CV
R Markdown, academic CV, template
Short bio
My overarching research goal is to understand how people make use of ideophones and iconic affordances to construe meaning, which I study from a usage-based perspective through quantitative corpus analysis and experimental studies. My current GRF project, undertaken in collaboration with colleagues at HKU and Radboud University, focuses on the learnability of ideophones from a cross-linguistic perspective.
My PhD dissertation (2020) investigates the Chinese ideophonic lexicon through four different methodological lenses: multiple correspondence analysis, diachronic prototype semantics, semantic vector spaces, and collostructional analysis. A prototypical structuring of the ideophonic lexicon is found throughout the data, which were collected from corpora and the Chinese Ideophone Database (CHIDEOD), a freely accessible online database I constructed.
My research and teaching approaches focus heavily on turning data into meaningful models and visualizations, that highlight different perspectives inherent in the raw data. For this reason, I invest heavily in teaching students and peers how to wrangle data in the right shape with the programming language R, in order to communicate effectively what the data tell us.
Research interests
Ideophones, onomatopoeia, mimetics; Cognitive Linguistics; lexical semantics; Cognitive Grammar;
historical linguistics; Chinese (in all its variants)
Current employment
Postdoctoral fellow, The University of Hong Kong 2021-2023 (PI Youngah Do, Ph.D, Co-Is Mark Dingemanse, Ph.D Hong Kong & Arthur Lewis Thompson, Ph.D; GRF 17603120)
Education:
PhD Linguistics (A+), National Taiwan University: Graduate Institute of Linguistics 2015-2020 Dissertation: Prototypicality and salience of Chinese ideophones: Taipei, Taiwan A cognitive and corpus linguistics approach Advisor: Lu Chiarung 呂佳蓉, Ph.D
MA Linguistics (magna cum laude), University of Leuven 2014-2015
Thesis: Ideophones in Middle Chinese: Leuven, Belgium A typological study of a Tang dynasty poetic corpus
Advisor: Jean-Christophe Verstraete, Ph.D
MA Sinology (magna cum laude), University of Leuven 2013-2014
Thesis: The Guwen yundong 古文运动 (Classical Prose Movement) Leuven, Belgium during Tang and Song: Ideological as well as Stylistic Innovation?
Advisor: Willy Vande Walle, Ph.D
Year-long Mandarin Chinese exchange study, Suzhou University 苏州大学 2012-2013 Suzhou, China
BA Sinology (cum laude), University of Leuven 2009-2012 Leuven, Belgium
Additional training and education
Summer school: Chinese Digital Humanities. Leiden: Leiden University. July 2016
Summer school: Translating Chinese (Summer +10). Taipei: National Taiwan University. July 2014
Honours and awards
- - Editor’s choice for Thompson, Van Hoey & Do. Cognitive Linguistics. (free open access) 2021
- - Financial Assistance Grant for International Students 2019-2020
- - Financial Assistance Grant for International Students 2018-2019
- - Research Fellowship for Outstanding International Doctoral Students 2015-2018
- - Scholarship from the Hanban 汉办, for long-term study of Chinese 2012-2013
Research*
* \(\bigstar\) marks the most significant publications.
Book chapters
\(\bigstar\) Van Hoey, Thomas. forthcoming. A semantic map for ideophones. In Thomas Fuyin Li (ed.) Handbook of Cognitive Semantics. Ch. 16. Leiden: Brill. (accepted, expected in 2022)
Significance: This chapter contains a literature review of the different semantic domains ideophones can occupy, as well as model that is falsiable given enough data.
Van Hoey, Thomas & Chiarung Lu. 2019. Lexical variation of ideophones in Chinese classics: Their implications in embodiment and migration. In Janice Fon (ed.), Dimensions of diffusion and diversity, 195–226. (Cognitive Linguistics Research 63). Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. doi: 10.1515/9783110610895
Refereed articles
\(\bigstar\) Thompson, Arthur Lewis, Thomas Van Hoey & Youngah Do. 2021. Articulatory features of phonemes pattern to iconic meanings: Evidence from cross-linguistic ideophones. Cognitive Linguistics 32(4)*. doi: 10.1515/cog-2020-0055 *Editor’s choice for this issue
Significance: This paper investigates which articulatory map to which semantic features for the ideophone systems of 13 languages. It makes use of a collostructional methodology.
Van Hoey, Thomas. forthcoming. The blending of bending: How we engage with the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender through memes. Metaphor and Symbol. (accepted).
