Veneeta Dayal

Bio: Veneeta Dayal is the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale University. Her research focuses on the semantics of natural language, and its interface with syntax and pragmatics. Her work typically looks at phenomena through the lens of cross-linguistic variation. She has worked on a number of topics, including bare nominals and genericity, free choice items and wh contructions.

Veneeta Dayal has published in top ranked journals in syntax and semantics and is the author of two books on questions (Kluwer, Oxford University Press), joint editor of a volume on the clause structure of South Asian languages (Kluwer), and editor of The Open Handbook of (In)definitentess: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Interpreting Bare Arguments for MIT Open Handbooks in Linguistics, which is in press.

In addition to her research, Veneeta Dayal has served in a number of administrative roles. She was Chair, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Director of Graduate Studies and Acting Dean of Humanities at Rutgers University where she was on the faculty from 1990-2018. She has been at Yale University since 2019, where she has served as Director of Graduate Studies and Acting Director of Undergraduate Studies and is currently serving as Chair of the Linguistics Department.

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Manfred Krifka

Bio: Manfred Krifka, who received his doctoral degree at the University of Munich in 1986, has held positions at the University of Texas at Austin and at Humboldt University Berlin, among others. Until his retirement, he was director of the Leibniz-Center General Linguistics in Berlin. He has worked on a wide range of topics, including the mass/count distinction, aspectual classes, genericity, information structure, quantification, negation, vagueness, and anaphoric reference. Currently, his main focus is on the semantics and pragmatics of speech acts, for which he received an ERC Advanced Grant. In this work, he developed an integration of speech acts as the basic units of human communication into models of formal syntax and semantics, in which he argues for an analysis of assertions in terms of social commitments. Krifka is also carrying out documentation of small languages in Vanuatu.

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Ming Xiang

Bio: Dr. Ming Xiang is the David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. Her research is geared towards better understanding the processing and neural mechanisms that support the rapid, real-time construction of sophisticated linguistic representations. She primarily works on sentence processing, including syntax, semantics and pragmatics comprehension. Her work is highly interdisciplinary, combining theoretical and methodological advances from adjacent fields including formal linguistics, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and, more recently, developments in artificial intelligence.

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Jidong Chen

Bio: Dr. Jidong Chen is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics at California State University, Fresno. She earned her PhD in Linguistics from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the Free University of Amsterdam, an MA in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and a BA in English Language and Literature from Central China Normal University. Her research focuses on language acquisition, psycholinguistics, bilingualism, and Chinese linguistics, with an emphasis on how learners acquire semantics and syntax from a cross-linguistic perspective. She has published widely on topics such as the acquisition of verb compounding, lexical semantics of complex verbs, event representation, classifiers, temporal marking, relative clauses, verb argument structure, preferred argument structure, and word order. Her recent work examines the influence of language on processing and the role of speech and gesture in event construal, as well as lexical and morphosyntactic development in bilingual and multilingual children, children with autism spectrum disorder, and adult second language learners.

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Zhenyu Chen

Bio: Chen Zhenyu is a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Fudan University. His research focuses on Chinese syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. He has authored six monographs: ‘Cognitive Models and Computational Approaches to the Temporal System’, ‘Cognitive Models and Computational Approaches to the Interrogative System’, ‘Clauses and Sentences in Chinese’, ‘Reference and Proposition in Chinese’, ‘Logic, Probability, and Map Analysis’, and ‘The Logic of Speech Acts’. Additionally, he has edited eight collections of academic papers and published over 130 scholarly articles. Professor Chen’s work extensively integrates theories and methodologies from Chinese structuralism, functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics, formal linguistics, linguistic typology, logical semantics, and pragmatic rhetoric. He incorporates insights from descriptive grammar, grammaticalization, stylistic analysis, and dialectal syntax research. His research encompasses the hierarchical structure and typological status of Chinese syntax, informational value and sentence completeness, the semantic structure of propositions, and the study of various syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic categories in Chinese, including time, interrogation, negation, modality, reference, quantification, exclamation, stance, and expectation.

