Current Projects

Prosody of Questions in Woleaian

With Audrey Lai, this project documents the prosody of mono- and multiclausal polar and content questions in Woleaian. This research also seeks to investigate the relationship between question particles, semantics, and prosody.

Syntax of Topicalization and Clefting in Woleaian

With Shinichiro Fukuda and Audrey Lai, this research investigates the role of topicalization and cleft constructions in both interrogative and declarative contexts. This project focusses on multiclausal constructions to diagnose when long-distance movement is licensed.

Perceptions of sājiāo (撒娇) in Heritage Mandarin Speakers

With Audrey Lai and Katie Drager, this project investigates how heritage speakers of Mandarin Chinese perceive sājiāo, a speech style associated with femininity, and compares heritage speakers' perceptions to native speakers' perceptions. We look at two varieties of Mandarin Chinese for both sājiāo stimuli and the language spoken by both heritage and native participants to examine the overlap between perception of social constructions and the variety of Mandarin used (Beijing versus Taiwanese Mandarin).