Keynote Speakers

The so-called "verb-doubling" (or "verb-copying") construction (VDC) has recurrently come into focus in studies on the syntax and semantics of Mandarin Chinese, ever since it was brought to the fore by Huang (1982). Its basic schema involves two identical spellouts of a verb V, the first followed by its internal argument (object), and the second by some complementative element. Two major lines of analysis can be distinguished: one assuming the two occurrences of V are movement-related, and another holding they are base-generated independently. The talk reassesses earlier analyses in light of recent contributions, exploring whether "VDC" is in fact a cover term for at least two different constructions, where one type is characterized by strict form-identity of V1 and V2 (potentially subject to movement analysis), while in the other, perfect form-identity is not strictly required (requiring a base-generation account).

In Classical Chinese, verbs occupy a highly prominent position, containing not only verbal but often nominal information. Taking verbs as a method and reexamining Classical Chinese from a verbal perspective reveals at least three features of Classical Chinese syntax: (1) words that feel nominal in Modern Chinese are actually verbs in Classical Chinese; (2) words that feel like prepositions, conjunctions, or adverbs are actually verbs; (3) some so-called serial verb or verb-object constructions are very likely parallel verb constructions. This approach echoes Yaska's method in the Nirukta, which proposed that nouns derive from verbs — a view that remains highly illuminating for linguistic analysis today.

Since structural linguistics, syntactic analysis of coordinate structures has been a perennial challenge. One underappreciated observation is that binding condition A and C tests show coordinate members have no c-command relation between them, in sharp contrast to the modifier-modified relation in subordinate structures. Assuming that the projection of semantic relations onto structural relations must be isomorphic — i.e., there is iconicity between them — we can use the Principle of Economy and the labeling mechanism in Minimalism to ensure no c-command between coordinate members. This case addresses whether Universal Grammar and functional grammar need to collaborate and how, with iconicity serving as a core element of the interface: Universal Grammar excels at precisely representing asymmetric grammatical relations, while iconicity as a core element of functional grammar provides the bridge for a complete explanation of the syntactic contrast between subordinate and coordinate structures.

One defining characteristic of the Chinese language is its lack of inflectional morphology (tense, number, case, etc.), which sets it free to build a variety of quantificational and predicational dependencies through Merge instead of Move. The talk examines eight types of structural inner-outer dichotomy in Mandarin Chinese — including wh-adverbials, reflexive adverbials, causative light verbs, foci, affectives, A-not-A questions, deontic modals, and bouletic modals — arguing that Chinese displays a most fully-developed spectrum of analyticity effects. This approach provides a straightforward way to link synchronic with diachronic syntax, as almost every outer expression can be shown to derive from grammaticalization of its inner counterpart, introducing new types of speaker-oriented adverbial expressions in the "treetops" of the clausal spine. It also provides a new way to map different parts of the clausal spine to their respective semantic/pragmatic functions in the history of the Chinese language.

This talk investigates English and Korean speakers' oral production of L2 Chinese elliptical sentences — sentences with Chinese verb-phrase ellipsis licensed by modal verbs, and sentences with ΣP-ellipsis licensed by the Chinese auxiliary shi 'BE'. An elicited imitation task was administered to learners at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. Results show that instead of elliptical sentences, learners at early stages produced significantly more complete sentences with no ellipsis, challenging syntactic complexity analyses based on sentence length and dependency distance. No L1 influence was observed at beginner levels, disconfirming an influential hypothesis by Schwartz & Sprouse (1994, 1996); however, L1 influence appeared at intermediate and advanced levels. The absence of L1 influence at beginner levels is attributed to a breakdown at the syntax-stylistics interface and to beginners' difficulty in implementing checking and deletion operations in L2 oral production.

Large language models (LLMs) are among the most consequential recent developments in natural language processing (NLP) and computational linguistics. This talk provides a technically grounded overview of major contemporary LLM architectures, their strengths and limitations, clarifying key distinctions: quantity vs. quality, creation vs. innovation, rule deduction vs. probabilistic imitation, NLP vs. AI, and AI vs. AGI. On empirical grounds, current LLMs are best viewed as advanced NLP systems rather than genuine artificial intelligence, predictably lacking robust causal reasoning. Explaining and improving "black-box" model behavior necessarily requires linguistic analysis, and core issues in AI explainability — such as "unintentional hallucinations" — demand linguistic theory for adequate diagnosis. LLMs track statistical co-occurrence patterns over symbols but do not genuinely encode rich semantic relations; addressing this semantic deficit lies at the heart of linguistic inquiry.