Research Interests

My research interests are syntax, phonology, their interface, and the formal properties of their representations. I primarily work within the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), supervised by Dr Louise Mycock.

The target languages of my research include Mandarin Chinese and Wenzhounese (a Wu dialect). Wenzhounese is (in)famously known as “the devil’s language” partly because its complex sound system makes it one of the least comprehensible dialects in China. (It even features in the NBC series Blindspot!) As a native speaker of this dialect, I am keen to uncover the unique and universal linguistic properties of Wenzhounese.

Publications

  1. Xie, Chen. (2023). The syllabicity constraint in Mandarin and Wenzhounese: An OT-LFG account. In Miriam Butt, Jamie Y. Findlay & Ida Toivonen (eds.) Proceedings of the LFG23 conference (pp. 241-266), PubliKon.
  2. Xie, Chen. (2023). The de-construction in Wenzhounese: How it differs from the ba-construction in Mandarin. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 32: 303-339. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-023-09259-5
  3. Luo, Mingqiong & Xie, Chen. (2018). 约束原则A关照下温州话反身代词的句法特征初探 [Binding Principle A and the syntactic attributes of reflexives in Wenzhou dialect]. Modern Chinese, 5: 83-89.

Conference Presentations

  1. Xie, Chen. (2024). Word order variation in Wenzhounese. The 12th International Conference of the European Association of Chinese Linguistics, 19 – 20 September, 2024, Roma Tre University.
  2. Xie, Chen. (2024). Tones and iambic stress in Wenzhounese. The 21st Old World Conference in Phonology, 14 – 16 February, 2024, Leipzig University [Slides]
  3. Xie, Chen. (2023). Gradience at the syntax-phonology interface: Evidence from Mandarin and Wenzhounese. The 28th Annual Lexical-Functional Grammar Conference, 22 – 24 July, 2023, University of Rochester.
  4. Xie, Chen. (2023). Stress, tone, and prosodic word in Wenzhounese [Poster]. The 30th Manchester Phonology Meeting, 25 – 27 May, University of Manchester.
  5. Xie, Chen. (2023). A comparative study of Mandarin and Wenzhounese resultatives. Resultatives: new approaches and renewed perspectives, 20 – 22 March, National University of Singapore. [Handout] [Slides]
  6. Xie, Chen. (2022). Prosodically constrained syntax in Mandarin and Wenzhounese [Poster]. ACTL Summer School, 27 June – 1 July, University of York.
  7. Xie, Chen. (2022). How do syntactic and phonological representations differ? A graph theoretic perspective. SE-LFG32, 21 May, University of Oxford.
  8. Xie, Chen. (2022). The de-construction in Wenzhounese. LAL2022, 25 – 26 March, Adam Mickiewicz University.
  9. Xie, Chen. (2021). An LFG analysis of Mandarin resultatives. The 9th International Conference on Formal Linguistics, 5 – 7 November, Fudan University.