Kristine Yu

Kristine Yu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Stanford University and M.A./Ph.D. in Linguistics from UCLA. Her research focuses on prosody, integrating fieldwork, experiments, formal theory, and machine learning. Key areas include tone/intonation, prosodic interfaces, language processing, and mathematical modeling of speech.

Her work spans languages like Samoan, Bole, African American English, and Formosan languages. She advises current students Alessa Farinella, Seung Suk Lee, and Charlotte Kaiser, with notable alumni including Leland Reimer and Ivy Hauser. Dr. Yu is actively involved in computational linguistics and phonetics, contributing to open data practices and collaborative research projects.

• Education: B.S. Stanford (Chemistry), M.A./Ph.D. UCLA (Linguistics)
• Key Research Themes: Prosodic Typology, Syntax-Prosody Interface, Speech Production/Perception
• Collaborations: Laboratory Phonology, SIGMORPHON, and cross-linguistic fieldwork initiatives

Her laboratory focuses on interdisciplinary approaches, combining experimental methods with formal models to explore prosody's role in grammar and processing. Recent work emphasizes African American English prosody and Samoan tonal systems, published in venues like Proceedings of Speech Prosody and Natural Language & Linguistic Theory.