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.

As a linguist who is a native Chinese speaker as well as Chinese language teacher, Jiang primarily focuses on the second language acquisition especially on the L2 learning of Chinese. He uses psycholinguistic approach to study the mechanism of language processing, particularly on the relation between the form of feedback and learning outcome (e.g., implicit vs. explicit learning). His goal is to apply the findings in basic linguistic research to better serve the second language classroom teaching by incorporating certain types of trainings into an existed Chinese language curriculum.

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

Liu, Jiang and Zhang, Jie (in press). A production and perception study of tonal neutralization in Nanchang Chinese. In William S-Y Wang (ed.), Journal of Chinese Linguistics special issue: "Studies on Tonal Aspects of Languages".

Liu, Jiang, Zhang, Jie., Tremblay, Annie., Jongman, Allard., Sereno, Joan., & Johnson, David.  (under revision) “The effects of talker variability and variances on the tone categorization in an implicit learning environment”, the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

Liu, Jiang, Zhang, Jie., Tremblay, Annie., Jongman, Allard., Sereno, Joan (2016) The Effects of Talker Variability and Input Distribution on the L2 Training of Tone Categorization”. Proceedings of The 5th International Symposium of Tonal Aspects of Languages.

Zhang, Jie and Liu, Jiang (2016). “The productivity of variable disyllabic tone sandhi in Tianjin Chinese”. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 25(1), pp 1-35.

Liu, Jiang and Jongman, Allard (2013). American Chinese learners’ acquisition of L2 Chinese affricates /ts/ and /ts^h/. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (POMA), Volume 18, pp. 060005 (10 pages), 164th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. DOI: 10.1121/1.4798223.

Zhang, Jie and Liu, Jiang (2011) Tone Sandhi and Tonal Coarticulation in Tianjin Chinese. Phonetica (68):161–191.