James Kirby is a specialist of experimental phonetics and leading expert on languages of East/Southeast Asia, working at the University of Edinburgh.

Nguyễn Thị Minh Châu (Vietnam National University & MICA) reported her initial contact with fieldwork in the province of Phú Thọ: she is beginning an in-depth phonetic-phonological study of the Mường language, with special emphasis on tone. 

 

Two students of Yunnan University who accompanied Alexis Michaud to conduct fieldwork in Yunnan in 2014, and who are currently doing a two-month internship at MICA, presented their initial findings. William Ji presented "An Elusive Two-level Tone System: Shekua Na". He is establishing the underlying lexical tone categories of a dialect that has two level tones (as opposed to three in the better-described varieties, Lijiang Naxi and Yongning Na). He uses classical phonological fieldwork methods, studying tone change in combinations of words. He considers learning to speak this language; he would thus be the first outsider (non-native speaker) to master the rich tonal morphology of this dialect. A Hui, a native speaker of Shekua Na, and William Ji's main consultant, explores the phonetic side of tones in the Na language. She compares the realizations of one and the same phonological tone category in various contexts, to bring out the principles that govern the phonetic realization of various tone sequences.