Dr Yin Zhong Postdoctoral Fellow

Location FG325
Phone +852 3400 2059
mail beth-yin.zhong@polyu.edu.hk

ORCID ID
Research Gate









Research Overview With a cross-disciplinary and cross-linguistic background, my earlier interests centred on media discourse and second language education. However, I was later fascinated by the interactions between language, cognition and culture, especially how such relationships can be reflected in the sensory lexicon. My current research focuses on using the corpus-based method and behaviour experiments to examine sensory-perceptual strengths and meaning transfers among human senses, with the aim of advancing understanding of embodied cognition theory through linguistic representations. In addition to sensory lexical research, I am also interested in how metaphorical frames influence people’s reasoning about social and political issues.




Education and Academic Qualifications Doctor of Applied Language Sciences (Distinction), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2020)
M.A. in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (Distinction), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2015)
B.A. in Mass Communication, Curtin University, Australia (2008)




Academic and Professional Experiences Lecturer, Language Centre, Hong Kong Baptist University (2020)
Research Assistant/Research Associate, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies/Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2018 -2020)
Teaching Assistant, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2015 – 2018)




Teaching Areas Lexical Semantics
Corpus Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics
Teaching Chinese as a Second Language




Research Interests
Cognitive Lexical Semantics
Corpus Linguistics
(Critical) Discourse Analysis
Conceptual Metaphor Analysis
Language and Politics



Research Output

Journal Articles
Zhong, Y., Huang, C.-R., Dong, S.C. (Forthcoming). Bodily sensation and embodiment: a corpus-based study of gustatory vocabulary in Mandarin Chinese. To appear inJournal of Chinese Linguistics.

Zhong, Y., Huang, C.-R. (2020). Sweetness or mouthfeel: A corpus-based study of the conceptualisation of taste.Linguistic Research, 37(3), 359-387.https://doi.org/10.17250/khisli.37.3.202012.001





Book Chapters
Zhong, Y., Huang, C.-R. (2019). Eventivity and auditory modality: An onto-cognitive account of hearing nouns in Mandarin Chinese. In: Su Q., Zhan W. (eds).From Minimal Contrast to Meaning Construct. Frontiers in Chinese Linguistics, vol 9 (pp.179-191). Springer, Singapore.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9240-6_13




Conference Proceedings
Zhong, Y., Huang, C-R. (2018). A semantic analysis of sense organs in Chinese compound words: based on embodied cognition and generative lexicon theory. In: Hong JF., Su Q., Wu JS. (eds)Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11173 (pp. 23-33). Springer, Cham.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04015-4_2

Zhong, Y., Huang, C.-R. (2018). Pleasing to the mouth or pleasant personality: a corpus-based study of conceptualization of desserts in online Chinese food reviews. InProceedings of the 32nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation: 25th Joint Workshop on Linguistics and Language Processing(pp.893-903). Association for Computational Linguistics.https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/Y18-2006.pdf

Dong, S.C.,Zhong, Y., & Huang, C.-R. (2018). How do non-tastes taste? A corpus-based study on Chinese people’s perception of spicy and numbing food. InProceedings of the 32nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation: 25th Joint Workshop on Linguistics and Language Processing(pp.858-866). Association for Computational Linguistics.https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/Y18-2001.pdf





Conference Presentations
Zhong. Y., Dong, S.C., Huang, C-R. (2018, October). Lexical categories and time-variant of Mandarin Chinese sensory lexicon. Paper presented at the 17th China International Conference on Contemporary Linguistics, Beijing, China.

Zhong. Y., Dong, S.C., Huang, C-R. (2018, September). Lexical differentiation in Mandarin Chinese sensory lexicon. Paper presented at the 10th International Conference of the European Association of Chinese Linguistics (EACL-10), Milan, Italy.










Esteem Measures







Awards and honours
Humanities Doctoral Scholarship 2018/2019
Faculty of Humanities, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Oct 2019)

Best Paper Award
At the 20th Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop, Beijing (Jun 2019)

Prize for Distinguished Postgraduate Students
Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Oct 2015)