Holman Tse, PhD (he/him/his)

Assistant Professor of Linguistics
Dept. of Literature, Language, and Writing (formerly English and International Languages)
St. Catherine University

Welcome to my website! Here, you will find information about my work including links to publications and conference presentation slides.

Research News

• Feb. 29, 2024: New publications
• Tse, Holman (2024) Functional load and vowel merger in Toronto Heritage Cantonese. In Rao, Rajiv (ed.). The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages, pp. 280-301. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108966986.014
• Nagy, Naomi; Tse, Holman and James Stanford (2024). Have Cantonese tones merged in spontaneous speech? In Rao, Rajiv (ed.). The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages, pp. 302-320. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108966986.015
• Feb. 9, 2024: Presentation at the University of Minnesota, Institute of Linguistics Colloquium Series.
• Presentation at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting (LSA 2024): Comparing two vowel mergers in Toronto vs. Hong Kong Cantonese in terms of functional load
• Abstract/Slides
• I will be one of the keynote speakers at the 27th International Conference on Yue Dialects. This event will take place November 30-December 2nd and will be an online event.
• Presentation at NWAV 51: AM/P~OM/P merger in Hong Kong vs. Toronto Cantonese: An underdocumented homeland sound change in a heritage language context. Link to slides
• I have been awarded a Denny Prize for Distinction in Writing. The paper submitted is a chapter published in the John Benjamins volume on Variation in Second and Heritage Languages: Crosslinguistic perspectives (Editors: Bob Bayley, Dennis Preston, and Xiaoshi Li). It is entitled What can Cantonese heritage speakers tell us about age of acquisition, linguistic dominance, and sociophonetic variation?
  • Link to published version (on John Benjamins e-platform)
  • Link to submitted pre-refereed manuscript version (on Research Gate)

About Me

I am a linguist specializing in heritage language phonetics and phonology and more broadly on sociophonetic variation and sound change in language contact settings. For example, my current research focuses on the extent of English influence on the vowel pronunciation patterns of bilingual Cantonese heritage speakers in Toronto, Canada. You can read more about my research on the research page and through links to publications and presentations. Both my MA (Univ. of Chicago) and PhD (Univ. of Pittsburgh) are in Linguistics while my BA (UC Santa Cruz) is in Anthropology. I have been a faculty member at St. Kate's since 2019. I teach general linguistics and sociolinguistics courses for the Language Studies Program. These courses are part of the “language” part of the Department of Literature, Language, and Writing (formerly Dept. of English and International Languages). You can find more information about my courses by visiting the teaching page. Although it's not a requirement to become a linguist (because it is not what linguistics is actually about), I am able to converse in several different languages. The last page of my CV includes a list of specific languages.

CV

My CV (PDF) - Last Updated: November 24, 2023

Research Profiles

I maintain research profiles on the following websites:

• Google Scholar
• Web of Science
• Academia.edu
• ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2398-5776
• BePress
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