\(\bigstar\) Van Hoey, Thomas & Arthur Lewis Thompson. 2020. The Chinese Ideophone Database (CHIDEOD). Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 49(2). 136–167. doi: 10.1163/19606028-bja10006
Significance: This paper presents the Chinese Ideophone Database, which is freely available online and can be used in computational studies and aid in the design of psycholinguistic experiments that investigate ideophones in Chinese.
Van Hoey, Thomas. 2018. Does the thunder roll? Mandarin Chinese meteorological expressions and their iconicity. Cognitive Semantics (4:2), 230-259. doi: 10.1163/23526416-00402003
Resources and data sets
Van Hoey, Thomas & Arthur Lewis Thompson. 2019. The Chinese ideophone database (CHIDEOD). CHIDEOD is accessible in .xlsx, .csv, .rds formats (doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/KPWGF), as well as through a Shiny app interface.
Theses
\(\bigstar\) PhD thesis Linguistics (grade: A+) 2020 Prototypicality and salience of Chinese ideophones: A cognitive and corpus linguistics approach 漢語擬聲(態)詞的原型與顯著特徵:以認知與語料庫語言學方法探討
Significance: My dissertation contains four different methdologies to investigate salience phenomena in Chinese ideophones, going from the traditional, manual approaches to increasingly more computation and complex methods.
MA thesis Linguistics (grade: 17.4/20)2015 Ideophones in Middle Chinese: A typological study of a Tang dynasty poetic corpus
MA thesis Sinology (grade: 18.6/20)2014 The Guwen yundong 古文运动 (Classical Prose Movement) during Tang and Song: Ideological as well as Stylistic Innovation?
Publications in preparation
Van Hoey, Thomas. Tuples and prototypes of collocate-ideophone constructions like ABB in Mandarin.
Thomas Van Hoey. Converging evidence: ABB constructions in Mandarin analyzed in the corpus and rated in the experiment.
Do, Youngah*, Arthur Lewis Thompson*, Thomas Van Hoey* & Mark Dingemanse. Iconicity in ideophones: When memory fails, just guess. * co-first authors
Do, Youngah*, Arthur Lewis Thompson*, Thomas Van Hoey* & Mark Dingemanse. Teasing apart sound, meaning and gesture of ideophones in a transmission and iterated learning paradigm.
* co-first authors
Van Hoey, Thomas. Onomatopoeia in Mandarin Chinese. In Lívia Körtvélyessy (ed.) Handbook of onomatapoeia.
Conferences
Invited talks
Van Hoey, Thomas. 2019. Defining Chinese ideophones: A family of constructions. International Workshop on Mimetics (Ideophones, Expressives) III: Crucibles of Mimetics. Nagoya: Nanzan University. 3 August 2019. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12651896
Van Hoey, Thomas. 2017. Chinese ideophones in historical corpora: A case study of mental space markers. Workshop on Mimetics II: New approaches to old questions. Nagoya: Nanzan University. 11 November 2017. Funding: MOST-106-2922-I-002-596. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.5830341
Theme sessions
Dingemanse, Mark, Arie Verhagen, Jonas Nölle & Thomas Van Hoey. 2019. Integrating iconicity: Recent work and future directions. ICLC 15 [International Cognitive Linguistics Conference], Nishinomiya: Kwansei Gakuin University. 6-11 August 2019. https://iclc2019.site/.
Conference presentations (oral)
\(\bigstar\) Van Hoey, Thomas & Iju Hsu. 2020. Chinese ideophones in advertisements and social media: Motivated by multimodal metaphors. RaAM 13 [Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor] Virtual. Hamar: Inland Norway University. 18-21 June 2020. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12651890
Significance: This presentation is a qualitative exploration of semantic extensions that can be observed for Chinese ideophones in social media usage. It is a prime candidate for further quantitative study.
