About Me

I am a postdoctoral fellow in the language processing lab at the University of Chicago, working with Ming Xiang. I received my PhD in Linguistics at UConn, where I was fortunately advised by Magdalena Kaufmann.

My research primarily focuses on semantics and pragmatics, including semantic/pragmatic theories and their implications for language processing. I employ a combination of theoretical and experimental tools to investigate how different linguistic expressions organize and constrain discourse contexts, as well as how various semantic/pragmatic notions influence language processing. Topics that I have worked on include discourse structures, speech acts and clause types, discourse particles, conditionals, temporality and modality.

My work is also informed by a cross-linguistic perspective. I work on East Asian languages. In addition to my native language Mandarin, I have collaborated with other researchers on topics in focus prosody, additive and concessive particles, and speech verbs in Japanese, Shanghainese and Cantonese.

Upcoming presentations

2025, May 7. Conditionality without if: bare conditionals and conditional marking strategies in Mandarin. Construction of Meaning Workshop, Stanford University.

Recent presentations

2024, June. Teasing apart the prosodic effects of focus and of defocus: syntax-prosody mismatches in right dislocation. LabPhon 19, Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea. [with Ka-Fai Yip] [poster]

2024, April. Non-agreeing resumptive pronouns in imperatives. Yale SRG. [with Ka-Fai Yip] [handout]

2024, April. Defocus Rephrasing: right dislocation and syntax-prosody mapping. Stony Brook University Linguistics’ Brown Bag talk series. [with Ka-Fai Yip] [slides]

2024, March. Conditionality without if : Mandarin conditionals and jiu. SURGE reading group, Rutgers University. [handout]

2024, March. Non-agreeing resumptive pronouns in imperatives. CUHK-UChicago Forum on Comparative Linguistics, CUHK, Hong Kong. [with Ka-Fai Yip] [handout]

photo credit to Zixi Liu