Kevin Liang

This summer, I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Michael Frank and Dr. George Kachergis at Stanford. I worked on a large-scale comparison of various word learning models using more naturalistic data. This involved a lot of coding in R on things such as data processing, model optimization, and creating a lot of graphs! Last year, I worked with Professor Charles Yang to investigate the process by which children learn the parts of speech of words. During that project, we tested the viability of a novel approach to how children generalize from specific examples to general rules known as the tolerance principle. This project involved a significant amount of coding and working with various corpora. Previously, I have also done research in phonetics on the acoustic properties of glottalic stops in Q'eqchi' - a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala. Additionally, I have also worked on a fieldwork project analyzing the changed tone system of Taishanese - a language spoken in Southern China. These projects have involved a wide range of research methods from fieldwork to coding to statistical analysis. I have been very fortunate to have been able to work on a wide range of different research projects and would be happy to talk to anyone about the process. No matter what field you're in, please feel free to reach out to me. I'd love to brainstorm some ideas together!

• University Scholars C’22
• University Scholars Summer Research Funding (Summer 2019, Summer 2020, Summer 2021) 
• Undergraduate Researcher, Department of Linguistics
• Poster Presentation, Acoustical Society of America 2019
• Oral Presentation, Penn Linguistics Conference 2020
• Poster Presentation, Boston University Conference on Language Development 2021