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Jianhua Hu

Bio: HU Jianhua is Chief Expert of Yunshan Lab of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and Professor of Linguistics at the Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). He is also the Expert of Special Government Allowances of the State Council and the Chief Expert of the Grand Strategic Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China “An Investigation into Child Language Development with Special Reference to its Behavior and Brain Mechanism as well as its Clinical Application and Corpus Construction” (23&ZD319). He is now the Vice President of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics. His research interests include syntax, semantics, syntax-semantics interface, the grammar of Old Chinese, child language acquisition, and psycholinguistics/neurolinguistics. His papers have been published in various refereed journals, such as Nature Human Behaviour, Linguistics, The Linguistic Review, Journal of Pragmatics, Lingua, International Journal of Chinese Linguistics, Studies of the Chinese Language, Contemporary Linguistics, Foreign Language Teaching and Research, Modern Foreign Languages, Journal of Foreign Languages, etc. His recent books on the syntax and semantics of Chinese are: Studies on Formal Syntax: Toward New Descriptivism (The Commercial Press, 2023), Prominence and Locality in Grammar: The Syntax and Semantics of Wh-Questions and Reflexives (Routledge, 2019), and Interfaces in Grammar (John Benjamins, 2019, co-edited with Haihua Pan).

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Zanhui Huang

Bio: Huang Zanhui is an Associate Professor of Chinese Linguistics at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. Her research focuses on semantics, primarily in the areas of focus and quantification in Mandarin Chinese. She has published nearly 30 journal articles, including articless in Zhongguo Yuwen (Studies of the Chinese Language). She is the author of Focus and Quantification: Theories and Applications and Research on the Event Quantification System in Modern Chinese. Her research has been supported by multiple grants, including three from the National Social Science Fund of China and one from the Ministry of Education of China.

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Yan Jiang

Bio: Yan JIANG 蒋严 /蔣嚴 is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and the Languages of China at Department of Linguistics, the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he teaches general linguistics, semantics, and translation. Before joining SOAS Linguistics in September, 2015, he had taught at Fudan University and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He recent works include a paper on temporal information in Shanghai Wu (semantics) published in Asian Languages and Linguistics 2024, two papers on Covid-19 and the Chinese community in London (discourse analysis) forthcoming in Chinese Language and Discourse, and in SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics. He is now working on a monograph on Chinese conditionals (in English) and an intermediate textbook on formal semantics and pragmatics (in Chinese).

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Peppina Po-lun Lee

Bio: Peppina Po-lun Lee is a Professor at the School of Education and Languages at Hong Kong Metropolitan University. She has authored or co-edited three books, including Focus Manifestation in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese: A Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2019) and Cantonese Particles and Affixal Quantification (Springer, 2012). In addition to her books, she has published a number of research papers in refereed journals, such as Journal of Linguistics, Lingua, Linguistics, Journal of Pragmatics, Language and Linguistics, Linguistics and the Human Sciences, ZhongguoYuwen (Studies of the Chinese Language), Dangdai Yuyanxue (Contemporary Linguistics), and Shijie Hanyu Jiaoxue (Chinese Teaching in the World). Specializing in theoretical linguistics, her research interests cover semantics, the syntax-semantics interface, Chinese and Cantonese linguistics, and comparative dialectal grammar. Her work has explored a wide range of topics, including focus and information structure, modality and negation, eventuality, quantification, and particles.

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Xuping Li

Bio: Li Xuping is a Professor in the School of Chinese Language and Literature at Zhejiang University. His research interests center on the semantics and syntax of noun phrases. In recent years, he has focused on cross-linguistic variations of nouns, numerals, classifiers, and demonstratives, with a particular emphasis on Sinitic and minority languages spoken in China. His major representative work is the monograph "Numeral Classifiers in Chinese: the Syntax-Semantics Interface" (published by De Gruyter Mouton in 2013). He also serves as the co-editor of the volume "Classifiers in Asian Languages: Description and Explanation" (published by Shanghai Educational Publishing House, in 2025).

