International Awards
Fung Global Network Grant, Princeton University
Competitive grant to convene international workshop on "Language, Nationalism, Nations: Multilingualism Beyond Europe" at the Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University, in October 2017. Funding amount approximately USD15,000. (Jointly with Pritipuspa Mishra)
Fung Global Fellowship, Princeton University
Fully funded competitive fellowship to conduct research on language planning and policy at the Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University. Funding amount approximately USD130,000, from Sep 2013 - Jul 2014.
ERASMUS-MUNDI-MULTI Mobility Grant
Mobility grant to carry out research at the Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Université Aix-Marseille in Nov-Dec 2011 and Feb-Mar 2013. Funding amount: €7,500.
Local Research Grants
SingSpeak: Automating Speech and Humanizing Machines
PI: Tan Ying Ying; Co-PIs: Chng Eng Siong (SCSE, NTU) and Ng Bee Chin (LMS, NTU)
This large-scale project makes use of the National Speech Corpus to investigate Singapore English speech and its variations. This project will detail the spectrum of Singapore English speech differences across age, ethnicity, education level, gender, and conversational contexts. The phonetic analyses will be applied to the building of an automatic speech recognition system suitable for use in the Singaporean context.
-- Academic Research Fund Tier 2 Grant (S$938,548), Jan 2020 – Jan 2023
Linguistic Justice, Nations and Multilingualism: Rethinking Singapore’s Language Policies
PI: Tan Ying Ying
The broad aim of this project is to inject a Singaporean perspective into the literature of multilingualism and linguistic justice, by exploring what Singapore’s language management model might be, and how it can be rethought by looking at it along unexplored dimensions of linguistic justice.
-- Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Grant (S$99,000), Nov 2018 – Oct 2021
Language Shift in Singapore’s Indian Community
PI: Ritu Jain (LCC, NTU), Co-PI: Tan Ying Ying
The overarching aim of this project is to assess community perceptions towards (affiliated and alternate) Indian languages, in particular the non-Tamil Indian languages such as Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Urdu, in order to understand the reasons for the shift away from such languages towards English.
-- Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Grant (S$66,540), Nov 2017 – Oct 2020
Benign Management or Planned Negligence?: Malay and Tamil Language Policies in Singapore
PI: Tan Ying Ying
Due to the very fact that the Singaporean state has not engaged in any large-scale or high-profile discussions on Malay and Tamil, there is also a sore lack of scholarly literature on this subject. The task of this project therefore is to trace the state’s conversations with regard to Malay and Tamil, in order to unveil the development of language policies pertaining to these two languages.
-- Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Grant (S$88,000), Mar 2017 – Feb 2020
Parity in Language Management of Multilingual Communities
PI: Tan Ying Ying
This is a small project tracing the language policies of the four official languages in Singapore.
-- College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Seed Grant (S$5000), Aug 2015 - Jul 2017
New sounds to better brain health: The effects of language learning on aging
PI: Alice Chan(Linguistics, NTU); Co-PIs: Tan Ying Ying and Annabelle Chen (Psychology, NTU)
This project explores this theme of active aging by using established techniques to compare language learning in young and older adults. The large-scale project examines how language learning influences cognitive ability, and by focusing on older adults, this project aims to shed light on older adult learning in general and how this knowledge can be applied to other languages and areas of learning.
-- Academic Research Fund Tier 2 Grant (S$681,485), Feb 2016 – Jan 2019
Development of Intonational Models For Malay And Singapore English
PI: Tan Ying Ying (taken over from James German); co-PI: Frantisek Kratochvil
The objective of this project is to study in detail, the intonational models for Malay and Singapore English. This study will systematically explore the inventories of pitch contours and how they relate to words, sentences, and communicated meanings.
-- Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Grant (S$91,114), Mar 2014 – Feb 2017
Discriminating Accents
PI: Tan Ying Ying
The objective of this project is to study in detail, the perceptual categories in the discrimination of accents, and the ways in which accents can be used to discriminate others. This research aims to investigate three major aspects of accent study, namely, the discriminability of accents, the intelligibililty of accents, and the attitudes toward accents.
-- Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Grant (S$40,000), Mar 2013 – Feb 2015
Speaker Profiling
PI: Tan Ying Ying
The objective of this project is to investigate the parameters of speaker identification, in particular, acoustic and prosodic characteristics which may be prove to be useful in speech recognition technologies. This project also looks into the possible repercussions and implications for speaker profiling technologies.
-- College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Seed Grant (S$5000), July 2011 - June 2013
Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training Using the Standard Singapore English Model
PIs: Tan Ying Ying & Chng Eng Siong (Computer Engineering, NTU)
This is a joint project with Chng Eng Siong from Computer Engineering, NTU. This project will build a corpus of Singapore English, and using the corpus, predict the modeling of Singapore English for software development and educational purposes. This project will take into account not only the phonemic structure of Singapore English, but also its prosodic nature.
-- Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Grant (S$190,000), Mar 2010 – Feb 2012
Quantifying the Singaporean Accent
PI: Tan Ying Ying
As the Principal Investigator of this project, I look into what is commonly known as the “Singaporean accent”. Analysing specifically the prosodic features of intonation, stress and rhythm, this project aims to pin down the “Singaporean accent” by giving it an acoustic definition. The quantification of these prosodic properties will provide concrete evidence for what this Singaporean accent is, and defines, in definite terms, what gives it its unique identity.
-- Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Start-up Grant (S$63,958), May 2007 – May 2010
Attitudes to Singaporean English
PI: Francesco Cavallaro (Linguistics, NTU); Co-PIs: Tan Ying Ying and Ng Bee Chin (Linguistics, NTU)
Research has shown that the process whereby speakers are judged by their linguistic and paralinguistic variation is at the very centre of the language-communication intersection. This project aims to address the dearth of research in this area in Singapore by conducting a both quantitative and qualitative investigation to measure and explain language attitudes in Singapore towards the different varieties of English spoken.
-- Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Grant (S$195,822), Jul 2008 – Mar 2013
Singapore Voices: A Sound Installation of Endangered Languages
Co-PIs: Ng Bee Chin, Francesco Cavallaro, Luke Kang Kwong (Linguistics, NTU), Tan Ying Ying, PerMagnus Lindborg (Design and Media, NTU), Roeland Stulemejier (NTU Museum)
This is an interdisciplinary project between the linguists, sound and visual artists working on endangered languages in Singapore. The sound installation was presented at the Language and Diversity Symposium at NTU on 5-6 March 2009. The installation is now part of the permanent exhibit of the NTU Museum and Libraries.
-- Institute for Media Innovation Mini Seed Grant (S$5,000), Mar 2009 – Sep 2009