CNRS Researcher @ Paris Cité
Everyone just calls me (in English) by my middle name, Henny. I am a linguist and cognitive scientist who mainly does fundamental research in these areas:
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Prosody and speech style
In speech directed to infants and children by caregivers, as used in digital media, and produced using emerging speech technologies -
Technology in second language (L2) acquisition
With adults learning to listen and read in their L2, and with children learning multiple languages in heritage and immigrant contexts -
Speech processing and learning throughout the lifespan
Phonetic/phonological acquisition and processing, particularly in multimodal contexts and as influenced by speech production
Contact me for MA, PhD, and Postdoc opportunities: We embrace open science and creative approaches to interesting problems. Selected publications highlight work from scholars trained in my research group: Click on their names to see where they are! My CV has a full list of publications, and more information about my teaching activities.
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University of British ColumbiaMA and PhD in Psychology2010 -
Duke UniversityBSc in Neurolinguistics2003
Experience
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Simon Fraser UniversityAsst./Assoc./Full Professor2016 - present -
Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueResearcher2013 - present -
Université Paris CitéFyssen Foundation Postdoc2011 - 2013
Honors & Awards
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SFU Excellence in Teaching Award2024
News
Selected Publications (view all )
Should robots sound more like machines than like humans?
Ha Eun Shim, Paige Tuttösí, Olivia Yung, Ivan Fong, Sara Ng, Angelica Lim, Yue Wang, Henny Yeung
INTERSPEECH 2026 Nominated for Best Student Paper
User expectations affect the perception of prosody in TTS voices, especially when voice quality is machine-like.
Should robots sound more like machines than like humans?
Ha Eun Shim, Paige Tuttösí, Olivia Yung, Ivan Fong, Sara Ng, Angelica Lim, Yue Wang, Henny Yeung
INTERSPEECH 2026 Nominated for Best Student Paper
User expectations affect the perception of prosody in TTS voices, especially when voice quality is machine-like.
First language influences on the production of morphologically complex lexical stress
Ka Keung Lee, Magda Ivok, Henny Yeung
Journal of Second Language Pronunciation 2026
Compares L1 speakers of Russian and Mandarin in terms of their ability to produce complex lexical stress patterns in English.
First language influences on the production of morphologically complex lexical stress
Ka Keung Lee, Magda Ivok, Henny Yeung
Journal of Second Language Pronunciation 2026
Compares L1 speakers of Russian and Mandarin in terms of their ability to produce complex lexical stress patterns in English.
Child phonology in a language revitalization context: Evidence from Hul’q’umi’num
Boey Kwan, Sonya Bird, Martina Joe, Quaysultunaat (Randeana) Jack, Henny Yeung
Journal of Child Language 2026
Explores how child learn consonants in an Indigenous language, from caregivers who themselves learned it as a second language.
Child phonology in a language revitalization context: Evidence from Hul’q’umi’num
Boey Kwan, Sonya Bird, Martina Joe, Quaysultunaat (Randeana) Jack, Henny Yeung
Journal of Child Language 2026
Explores how child learn consonants in an Indigenous language, from caregivers who themselves learned it as a second language.
Associations between music perception and the production of acoustic cues to lexical stress in Mandarin learners of English
Xizi Deng, Cathy Lin, Henny Yeung
Applied Psycholinguistics 2026
Music perception is correlated with native Mandarin speakers' production of English lexical stress, even in naturalistic speech tasks.
Associations between music perception and the production of acoustic cues to lexical stress in Mandarin learners of English
Xizi Deng, Cathy Lin, Henny Yeung
Applied Psycholinguistics 2026
Music perception is correlated with native Mandarin speakers' production of English lexical stress, even in naturalistic speech tasks.
Generating consistent prosodic patterns from open-source TTS systems
Ha Eun Shim, Olivia Yung, Paige Tuttösí, Boey Kwan, Angelica Lim, Yue Wang, Henny Yeung
INTERSPEECH 2025
Shows that open-source text-to-speech (TTS) systems fail to make clear prosodic boundaries when needed to disambiguate sentence meanings.
Generating consistent prosodic patterns from open-source TTS systems
Ha Eun Shim, Olivia Yung, Paige Tuttösí, Boey Kwan, Angelica Lim, Yue Wang, Henny Yeung
INTERSPEECH 2025
Shows that open-source text-to-speech (TTS) systems fail to make clear prosodic boundaries when needed to disambiguate sentence meanings.
The perception of accented English by Mandarin learners of English: Revisiting the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit
Xizi Deng, Henny Yeung
Journal of Phonetics 2025
Adult learners of a second language must cope with accents in that language: The most comprehensive study to date at the word-level.
The perception of accented English by Mandarin learners of English: Revisiting the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit
Xizi Deng, Henny Yeung
Journal of Phonetics 2025
Adult learners of a second language must cope with accents in that language: The most comprehensive study to date at the word-level.
An exploration of voice quality in mothers speaking Canadian English to infants
Andrew Cheng, Elise McClay, Henny Yeung
Language Learning and Development 2024
The first study to compare creakiness and breathiness in English adult- and infant-directed speech.
An exploration of voice quality in mothers speaking Canadian English to infants
Andrew Cheng, Elise McClay, Henny Yeung
Language Learning and Development 2024
The first study to compare creakiness and breathiness in English adult- and infant-directed speech.