Curriculum Vitae
Download my academic CV (DOCX)
Education
National University of Singapore — Singapore
MA by Research in Linguistics (2025 – Present)
Chengyi College, Jimei University — Xiamen, Fujian, China
Bachelor of Engineering in Network Engineering (2017 – 2021)
Research Interests
- Sinitic linguistics on Yue (Cantonese), focusing on language contact
- Typological variation in Sinitic varieties
- Digital linguistic infrastructure for Yue varieties, including corpora and romanization
- Corpus linguistics and lexical-resource development
- Language technology for under-resourced languages
Publications & Presentations
Liang, Zinan and Huang, Junxin. (2024). "Man1 in Ngzhau Cantonese: A Study of Language Contact between Yuehai and Goulou Yue." Buckeye East Asian Linguistics. 9, 163-179. Presented at the 27th International Conference on Yue Dialect, September 2024.
June 13, 2026
Conference Presentation at 32nd Annual Conference of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics (IACL-32),
June 2025
Conference Presentation at The Eighth Forum on Cantonese Linguistics (FoCaL-8), The University of Hong Kong
September 2024
Conference Presentation at 27th International Conference on Yue Dialect, The Ohio State University
June 26, 2021
Workshop Presentation at 21st Workshop on Cantonese (WOC-21), Hong Kong
Research & Employment Experience
TypeDuck — Cantonese IME with Multilingual Dictionary
Developer / Research Assistant; PI: Dr. Chaak Ming Lau, EduHK (Sept 2022 – Dec 2024)
- Developed a Cantonese Input Method Engine (IME) to assist Cantonese learners from diverse ethnic backgrounds, planned for introduction in Hong Kong primary and middle schools.
- Built and deployed the IME algorithm server.
- Designed and implemented the dictionary user interface.
- Refined the Cantonese lexicon of the IME dictionary by filtering and removing obsolete or rare terminology.
Chinese Newspaper Corpus System
Developer; PI: Prof. Sze Wing Tang, CUHK (Oct 2020)
- Conceived and developed a robust scraping and data-extraction system for mainstream online Chinese newspapers across Asian countries.
Academic & Open-Source Contributions
Cantonese Computational Linguistics Infrastructure Development Workgroup (CanCLID)
Core Contributor (2020 – Present)
- Collected and curated a high-quality corpus of online text in Guangzhou Cantonese.
- Trained a Cantonese language model based on Guangzhou and Hong Kong text corpora, subsequently building a Cantonese/Mandarin classifier.
- Led the localization of Mozilla Common Voice into Cantonese, including UI translation, corpus collection/refinement, and audio recording verification.
- Optimized the Cantonese IME algorithm to enhance overall functionality and prediction accuracy.
Lingnaam Jyutjam (嶺南粵音) Core Contributor (2017 – Present) — jyutjam.org
- Developed the web application for the Pan-Cantonese Dictionary (Jyutdict.org), which archives pronunciation records of Yue varieties across Guangdong and Guangxi.
- Engaged in academic discussions concerning Yue classification and the reconstruction of Early-Qing Cantonese phonology.
- Conducted extensive collection and analysis of colloquial Cantonese terms, contributing to the construction of proto-Yue phonetics.
- Parsed and filtered Guangzhou Cantonese transcripts using Python for a comprehensive colloquial dictionary.
- Introduced and implemented a Cantonese tone-sandhi transcribing solution for Jyutping++.
Computational Methods & Data Skills
- Data & NLP workflows: Corpus collection, web scraping, data cleaning, parsing, metadata organization, and language-model-based classification for Cantonese/Mandarin data.
- Programming & tools: C++, Python, pandas, regular expressions, PHP/MySQL, and Git/GitHub.
- Linguistics tools: Praat for acoustic analysis and lexical data preparation for dictionaries and input methods.
Languages
- Native: Cantonese, Dianbai Min
- Fluent: Mandarin
- Conversational: Taiwan Hokkien
- Professional: English
- Basic: Japanese, Bahasa Melayu / Indonesian
Service and Community Work
- Lingnaam Jyutjam, core contributor to Yue classification, Early-Qing Cantonese phonology, romanization, and Pan-Cantonese Dictionary work.
- CanCLID, core contributor to corpus, classifier, Common Voice localization, IME, and open-source language technology work.