Van Hoey, Thomas & Chiarung Lu. 2020. From ideational to interpersonal: A behavioral profile analysis of qǐlái 起來 in Modern Mandarin. CLDC 10 [Conference on Language, Discourse, and Cognition]. Taipei: National Taiwan University. 1-2 May 2020. https://sites.google.com/view/cldc10 (cancelled due to corona virus)
Van Hoey, Thomas & Chiarung Lu. 2019. Reduplication as a trigger of intersubjectivity: Mandarin Chinese ideophones and reduplication in the CHILDES corpora. ICLC 15 [International Cognitive Linguistics Conference], Nishinomiya: Kwansei Gakuin University. 6-11 August 2019. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12651902
Van Hoey, Thomas. 2019. Radiant suns, burning fires and brilliant flowers: The onomasiology and radical support of Chinese literary LIGHT ideophones. ICLC 15 [International Cognitive Linguistics Conference], Nishinomiya: Kwansei Gakuin University. 6-11 August 2019. Funding: NTU, College of Liberal Arts. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12652445
Van Hoey, Thomas & Arthur Lewis Thompson. 2019. Bridging phonology, meaning, and written form across time: Introducing a database of Chinese literary ideophones — CHIDEOD. ILL 12 [International Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature], Lund: Lund University. 3-5 May 2019. Funding: MOST-108-2922-I-002-198. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12651899
Van Hoey, Thomas & Chiarung Lu. 2018. All that glitters is not gold: Prototypical semantic change in shiny Literary Chinese ideophones. ICPEAL 17 [International Conference on the Processing of East Asian Languages]-CLDC 9 [Conference on Language, Discourse, and Cognition]. Taipei: National Taiwan University. 19-21 October 2018. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12652544
Van Hoey, Thomas. 2016. Ideophones in Old Chinese: The case of the Shijing 詩經. ISACG [International Symposium on Ancient Chinese Grammar] 9. Berlin: Humboldt University. 29-30 July 2016. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12651875
Van Hoey, Thomas. 2016. A diachronic analysis of ideophones in Chinese. Summer school in Chinese Digital Humanities. Leiden: Leiden University. 6-9 July 2016. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12652508
Van Hoey, Thomas & Chiarung Lu. 2016. The distribution of ideophones in Tang poems: A variationist perspective. CLDC [Conference on Language, Discourse, and Cognition] 8. Taipei: National Taiwan University.13-14 May 2016. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12651824
Conference presentations (posters)
Van Hoey, Thomas. 2018. The blending of bending: Worldbuilding in Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. RaAM [Association for Researching and Applying Metaphor] 12. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Polytechnic University. 27-30 June 2018. Funding: MOST-107-2922-I-002-237. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12652460
Van Hoey, Thomas. 2017. The thunder rolls: Iconicity and ideophones in Chinese meteorlogical expressions. CLS-MPI Iconicity Focus Group Workshop: Types of Iconicity in Language Use, Development and Processing. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. 6-7 July 2017. Funding: NTU, College of Liberal Arts. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12652526
Van Hoey, Thomas. 2016. Ideophones in Premodern Chinese: Revisiting Dingemanse’s implicational hierarchy (poster). Mimetics in Japanese and other languages in the world (日本語と世界諸言語のオノマトペ). Tachikawa: NINJAL. 17-18 December 2016. Funding: MOST-105-2922-I-002-682. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12652514
Departmental lectures
Van Hoey, Thomas. 2021. Tuples and prototypes of collocate-ideophone constructions like ABB in Manarin Chinese. VLT talks. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong. 29 June 2021.
Van Hoey, Thomas. 2017. A semantic map for ideophones: From an implicational hierarchy to the spinning top model. Brown Bag Lectures. Taipei: National Taiwan University. 26 April 2017.
Contributions
Van de Velde, Freek & Dirk Pijpops, in collaboration with Mathias De Backer, Wendy Feytons, Alek Keersmaekers, Veerle Monserez, Thomas Van Hoey, and Marie Vanwingh. 2016. Addressees use Zipf’s law as a cue for semantics. In Seán G. Roberts, Christine Cuskley, Luke McCrohon, Lluís Barceló-Coblijn, Olga Fehér & Tessa Verhoef (eds.), The evolution of language: Proceedings of the 11th international conference (EVOLANGX11). Online at http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/117.html.
Tutorials
\(\bigstar\) Van Hoey, Thomas. 2021. R Tutorial for Linguistics Pioneering Initiative. National Taiwan University. 6 lectures during November 2021. (soon to be released on YouTube)
\(\bigstar\) Van Hoey, Thomas. 2019. R bootcamp for lexical semanticists. Introduction to wrangling raw data to formats useable for further analysis using R. Seminar on Language and Culture 語言與文化專題研究.Taipei: National Taiwan University. 5 lectures during November 2019. blogpost
Significance: These tutorials convey the basic tips and tricks for all stages of the analysis process in R: from reading in data, to tidying it, to wrangling it in the right shape for the right purpose, visualization, modeling, and finally for output that can serve in further analysis, or output directly for communication.
