Hello! I am a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Molly Babel is my dissertation supervisor. My dissertation research aims to provide an acoustic-phonetic description of all the consonants in Gitksan. Gitksan is a First Nations language of the Tsimshianic language family, spoken in northwestern British Columbia. The language is endangered and understudied.

My research interests include acoustic phonetics, tone and intonation, speech variation, and computational phonetics. In particular, I am interested in fieldwork in Canadian First Nations languages and experimental work in Sino-Tibetan tone languages.
 
My previous research projects included

• Acoustic characteristics of plain and ejective stops in Gitksan
   
• Discourse meaning of polar question intonation and sentence-final particles in Cantonese
   
• An exemplar-based model of intonation perception of statements and questions in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin

Chow, U., & Babel, M. (2024). Gitksan fricatives: auditory-acoustic trajectories differentiate [s]-[ɬ]-[χ]-[h]. In T. Cho, S. Kim, J. Holliday, & S. Lee-Kim (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th Conference on Laboratory Phonology (pp. 433–434). Seoul, Korea: HIPCS, Hanyang University.

Sóskuthy, M., Chow, U. Y., Mellesmoen, G., & Sadlier-Brown, E. (2023). The quantitative phonetic analysis of languages with small accessible populations. In R. Skarnitzl & J. Volín (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 3402–3406). Guarant International.

Liu, Y., Shamei A., Chow, U. Y., Soo, R., Pineda Mora, G., De Boer, G., & Gick, B. (2020). F0-related head movement in blind versus sighted speakers. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 148(2), EL190–EL194.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2019). An exemplar-based learning model of English sentence intonation. Proceedings of the 33rd Northwest Linguistics Conference, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, 1–15.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2019). Native, naïve, and exemplar-based perception of statement and question intonation in Cantonese and Mandarin. In S. Calhoun, P. Escudero, M. Tabain, & P. Warren (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019 (pp. 2936–2940). Canberra, Australia: ASSTA Inc.

Chow, U. Y. (2016). L2 transfer of stress, tones, and intonation from Mandarin: A case study. Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics, 29, 19–40.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2016). Perception of intonation in Cantonese: Native listeners versus an exemplar-based model. Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, University of Calgary, Canada.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2016). Perception of statement and question intonation: Cantonese versus Mandarin. In C. Carignan & M. D. Tyler (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology, Parramatta, Australia (pp. 13–16). Canberra, Australia: ASSTA Inc.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2016). The role of the final tone in signaling statements and questions in Mandarin. Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages, University at Buffalo, USA, 167–171.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2015). Exemplar-based classification of statements and questions in Cantonese. In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow, UK: the University of Glasgow. Paper number 0987.

Chow, U. Y. (2014). Intonation patterns of double subjects in Mandarin: Evidence in support of a possessive structure. Proceedings of the 30th Northwest Linguistics Conference, Simon Fraser University, Canada, 11–23.

Chow, U., & Babel, M. (2024, June). Gitksan fricatives: auditory-acoustic trajectories differentiate [s]-[ɬ]-[ç]-[xʷ]-[χ]-[h]. Poster presented at the 19th Conference on Laboratory Phonology, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea.

Chow, U. Y., & Babel, M. (2024, May). Dynamic auditory-acoustic properties differentiate word-final fricatives in Gitksan. Poster presented at the 2024 Joint Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Canadian Acoustical Association, Ottawa, Canada.

Chow, U. Y. (2023, May). Discourse meaning of polar question intonation and sentence-final particles in Cantonese. Poster presented at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, York University, Canada.

Chow, U. Y. (2020, December). Acoustic correlates of question-final Cantonese tones. Poster presented at the 12th International Seminar on Speech Production, held virtually.

Chow, U. Y. (2020, December). Random forest classification of Gitksan stops. Poster presented at the 179th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, held virtually.

Chow, U. Y. (2020, July). Formant frequencies and frication of the ‘fricative vowel’ [ʐ] in Mandarin. Poster presented at the 17th Conference on Laboratory Phonology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Liu, Y., Shamei, A. Chow, U. Y., Pineda G., Angsongna, A., De Boer, G., & Gick, B. (2020, July). Head movement and F0 variation in blind and sighted speakers’ speech. Poster presented at the 17th Conference on Laboratory Phonology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Chow, U. Y. (2020, May). Voice quality of Gitksan ejectives. Poster presented at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, held virtually.

Chow, U. Y. (2019, September). An optimality-theoretic analysis of tone sandhi in Shanghai nominal compounds. Poster presented at the 4th NorthWest Phonetics & Phonology Conference, University of Calgary, Canada.

Chow, U. Y. (2019, June). Acoustic properties of plain and glottalized stops in Gitksan. Poster presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Chow, U. Y. (2019, April). Formant analysis of the syllabic [z̩] in Mandarin. Talk presented at the 35th Northwest Linguistics Conference, University of Victoria, Canada.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2018, June). The influence of knowledge of lexical tones on the identification of statements and questions in Cantonese. Talk presented at the 4th Workshop on Innovations in Cantonese Linguistics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2017, May). An investigation of native and naïve listeners’ perception of Mandarin intonation using exemplar-based simulations. Poster presented at the 3rd NorthWest Phonetics & Phonology Conference, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2016, June). An exemplar-based model of English intonation. Talk presented at the Satellite Workshop: A Common Prosody Platform for Comparing Prosodic Theories, 8th International Conference on Speech Prosody, Boston University, USA.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2016, April). Creaky voice as a cue in an exemplar-based classification of English statements and questions. Talk presented at the 32nd Northwest Linguistics Conference, University of Washington, USA.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2016, March). Perception of intonation in Cantonese: Native listeners versus exemplar-based model. Talk presented at the 3rd Workshop on Innovations in Cantonese Linguistics, Ohio State University, USA.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2015, June). Perception of statements and questions in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. Poster presented at the 1st NorthWest Phonetics & Phonology Conference, University of Oregon, USA.

Chow, U. Y., & Winters, S. J. (2014, November). Designing an exemplar-based computational model of intonation perception of English statements and questions. Talk presented at the Alberta Conference on Linguistics, University of Alberta, Canada.

Chow, U. Y. (2014, June). Intonation patterns of double subjects in Mandarin: Evidence in support of a possessive structure. Poster presented at the International Symposium on Prosody to Commemorate Gösta Bruce, Lund University, Sweden.