My main field is Second Language Acquisition (SLA). I am interested in second language learners' processing of syntactic structures and learning of lexico-semantics using psycholinguistic methods.

My dissertation looked into Chinese-speaking learners' acquisition of subject-verb agreement in English (e.g. 3rd person singular -s). I use training to investigate factors that potentially impact the establishment agreement.

I am also interested in phonological variation in the languages that I study or will study :)

B.A. in English Language and Literature, Beijing Foreign Studies University (北京外国语大学), September 2010 - June 2014

M.A. in Linguistics, University of Kansas, August 2014 - December 2016

Ph.D. in Linguistics, University of Kansas, January 2017 - July 2020

Undergraduate Research and Innovation Grant, granted by Ministry of Education of China, 2012-2014.

National Scholarship (国家奖学金), awarded by Ministry of Education of China, 2012-2013.

University Graduate Fellowship, awarded by University of Kansas, 2016-2017.

Graduate Teaching Award, awarded by Department of Linguistics, 2019.

Dissertation Fellowship, awarded by Department of Linguistics, 2019.

I was a drill session teacher for Elementary Chinese 104 in 2015.

I have been a teaching assistant for LING 110 Language and Mind from 2017 to 2018.

I was a graduate research assistant from 2019 to 2020.

Tang, W. (2020). Number matters: enhancing nominal number to facilitate subject-verb agreement. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Kansas.

Tang, W. & Zhang, J. (2020). Effects of Era and Perceptual Distinctiveness in Japanese Loanword Adaptation. Japanese and Korean Linguistics, Vol. 26.

Tang, W. & Zhang, J. (in revision). The representation of /f/ and /v/ in Japanese Loanword Adaption: using Japanese Google N-gram. Journal of East Asian Language and Linguistics.

Tang, W., Gabriele, A., & Fiorentino, R. (in revision). Examining transfer in the acquisition of count/mass distinction in L2 English. Second Language Research.

Tang, W., Gabriele, A., & Fiorentino, R. (2019, June). L2 acquisition of count/mass distinction. Paper presented at Japan SLA Annual Conference, Chuo University.

Tang, W., Gabriele, A., & Fiorentino, R. (2019, March). Examining transfer in the acquisition of count/mass distinction in L2 English. Paper presented at 29th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition, University of Nevada. (Slides below)

Tang, W., & Zhang, J. (2018, November). Effects of Era and Perceptual Distinctiveness in Japanese Loanword Adaptation. Paper presented at 26th Japanese Korean Linguistics, UCLA. (Slides below)

Tang, W., Gabriele, A., & Fiorentino, R. (2020, March). Enhancing sensitivity to nominal number facilitates the processing of subject-verb agreement in second language learners. Poster to appear at 2020 CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, UMass Amherst. (link: video + poster)

Effects of Era and Vowel Context on Japanese Loanword Adaptation: a corpus investigation using Japanese Google N-gram. Graduate Research Competition, University of Kansas. 2017. (poster below)

I love language, humor, music, books, airports...

I believe that learning languages can be both interesting and effective, as long as we find out the way that suits most learners, and the particular methods that adapt to individual learners.

If you would like to contact me:

• reginatangwenting@gmail.com
• wentingkansas@163.com