Broader audiences
Van Hoey, Thomas & CJ Young. 2019. Language, culture, and cognition. Summer training camp for Taiwanese and Hong Kong high school representatives in the International Linguistics Olympiad. Taipei: Academia Sinica. 17 July 2019.
Van Hoey, Thomas. 2018. Austronesian languages. Summer training camp for Taiwanese high school representatives in the International Linguistics Olympiad. Chiayi: National Chungcheng University. 19 July 2018.
Funding
Fellowships
- 2019-2020 NTU, Financial Assistance Grant for International Students
- 2018-2019 NTU, Financial Assistance Grant for International Students
- 2015-2018 NTU, Research Fellowship for Outstanding International Doctoral Students
- 2012-2013 Hanban scholarship
Travel grants
- 2019 NTU, College of Liberal Arts
- 2019 MOST-108-2922-I-002-198
- 2018 MOST-107-2922-I-002-237
- 2017 NTU, College of Liberal Arts
- 2016 MOST-105-2922-I-002-682
Teaching
English conversation (BA2) Applied Foreign Languages, Tatung University 大同大學 2019-2020
Consultancies
Premodern Japanese grammar for Sterk, Darryl. 2020. Indigenous cultural translation: A thick description of Seediq Bale. New York: Routledge.
Membership
- International Cognitive Linguistics Association
- Researching and Applying Metaphors
- Linguistics Society of Taiwan
- European Association of Chinese Studies
Previous employment
Research and Teaching Assistant, National Taiwan University 2019-2020 Contemporary online language variation: A case study of Internet public opinion analysis, research assistent, PI Chiarung Lu (MOST 108-2410-H-002-059)
Research Assistant, National Taiwan Normal University 2019-2020
Assisting in Formosa-related newspaper project, PI Ann Heylen
Research and Teaching Assistant, National Taiwan University 2016-2019
Assisting in courses and research, for Chiarung Lu
Teaching Assistant, English summer camp at Wesley Girls’ High School (Taipei), 2018
organized by the Language Training & Testing Center at National Taiwan University
Research Assistant for the Formosan Spoken Corpus, National Taiwan University 2017-2018
Transcribing Isbukun Bunun, PI Li-May Sung
Dutch translator of Chinese short stories, babel101.com 2014-2016
Freelance Chinese-Dutch translator and interpreter, Judicial Court of Leuven 2014-2016
Assistant, East-Asian Library (University of Leuven) 2014-2015
Freelance translator Dutch-Chinese, Expat Insurances 2012-2013
Languages
Active: Dutch, English, Chinese, French
Passive: Japanese, German, Premodern Chinese
Basic knowledge: Isbukun Bunun (Austronesian)
Service
- Sinalumni (alumni association of Sinology students) 2015-ongoing management of membership database and coordinating KU Leuven Connect
Reviewing
- Cognitive Linguistics
- PLoS
- Linguistics Vanguard
- Canadian Journal of Linguistics / Revue canadienne de linguistique
- Glossa
- Handbook of Cognitive Semantics
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
- Mapping China Journal
Conference organisation
ICPEAL 17 - CLDC 9 2018
International Conference for the Processing of East Asian Languages and Conference on Language, Discourse, and Cognition http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~gilntu/icpeal2018cldc/ Role: coordinator of the student committee responsible for organizing the joint conference
Technological knowledge
- Microsoft office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access) and open source variants
- (typesetting)
- Database construction and management
- Application deployment with Shiny
- R, Python (statistical research)
- Psychopy3
- Experimental design and corpus research
- Regression analysis, cluster analysis, principal components analysis, dendrograms
- Knowledge of general linguistic theories, (lexical-semantial) Cognitive Linguistics, descriptive and typological linguistics, computational linguistics
Other awards and certificates
- Intermediate level, Isbukun Bunun Proficiency Test 2018
- 1st place at Hackathon Taiwanese Linguistics Olympiad 2017
- HSK 6 (Chinese Proficiency Test, level 6) 2013
- HSK 5 (Chinese Proficiency Test, level 5) 2013
- 3rd place, Chinese calligraphy competiton with hard pen for Belgian university students 2011
- HSK 3 (Chinese Proficiency Test, level 3) 2010
- Finalist, HUB (Brussels) Language Competition, French 2009
- Finalist, Olyfran (French language competition) 2007