I'm Jack (Yuanfan) Ying, a 5th-year PhD student in Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park. My advisors are Jeffrey Lidz and Alexander Williams. I also work with Valentine Hacquard and Kate Mooney.
I study language processing and development to understand how learning happens and evolves, using corpus, experimental, and computational methods. Aside from syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, I'm also interested in phonetics, phonology/tonology, and speech perception (in native vs. heritage speakers).
Trees are in the eyes of the beholder.
Baltimore, MD. May 30, 2024.
Research Overview
My amazing cohort members at UMD are Clara Cuonzo, Rosa Eun-Kyoung Lee, Imane Bou-Saboun, Leslie Famularo, Luisa Seguin, and Xinchi Yu.
F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
New York City. June 3, 2022.
About Me
I was born in Huangyan (黄岩, literally "yellow stone"), a coastal city in southeast China (over 200 miles south of Shanghai) known for its Mandarin orange cultivation and mold production. I grew up speaking both Mandarin Chinese and Huangyan (a Sinitic Wu Dialect).
Huangyan Wu is phonologically rather different from Mandarin Chinese - it has eight tones (as opposed to four in Mandarin) and fricative vowels. This led me to do fieldwork on Huangyan and characterize its tonal inventory. I'm interested in doing future projects on how learning a dialect might affect children's language development and cognitive abilities.
Outside of research, I’m passionate about anything that is rhythmic, including music, movies, and poetry. For this very reason, I have always been inspired to experiment with new languages and cultures.
Last updated: May 24, 2025