Yolanda Xavier
iuˈɫɐ̃dɐ ʃɐviˈeɾ
Project maintained by yolandazapadnya Hosted on GitHub Pages — Theme by mattgraham
PhD Candidate in Psycholinguistics
About me
Currently I am a final-year PhD candidate in Psycholinguistics at the Research Center for Linguistics at NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal. My research borders the Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic: I am investigating language attitudes of native European Portuguese speakers towards the non-native speakers of European Portuguese considering the hiring contexts, with utterances being chosen considering specific phonetic cues, namely nasal and oral vowels.
I am also interested in the fields of ML, AI, and NLP, and have already co-authored several publications, as well as did some training. Our recent paper was submitted to the NeurIPS 2026.
Research & product skills
- LaTeX
- Python: PyTorch, pandas, Hugging Face Transformers, SentenceTransformers, Git
- jamovi
- Statistical analysis in R (RStudio): lme4, ggplot2, mclogit, and similar
- Acoustic analysis in Praat: scripts, formant analysis, duration (vowel and syllable), and pitch
- Experimental design: Gorilla Experiment Builder
- Data collection and visualization
- Scientific article writing
- MVP development
- Product validation
- AI-assisted prototyping
Currently building an AI-powered communication platform inspired by my psycholinguistic research, which helps people communicate more clearly and reduce miscommunications. More information will follow soon.
Soft skills
- critical thinking
- analytical thinking
- empathy
- team work
- proactivity
- emotional intelligence
- patience
- resilience
- creativity
- problem-solving
Publications
- Xavier, Y., Correia, S. An acoustic analysis of nasal vowels and reduced oral vowels produced by L1 Ukrainian speakers of L2 European Portuguese on intermediate and advanced levels. Lingua (2026). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2026.104121
- Gasparini, L., Shaw, D., Kathiresan, T., Borysiewicz, D., Stuart, GW., Cross-linguistic POS Consortium, Vogel, AP. (2026). Automated Parts-of-Speech Tagging in 52 Languages: Benchmarking to Establish Suitability for Multilingual Clinical Language Analysis [Available as an article. Contribution as member, Cross-linguistic POS Consortium]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nlp.2026.100226
- Xavier, Y. [co-author] (2025). Global PIQA: Evaluating Physical Commonsense Reasoning Across 100+ Languages and Cultures [Avaliable as a preprint. Paper submitted to NeurIPS 2026]. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.24081
- Gasparini, L., Shaw, D., Kathiresan, T., Borysiewicz, D., Stuart, GW., Cross-linguistic POS Consortium, Vogel, AP. (2025). Automated Parts-of-Speech Tagging in 52 Languages: Benchmarking to Establish Suitability for Multilingual Clinical Language Analysis [Available as a preprint. Contribution as member, Cross-linguistic POS Consortium]. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5886229
- Zouhar, V., Bafna, N., Choudhary, M., Züfle, M., Rajaee, S., Chen, P., Vamvas, J., Papi, S., de Gibert, O., Malik, B., Habba, E., Mastromichalakis, O. M., …, Xavier, Y., …, Fan, Y., et al. (2026). Last Translation Benchmark [Preprint]. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.04173.
Achievements
- GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS: The Biggest Programming Lesson in the World (2024) — Guinness World Records, United Kingdom
- Lingathon Winner Team (2024) — LOT, Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics
- Idea Puzzle Prize (2025) — Idea Puzzle, Portugal
- Hackathon Winner (2025) — Linguistics Research Software Hackathon, Best Challenge 1, LingHero Team
- Student Stipend, Gauss: AI Global (2026) — Austria
- Grant, Gorilla Experiment Builder (2026) — United Kingdom
-
**INTERNATIONAL TUD EXCITE SUMMER SCHOOL** (2026) — winner team, Dresden, Germany
Past life
I am a former triple and long jumper:
Used to be a runway model for a Fashion Studio Agency in Lisbon, Portugal.
Currently enrolled with Bendita Talent Agency in Lisbon.
Also writing my blog on Medium.