Education

• Ph.D., Linguistics, University of Kansas
• B.A., English Language and Linguistics, Lancaster University
• English language and literature, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

Research Interests

General linguistics: Language acquisition, Phonetics, Phonology, Psycholinguistics, Neurolinguistics.
Chinese linguistics: Chinese tones, Chinese character recognition.
Pedagogy: Use of technology in Chinese language teaching.

My research interests lie in phonetics-phonology, bilingualism, and psycholinguistics. I have been investigating the mental lexicon of both native and non-native speakers, with a particular focus on second language learners. Alongside my PhD student, I explore how emotion prosody is perceived and produced, aiming to understand the processing of both paralinguistic and linguistic cues in speech. In addition to fundamental research, I strive to apply psycholinguistic insights to (Chinese) language pedagogy, with the goal of enhancing student learning outcomes.

Research Projects

Jiang is currently studying the relation between the indexical information (e.g., speaker voice) in speech and the sound categorization trying to further understand why multiple talkers’ speech is more robust in terms of training learners’ speech perception. He is using video game as a perceptual training paradigm to study learners’ speech learning. Jiang also studies the processing of Chinese characters, which is of logographic writing system.

Teaching 

Introduction to Phonology, Seminar on L2 phonology, Chinese linguistics

Representative Publications

• Pelzl, Eric, Liu, Jiang & Qi, Chunhong (2022) Native language experience with tones influences both phonetic and lexical processes when acquiring a second tonal language. Journal of  Phonetics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2022.101197
• Liu, Jiang & Wiener, Seth (2022). Effects of phonological and talker familiarity on second language lexical development. The Mental Lexicon, 17(1): pp132-153. https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.20024.liu
• Liu, Jiang & Wiener, Seth (2021). CFL learners’ Mandarin syllable-tone word production: effects of task and prior phonological and lexical learning. Chinese as a Second Language Research, 9(2), 31-52. https://doi.org/10.1515/caslar-2021-0002
• Wiener, Seth & Liu, Jiang (2021). Effects of perceptual abilities and lexical knowledge on the phonetic categorization of second language speech. JASA Express Letters, 1(4), 045202. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0004259
• Liu, Jiang, & Wiener, Seth (2020). Homophones facilitate lexical development in a second language. System, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2020.102249
• Li, Wenshan & Liu, Jiang (2020). The dynamics of yes and no in and as context. Lingua, 244, 102874. doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102874
• Zhang, Jie & Liu, Jiang (2016). “The productivity of variable disyllabic tone sandhi in Tianjin Chinese”. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 25(1), pp 1-35. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-015-9135-0
• Zhang, Jie & Liu, Jiang (2011) Tone Sandhi and Tonal Coarticulation in Tianjin Chinese. Phonetica (68):161–191. https://doi.org/10.1159/000333387