Nuosu Yi is a Sino-Tibetan tone language spoken in Sichuan, China, predominantly in the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. To investigate the tone adaptation patterns based on active borrowing from Chinese, I do corpus study on di-syllabic words and compare the findings with experimental results on peudo-loanwords. 

Preliminary work presented in PLC 49.

Here are my copora: Native Nuosu Yi corpus (mono- and disyllabic words), Nuosu Yi loanwords (disyllabic words).

Kalasha and Khowar are languages spoken in Chitral and surrounding areas in Pakistan. They are classified as related Indo‐Aryan languages, most archaic among all the modern Indic languages.  To prove the genetic relationship between Kalasha and Khowar, as well as that between the two languages and their probable ancestor, Sanskrit, I describe phonological changes diachronically from Classical Sanskrit to Modern Kalasha and Khowar. 

Preliminary work was presented in PHUNY 2024 and WeCIEC 35.

Contrastive hierarchy has been used to describe phonological systems of various languages. Work on Mandarin tonal system considers both synchronic alternation and historical source. In this work, I look at morpho-phonological alternation and change of obligatoriness of the alternation within fifty years of Beijing Mandain. Considering non-hierarchical features of tones, I propose a refined hierarchy of Beijing Mandain tone system.

Preliminary result was presented in IACL 30.

Words in historical Chinese literature can be misinterpreted due to semantic changing, dialectal difference, and character misreading/miswriting. While blurring meanings can be recovered, different types of philological evidence may lead to different result of reinterpretation. 

In the case study of 鹽菜 yancai 'salt-vegetable, pickle', I revise the word that was misglossed as jiangcai with various evidence, of which parallel Pali Buddhism texts is the most significant evidence. Since Buddhism texts are crucial to study of Middle Chines colloqoialism, I futher propose that parallel texts of Chinese and foreign languages, such as  Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, etc., should be referred to whenever possible.

Preliminary result was presented in AOS 2024.