Current Project

1. Quantifier scope

Two manuscripts (1) and (2) are currently under review,  two manuscripts (3) and (4) are in preparation, and a subproject (5) may get started around Summer 2023 .

(1) Quantifier scope and subjecthood in Mandarin (collaborating with Prof. Richard Larson)

(2) Scope interpretations of simple transitives under Mandarin adverbial clauses (accepted)

(3) Experimental investigation to scope fluidity of relative clauses in Mandarin (collaborating with Shaohua Fang)

(4) Quantifier scope and thetic sentences

(5) Comparison and Acquisition: Quantifier scope in Mandarin and other languages (collaborating with Prof. Yang Zhao)

2. Wh-prosody

One manuscript (1) is in preparation and follow-up perception experiments may get set up in Summer 2023.

(1) Prosody and structure of wh-indeterminates in Mandarin (collaborating with Prof. Jiwon Yun)

(2) Prosodic disambiguation of wh-indeterminates in Mandarin Chinese (collaborating with Prof. Jiwon Yun; accepted)

3. Polarity Items

One manuscript (1) is in preparation, and experiment (2) may get launched in Spring 2023.

(1) Subtrigging in Mandarin

(2) Processing of polarity items by Mandarin speakers and L2 learners of Mandarin (collaborating with Jun Lyu)

4. Other projects: Evaluation of forced aligner, code-switching, Motivations for language learning

One manuscript (1) is under review, and two manuscripts (2) and (3) are in preparation and may get submitted to journals by end of January 2023.

(1) Forced aligner tool in prosody research (collaborating with Prof. Jiwon Yun, Xiang Li, Huiyi Huang and Chuandong Liu)

(2) English-Mandarin code-switching in an online community (collaborating with Priya Rajeev)

(3) Motivations and concerns for college students in the US to enroll in Chinese language courses

Publications

Journal Articles

  1. Wu, Hongchen, Jiwon Yun, Xiang Li, Huiyi Huang and Chuandong Liu. Using a forced aligner for prosody research. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. volume 10, Article number: 429 (2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01931-4 
  2. Wu, Hongchen. 2023. An experimental investigation into scope rigidity in written Mandarin. Front. Psychol. Sec. Language Sciences. Volume 14 – 2023 | DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1128616.
  3. Wu, Hongchen and Jiwon Yun. 2021. Processing of the Mandarin polarity item renhe ‘any’. Language and Linguistics 22.4. 635-666. [PDF]
  4. Wu, Hongchen, and Yang, Zhao. 2018. 英语、韩语母语者汉语否定标记习得研究 [‘L2 Chinese Acquisition of Negative Markers by English- and Korean-speaking Learners’]. 世界汉语教学 [‘Chinese Teaching in the World‘] 2: 256-269. (written in Chinese; English abstract included) [PDF] (Note: This journal is a Chinese Core Journal and ranked as 1st in Linguistics, according to the 2018 Chinese Social Sciences Journals AMI Evaluation Reports, Chinese Social Sciences Research Evaluation Center) 
  5. Wu, Hongchen. 2013. 从集合论角度看语义和谐律的逻辑限制条件 [‘Logical Constraints for Semantic Harmony Principle in terms of Set Theory’], 山东大学研究生学志[‘Postgraduate Journal of Shandong University’], Volume 1, Page 125-131. (written in Chinese) [PDF]

Abstract Refereed Conference Proceedings

  1. Wu, Hongchen and Jiwon Yun. 2023. Prosodic disambiguation of wh-indeterminates in Mandarin Chines. Proceedings of the Linguistics Society of America (2023). vol 8. no 1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5556
  2. Wu, Hongchen, Richard Larson, Yaobin Liu, Lei Liu, and Gary Mar. 2018. Rethinking quantifier scope in Mandarin. In Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistics Society Annual Meeting 48 (NELS 48), ed. by Sherry Hucklebridge and Max Nelson, vol. 3, 257-263. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, GLSA. [PDF]
  3. Lee, So Young, Lei Liu, Hongchen Wu, and Jiwon Yun. 2018. Syntax and Prosody Interface of Wh-Scope in Mandarin. 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2018, 913-916.  (DOI: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018) [PDF]
  4. Lee, So Young , Hongchen Wu, Lei Liu, and Jiwon Yun. 2017. Prosody and wh-scope interpretation in Chinese. In Proceedings of the 29th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-29). ed. by Lan Zhang, vol. 2, 373-380. University of Memphis, Memphis, TN. [PDF]
  5. Chen, Estella Y. M., Huei-Yi Lai, Jing Zhang, and Hongchen Wu. 2016. A Model to Evaluate Mandarin Learning MOOCs. In Mohammad Khalil et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the EUROPEAN STAKEHOLDER SUMMIT on Experiences and Best Practices in and around MOOCs (EMOOCs 2016), 401-408. [PDF]
    Wu, Hongchen. 2012. A Review and Comment on the Research of Wh-indefinites in Mandarin, Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Teaching Chinese as a second language for Beijing Graduate students (archived by China National Knowledge Infrastructure, www.cnki.net). (in Chinese).  [PDF]

Recent Presentations (Refereed Conferences)

