Talks

Feel free to email me if you’d like to access any handout that is not available here!

2026

1. Two types of exclusive doubling in Vietnamese. The 6th annual meeting of International Symposium of Vietnamese Linguistics (ISVL 6), Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. [handout]

2. Varieties in scalarity of exclusives. LSA Annual Meeting, New Orleans. [handout]

3. Does the Williams Cycle apply to Mandarin Chinese? LSA Annual Meeting, New Orleans. [with Fulang Chen] [handout]

4. A partial Copy Deletion account of non-agreeing resumptive pronouns in Yorùbá. ACAL-57, Buffalo. [with Bode Adedeji] [handout]

5. Defending a quantifier-particle approach to Yorùbá exclusives. ACAL-57, Buffalo. [with Bode Adedeji] [handout]

6. Syntax below words: verbal suffixation in Chinese. Poster at CLS-62, UChicago. [with Tommy Tsz-Ming Lee] [poster]

7. Revisiting Parallel Chains: a long road to repetition. PLC-50, UPenn. [with Tommy Tsz-Ming Lee] [slides]

8. A preliminary study on syntactic variation between Saigon and Hong Kong Cantonese. WOC-26, CiyUHK. [with My Thi Ha]

2025

1. Semantic dependency between focus particles in exclusive doubling. SynSem, NUS, Singapore. [slides]

2. Intervention effects are not uniform: evidence from exclusive doubling in Cantonese. ICFAMC-4, CUHK. [slides]

3. Diagnosing multidominance by focus association of ‘only’. WCCFL-43, UW. [with Squid Tamar-Mattis] [abstract] [handout]

4. A parametric view on exclusive focus particles. Poster at WCCFL-43, UW. [abstract] [poster]

5. Exclusive focus in Akan and type flexibility. TripleA-12, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. [with Comfort Ahenkorah] [slides]

6. Backward association of exclusive particles and scope freezing. Short talk at GLOW-47, Frankfurt & Göttingen. [with Daniel Aremu and Bode Adedeji] [handout]

7. Right dislocation as multidominance, and beyond. Poster at GLOW-47, Frankfurt & Göttingen. [poster]

8. Parametric variations in discontinuous predicates in Sinitic languages. TEAL-14, USC. [with Tommy Tsz-Ming Lee] [handout]

9. Asymmetric reconstruction for binding but not for scope. SuB-30, Frankfurt. [with Yusuke Yagi] [handout]

10. Against a syntactic approach to wh-rhetorical questions — with special focus on Cantonese (and Vietnamese). Colloquium talk at National Tsing Hua University. [handout]

11. The structural matching effects in adverbial and converbal clauses. Guest lecture at Main Clause Phenomena and the Syntax of Chinese, National Tsing Hua University. [slides]

12. Converging and diverging variations in metaphorization of light verbs: A corpus study on four Chinese speech communities. PACLIC-39, VIASM, Hanoi, Vietnam. [with Yaxuan Ji, Dicky Ko, Thomas Ho & Benjamin K. Tsou] [paper

2024

1. Only ‘only’ only: a distributed meaning approach to exclusive doubling. SALT-34, Rochester. [slides]

2. Exclusive focus particles in Yorùbá. ACAL-55, McGill. [with Bode Adedeji] [handout]

3. A tale of two types of exclusive doubling in Vietnamese. SEALS-33, NTHU, Taiwan. [handout]

4. Cantonese exclusive focus marker -dak as perfective aspect. Yue-28, HKMU. [slides]

5. Differentiating between evidential bias and epistemic bias in questions: Evidence from Cantonese. Yue-28, HKMU. [slides]

6. Facilitator effects in Mandarin topicalization: Evidence for a crossing-based view of antilocality. NELS-55, Yale. [with Fulang Chen] [handout]

7. Right dislocation, defocus, and variations in syntax-prosody mapping. Phex-15, Tonjo. [with Xuetong Yuan] [slides]

8. Teasing apart the prosodic effects of focus and of defocus: syntax-prosody mismatches in right dislocation. Poster at LabPhon-19, HYU, Korea. [with Xuetong Yuan] [poster]

9. Differentiating between evidential bias and epistemic bias in questions: Evidence from Cantonese. Yue-28, HKMU. [slides]

