Beautiful night scene of Oaxaca, viewed from Cerro del Fortín, on June 23, 2025.
My research interests lie in formal syntactic theory, linguistic fieldwork, and the syntax–phonology interface. My current work investigates:
The interaction between object prominence and argument ellipsis
The syntactic position and hierarchies of sentential particles in Copala Triqui.
The role of grammatical tone in shaping syntactic structure. A central question in this line of work concerns how tonal pronominal clitics with no overt surface alternations in Copala Triqui can nonetheless be diagnosed as part of the syntax.
Presentations:
Liu, Haoliang (2026). DOM Bleeds Argument Ellipsis: A Case-Movement Account. Poster at GLOW in Asia 2026 The 2nd Workshop for Young Scholars. Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan. March 13.
Liu, Haoliang (2026). Dropping Unmarked Objects: DOM, Case Valuation, and Object Ellipsis. Poster at the 2026 Linguistic Society of America (LSA) Annual Meeting. New Orleans Marriott, New Orleans, Louisiana. January 11.
Liu, Haoliang (2026). Null Arguments and Differential Object Marking in Copala Triqui. Talk at the 2026 Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) Annual Meeting. New Orleans Marriott, New Orleans, Louisiana. January 11.
Liu, Haoliang and Wolf, Jonah (2026). Negation in Copala Triqui. Talk at the 2026 SSILA Annual Meeting. New Orleans Marriott, New Orleans, Louisiana. January 11.
Liu, Haoliang, Wolf, Jonah, and Yu, Kevin (2025). Copala Triqui Clause Structure and the Emphatic Particle Se̱. Talk at the 2025 SSILA Annual Meeting. Virtual. January 24.