I am a linguist with a PhD conferred by the University of Manchester. My doctoral research was jointly supervised by Prof. Kersti Börjars and Prof. Eva Schultze-Berndt. Currently, I am appointed as an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester as well as a Supervisor and Examiner of MA Linguistics research projects at the University of Hong Kong.

My academic journey includes earning master's and bachelor's degrees from the University of Hong Kong. In addition to my linguistic pursuits, I am a qualified English (ESL/TESOL) teaching professional in Hong Kong and have been recognised as a Fellow of Advance HE in the UK.

My long-term research interests can be broadly categorised into three interdisciplinary strands, each with its own related questions. While answering these big questions will likely be career-long endeavours, my current work is devoted to shedding light on Strands A and B (and less so on Strand C):

Long-term Research Interests:

A. Formal linguistic theories, data, and empirical methods

1. What are the (abstract) rules revealed by language data that account for cross-linguistic commonalities and differences?

2. How can we model these linguistic rules in a formally explicit grammatical theory, with the consideration of different types of linguistic information -- in particular, syntax, semantics, and discourse?

3. How do different grammatical theories capture these linguistic rules? What are their advantages and limitations?

4. How can empirical methods, such as corpus analyses and acceptability-judgment experiments combined with inferential statistical models, inform formal-linguistic analyses and facilitate the replicability of research findings?

B. Computational grammar engineering and its applications

1. Given formally explicit analyses that have mathematical precision, how can we computationally implement them to devise computer-processable grammars? (knowledge-based grammar engineering)

2. What are the applications of these computer-processable grammars? For example, how can we make good use of these grammars to create parsed treebanks (notated with in-depth linguistic information) that have further natural-language processing (NLP) purposes?

C.  Language contact and bilingual language acquisition

1. How can we extract insights from large-scale language-development corpora to identify factors (e.g., structural, cognitive, social) that shape bilingual language acquisition?

My PhD project ("Control and Complementation in Parallel Constraint-based Architecture") was devoted to Strand A, with its subsequently derived work contributing to Strand B. The project utilised Mandarin Chinese data, with cross-linguistic awareness that there are significant differences between Mandarin and Indo-European languages in the relevant grammatical phenomena.

The project adopted an empirically oriented approach. It involved designing numerous linguistic diagnostics, meticulous analysis of data drawn from large-scale corpora, as well as the use of acceptability-judgment experiments followed by cumulative-link mixed-effects statistical analyses in R. 

To model the empirical patterns, I adopted the theoretical framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) augmented with Glue Semantics and Discourse Representation Theory to construct formally explicit analyses that address issues at syntax-semantics-discourse interfaces. My LFG analyses involved comparison with existing proposals formulated in other grammatical frameworks, in particular, Minimalist ones, in an effort to facilitate cross-theoretical understanding.

Subsequently, I instantiated (part of) my analyses using the grammar-engineering tool Xerox Linguistic Environment to create computer-processible grammar fragments. See Presentations and Publications for more information.

My (near) future research will continue to build upon the findings in my PhD project to contribute to answering the questions in Strands A and B. I will expand my scope of investigation to the modelling of co-reference in general.

To shed light on the question in Strand C, I co-authored the paper "Inter-sentential Code-switching and Language Dominance in Cantonese–English Bilingual Children" in the Journal of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech with Stephen Matthews. We examined the relationship between language dominance and inter-sentential code-switching in Hong Kong Cantonese–English bilingual children by analysing longitudinal corpus data. We proposed that intra-sentential and inter-sentential code-switching each have a different status in bilingual children’s developing grammar, underlining the methodological importance of separating the two constructs in future investigations. We also suggested that, in societies where intra-sentential (but not inter-sentential) code-switching is a social norm, inter-sentential code-switching could serve as signs of early bilinguals’ dominance status.

Language-wise, I have conducted research on new data of Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. I am interested in expanding my repertoire to incorporate other languages, including other Sinitic varieties (e.g., Southern Min), for cross-linguistic comparative purposes.