10. Agreement in imperative clauses: evidence from object resumptive pronouns in Mandarin Chinese. Poster at NELS-54, MIT. [with Xuetong Yuan] [poster] [handout]

11. Variation of sibilant palatalization in homeland and heritage Cantonese. Poster at LabPhon-19, HYU, Korea. [with Yanting Li, Xiao Dong & Gareth Junjie Yang]

2023

1. Agreeing with ‘only’. WCCFL-41, UCSC. [handout]

2. A compositional account of “only” doubling. Invited talk at Syntax-Semantics Reading Group LFRG, MIT. [handout]

3. Are there weak definites in bare classifier languages?. SALT-33, Yale. [with Ushasi Banerjee & Margaret Chui Yi Lee] [slides] [handout]

4. Defocus leads to syntax-prosody mismatches in right dislocated structures. CLS-59, UChicago. [with Xuetong Yuan]

5. (In)dependence of features on composite probes. Poster at NELS-53, Uni Göttingen. [with Magdalena Lohninger] [poster] [handout]

6. On the Rising-Falling boundary tone in Cantonese. Yue-27, OSU (online). [with Mei-ying Ki] [slides]

2022

1. Rethinking the internal syntax of adverbial clauses and operator movement. CUHK. GLOW in Asia XIII. [with Zhuo CHEN]

2. Non-agreeing resumptive pronouns and partial Copy Deletion. Poster at LSA-96, Washington, DC. [with Comfort Ahenkorah] [poster] [handout]

3. High vs. low ‘again’: Mandarin you vs. zai and Cantonese -faan vs. -gwo. BEAL-5, OSU. [with Yuyang LIU] [handout]

4. On Cantonese yes-no question particle aa4: evidential bias and confirmation. Poster at LDSA, Yale. [poster]

5. Processing discontinuous predicates in Cantonese. FoCaL-5, CityUHK. [with Carmen Kin Man TANG, Tommy Tsz-Ming LEE & Sheila Shu-Laam CHAN]

2021

1. Converbs and adverbial clauses: a case study in Cantonese. NACCL-33, Uchicago (online). [paper version]

2. Two types of temporal adverbial clauses in Cantonese. Poster at WCCFL-39, UArizona (online). [poster] [handout]

3. Universal concord as syntactic agreement. Invited talk at Syntax Brown Bag, NYU. [handout]

4. Syntax-prosody mapping of right dislocation: a comparative study of Cantonese and Mandarin. Award presentation at ICPG-7, BLCU & TJU, China. [paper] [Young Scholar Award for Prosodic Grammar, First Place]

5. Partial deletion at word-level: discontinuous predicates in Cantonese. BCGL-14, CRISSP of KU Leuven (online). [with Tommy Tsz-Ming LEE & Sheila Shu-Laam CHAN]

6. Differential metaphorization and grammaticalization in Chinese light verbs. SLE 2021, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (online). [with Benjamin K. TSOU] [OSF]

7. MSC variations in metaphorization among Pan-Chinese speech communities. NACCL-33, Uchicago (online). [with Benjamin K. TSOU] [slides]

8. CanTONEse (Android/iOS), an app for learning Cantonese tones. Invited talk at School of Cantonese Studies, EdUHK (online). [with Mei-ying Ki & Yik-Po Lai]

9. Exclusive focus in Yoruba. SNEWS 2021, UConn (online). [handout]

2020

1. Indirect evidence as a licensing condition of hyperraising in Cantonese and Vietnamese. BCGL-13, CRISSP of KU Leuven (online). [with Tommy Tsz-Ming LEE] [paper version]

2. On the position of perfective aspect. ARF-2020. CUHK (online). [handout]

3. 漢語動詞虛化初探：港澳京三地同中之異[A preliminary study on metaphorization of Chinese verbs: comparing Hong Kong, Macau and Beijing]. ARF-2020. CUHK (online). [with Benjamin K. TSOU & Yaxuan JI] [slides] [samples]

4. How to identify intonations on sentence-final particles? WOC-20, HKBU (online). [with Him Nok LEE] [slides]

Before 2019

1. 澄海閩語中的言說動詞[Verbs of saying in Chenghai Min]. IRF-5, Sun Yat-sen University. [with Jia JIN] [slides]

2. Subordinate affixes in Cantonese and intervention effects. IACL-27, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies.

3. Cantonese verbal suffix dak and intentionality. WICL-4, UBC. [slides]