– Quantifier scope

  1. Hongchen Wu. Quantifier Scope in thetic sentences. The 32nd North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-32), UConn Storrs, USA. (September 18, 2020)
  2. Richard Larson and Hongchen Wu. Quantifier Scope and Topicality in Mandarin. 26th Meetings of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics (IACL). University of Wisconsin-Madison. (May 6, 2018) 
  3. Hongchen Wu. Quantifier Scope in thetic sentences. The 32nd North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-32), UConn Storrs, USA (September 18, 2020)
  4. Hongchen Wu, Richard Larson. Topicality and quantifier scope in Mandarin. NACCL-30 (the 30th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics), Columbus, Ohio, USA. (March 9, 2018)
  5. Hongchen Wu, Yaobin Liu, Lei Liu, Gary Mar. On thawing frozen scope. ISOCTAL-2 (the 2nd International Symposium on Chinese Theoretical and Applied Linguistics), Milan, Italy. (December 15, 2017)
  6. Hongchen Wu, Richard Larson, Yaobin Liu, Lei Liu, and Gary Mar. Rethinking quantifier scope in Mandarin. NELS-48 (the 48th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society), Reykjavík, Iceland. (October 29, 2017)

– wh-prosody

  1. Hongchen Wu and Jiwon Yun. Prosodic disambiguation of Wh-indeterminates in Mandarin Chinese. LSA 2023 Annual Meeting (January 8, 2023)
  2. So Young Lee, Lei Liu, Hongchen Wu, and Jiwon Yun. Syntax and prosody interface of wh-Scope in Mandarin. Speech Prosody 9 conference, Poznan, Poland (June 16, 2018)
  3. So Young Lee, Hongchen Wu, Lei Liu, and Jiwon Yun. The effect of surface syntactic positions of wh-phrases on wh-scope. IACL 26 (the 26th Annual Conference of International Association of Chinese Linguistics), Madison, Wisconsin, USA. (May 4, 2018)   
  4. So Young Lee, Hongchen Wu, Lei Liu, and Jiwon Yun. The difference between perception and production of prosodic information in Chinese wh-scope disambiguation. PLC-42 (the 42nd Annual Penn Linguistics Conference), Philadelphia, PA, USA. (March 25, 2018)
  5. So Young Lee, Hongchen Wu, Lei Liu, Siyao Peng, Jiwon Yun. Prosodic disambiguation of wh-scope in Chinese. IACL-25 (the 25th Annual Meeting of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics), Budapest, Hungary. (June 25, 2017)
  6. So Young Lee, Hongchen Wu, Lei Liu, Siyao Peng, Yaobin Liu, Jiwon Yun. Prosody and wh-scope interpretation in Chinese. NACCL-29 (the 29th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics), New Brunswick, NJ, USA. (June 17, 2017)

– Polarity Item

  1. Hongchen Wu and Jun Lyu. Processing of Mandarin negative polarity item and free choice item renhe. NACCL-34. Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA. (September 24, 2022)
  2. Hongchen Wu and Jiwon Yun. Licensing of Mandarin NPI renhe in a relative clause environment. LSA 2019 Annual Meeting. New York, USA. (January 3, 2019)
  3. Jun Lyu, Hongchen Wu, Aydogan Yanilmaz and John Drury. ERP effects distinguishing Negative polarity versus Free choice: A look at English ANY and Mandarin RENHE. CUNY 2018 (the 31st Annual CUNY Sentence Processing Conference), UC Davis, CA, USA. (March 15, 2018)
  4. Hongchen Wu, Jun Lyu, Aydogan Yanilmaz, John E. Drury. ANY ERP effects. SNL 2017 (the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language), Baltimore, Maryland, USA. (November 9, 2017)

– Other projects

  1. Priya Rajeev & Hongchen Wu. An annotated English-Mandarin code-switching corpus for sociolinguistics research and language technologies. 14th International Conference on Corpus Linguistics (CILC2023), Oviedo, Asturias, Spain (May 10, 2023).
  2. Hongchen Wu. The head raising analysis of Mandarin prenominal relative clause. IACL 26 (the 26th Annual Conference of International Association of Chinese Linguistics), Madison, Wisconsin, USA. (May 5, 2018)

 

 Recent Presentations (invited talk & non-referred conferences)

Editorial Books

1. Data Standardization

While working as an Engineering Linguist / Taxonomist contractor for the LinkedIn NYC team, my work mainly includes annotating data, revising guidelines to improve inner-annotator agreement, and calculating evaluation metrics.

2. LRC-Chinese grammar checker project & Opinion Lexicon project

From Aug. 2018 to Jul. 2019, my work for this project mainly includes developing lexicon corpus, and proposing critiques for syntactic annotation.

3. Editable Dictionary

This Python tool, developed in 2015 as my Computational Linguistics course project, can convert simplified/traditional Chinese characters to pinyin with tones. The highlights of this program are: a) when a character has multiple pronunciations, the program can assign the accurate pinyin to a character according to the context; b) it’s an editable dictionary and users can add an item if it is not in the database, so the database can be automatically improved with users’ input.

4. Easy Pronunciation

This software is a self-study software, co-developed by me and six other colleagues in 2012. It’s based on a corpus including standard Chinese pronunciation and can assist second language learners with learning vowels and tones of Mandarin by providing real-time feedback about their pronunciation.