Yuan Chai

Yuan Chai is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington, supervised by Professor Richard Wright. They serve as instructor-of-record for courses including Introduction to Linguistic Phonetics and Computational Methods for Linguists.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Linguistics, UC San Diego
• M.A. in Linguistics, University of Colorado Boulder

Dr. Chai specializes in experimental phonetics with emphasis on voice quality (breathy, creaky, falsetto), tone systems, and checked syllables. Their fieldwork documents endangered languages like Yateé Zapotec (Oaxaca, Mexico) and Xiapu Min (Fujian, China), analyzing phonation-tone interactions through acoustic and perceptual studies. Current projects include building a Living Dictionary for Yateé Zapotec with community audio recordings.

Recent publications demonstrate consistent focus on multi-dimensional phonetic contrasts, particularly how glottalization position/duration affects perception in Zapotec, and tone sandhi neutralization in Xiapu Min. Work spans journal articles (JASA, Languages), conference presentations (ICPhS, ASA), and collaborative book chapters.

Dr. Chai collaborates extensively with native speakers (Briseida Mendez, Adrián Fernández) and researchers (Patricia Keating, Marc Garellek, Jody Kreiman) across institutions. They maintain active GitHub repositories for computational linguistics tools and prioritize open-access language documentation resources.