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Department of Linguistics,
University of Pennsylvania
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I am a 2nd-year PhD student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, working with Prof. Anna Papafragou. I received my BA and MA at Tsinghua University, where I was advised by Prof. Peng ZHOU.
My research focuses on the interface between semantics, pragmatics, and language acquisition. I am particularly interested in how speakers and listeners use contextual information to construct and interpret meaning, and how these processes develop in children. Broadly, I investigate how pragmatic inference, informativeness, and discourse structure shape the way linguistic expressions are produced and understood.
In collaboration with Professor Anna Papafragou, I am currently investigating how children derive pragmatic inferences from plural expressions. Specifically, our research explores whether the “more-than-one” interpretation of plurals arises from a scalar implicature and how contextual informativeness guides children’s computation of this inference. By manipulating the relevance of quantity in discourse, we aim to understand when and how pragmatic reasoning supports the acquisition of plural meaning.
2025, October 11. Meaning in Context: Children’s Understanding of English Plurals. The 11th MACSIM, Johns Hopkins University. [poster]
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