empirical evidence for Heinz's (2010) Subregular Hypothesis, which predicts that some gaps found in the typology of phonotactic patterns are due to learnability-more specifically, that only phonotactic patterns with specific computational properties are humanly learnable. The study compares the learnability of two long-distance harmony patterns that differ typologically (attested vs. unattested) and computationally (Str…
Variation in phonological bias: Bias for vowels, rather than consonants or tones in lexical processing by Cantonese-learning toddlers
Lexical and Prosodic Pitch Modifications in Cantonese Infant-directed Speech
The functions of acoustic-phonetic modifications in infant-directed speech (IDS) remain a question: do they specifically serve to facilitate language learning via enhanced phonemic contrasts (the hyperarticulation hypothesis) or primarily to improve communication via prosodic exaggeration (the prosodic hypothesis)? The study of lexical tones provides a unique opportunity to shed light on this, as lexical tones are phonemically contrastive, yet th…
The tone atlas of perceptual discriminability and perceptual distance: Four tone languages and five language groups
Some prior investigations suggest that tone perception is flexible, reasonably independent of native phonology, whereas others suggest it is constrained by native phonology. We address this issue in a systematic and comprehensive investigation of adult tone perception. Sampling from diverse tone and non-tone speaking communities, we tested discrimination of the three major tone systems (Cantonese, Thai, Mandarin) that dominate the tone perception…
The ability to use contextual cues to achieve phonological constancy emerges by 14 months
The ability to map similar sounding words to different meanings alone is far from enough for successful speech processing. To overcome variability in the speech signal, young learners must also recognize words across surface variations. Previous studies have shown that infants at 14 months are able to use variations in word-internal cues (i.e., acoustic cues within the target word) to form phonological categories and to learn words. The present s…
Prosodic interaction in Cantonese-English bilingual children’s speech production
This corpus-based study investigates intonation patterns in the production of Cantonese by Cantonese-English bilingual children. We examine the intonation patterns in eight simultaneous bilingual children acquiring a tonal (Cantonese) and an intonational language (English) from 2;0 to 3;0. Two intonation patterns are observed in all the bilingual children studied: high pitch followed by a fall (including H_H*L% and H_L*L%) and low pitch followed …
Cross-talker lexical tone discrimination in infancy
This study investigated how infants deal with cross-talker variability in the perception of native lexical tones, paying specific attention to developmental changes and the role of task demands. Using the habituation-based visual fixation procedures, we tested Cantonese-learning infants of different age groups on their ability to discriminate Cantonese Tone 1 (high level) and Tone 3 (mid level) produced by either multiple talkers or a single talk…
Consonant, vowel, and tone cues in early wordform recognition: Evidence from Cantonese-learning infants
Phonological biases in word recognition vary across languages, however, most work has examined consonant and vowel information, with little attention to how lexical tones contribute to word recognition in tone-language learners. The present study asked how consonants, vowels, and tones are weighted using a familiar-wordform recognition task in 11-month-old Cantonese-learning infants. In a baseline experiment (Experiment 1), infants listened longe…
Language Development and Disorders (7 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (7 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Phonology (5 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Perception (3 works) · Speech and dialogue systems (3 works) · Tone (literature) (3 works) · Artificial Intelligence (2 works)