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Mingming Liu

Bio: Mingming Liu is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Tsinghua University. His primary research interests lie in semantics and pragmatics, with a focus on Mandarin focus particles, wh-expressions, universal quantifiers, and conditionals. He has published papers in journals including Glossa, Journal of East Asian Linguistics, Linguistics and Philosophy, and Natural Language Semantics.

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Yuan Shen

Bio: Shen Yuan is currently a Professor in the Department of English at Fudan University. Her primary research interests lie in semantics and the interfaces between semantics and other components of grammar. Her work has appeared in journals such as Zhongguo Yuwen (Studies of the Chinese Language), Dangdai Yuyanxue (Contemporary Linguistics), Xiandai Waiyu (Modern Foreign Languages), and Waiguoyu（Foreign Languages). Her authored and co-authored books include New Developments in Formal Linguistics (co-authored with Professor Cheng Gong), Syntax–Semantics Interface, The Semantics and Pragmatics of Bare Noun Phrases in Chinese. She also serves as Executive Editor-in-Chief for The Greater-China Chinese–English Dictionary (Volume I).

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Yingying Wang

Bio: Yingying Wang is a professor in the College of Foreign Languages at Hunan University. Before joining Hunan University, she taught in the philosophy department at Sun Yat-sen University and worked as a research fellow in linguistics at City University of Hong Kong. She holds a Ph.D. from Sun Yat-sen University. She has published academic papers in journals such as Language, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Journal of Semantics, and Lingua. Her primary research interests lie in semantics and pragmatics.

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Jiun-Shiung Wu

Bio: Jiun-Shiung Wu is Professor of Linguistics, Silk Road Language and Culture Center and Institute of Linguistics, National Chung Cheng University. He received his Ph.D. from Ph.D. Program in Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin. His areas of expertise are formal semantics, formal pragmatics, syntax-semantics interface, natural language processing, etc. His research interests are tense and aspect, modality, mood, temporal relations, discourse relations, discourse structure, etc., in Chinese. His recent interest is the semantics and pragmatics of optatives in Chinese languages. He is the author of two books: Temporal and Atemporal Relations in Mandarin. Taiwan Journal of Linguistics Monograph Series No. 2 and Intensification and Modal Necessity in Mandarin Chinese. He authors dozens of journal papers and book chapters.

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Beibei Xu

Bio: Dr. Xu Beibei, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of English at the College of Foreign Languages, Huazhong Agricultural University. As a Rutgers Linguistics Ph.D., he specializes in formal semantics, formal pragmatics, syntax-semantics interface study, and Chinese linguistics, with a focus on biased questions, subjective (evaluative) adverbs, epistemic modality, and speech act theory. Actively engaged in research, he leads one Ministry of Education Social Science Research Project and one Hubei Provincial Department of Education Social Science Research Project. Dr. Xu has published articles in esteemed journals such as Foreign Language Teaching and Research and Contemporary Linguistics.

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Shumian Ye

Bio: Dr. Ye Shumian is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University. Her primary research centers on the theoretical exploration of natural language semantics, examining its intersections with adjacent fields such as pragmatics and syntax. Dr. Ye has a specific focus on the formal analysis of Mandarin non-canonical questions (NCQs). Current research interests include the semantic and pragmatic licensing of NCQs, the function of response particles, and the syntactic-semantic behavior of elements like question-embedding predicates and speaker-oriented adverbs.

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Linmin Zhang

Bio: Linmin Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Practice in Neuroscience at NYU Shanghai. Her research interests include formal semantics and experimental linguistics, with a combination of formal logic and experimental methods to study inference patterns and compositional details of linguistic expressions, aiming for a better understanding of underlying human cognition and the general computational mechanisms of linguistically-encoded meanings. Her work has been published in Linguistics & Philosophy, Journal of Semantics, NeuroImage, etc.

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