Linguistics seminar – From Linguistic Input to Neural Representation: How the Brain Learns Language Date: 16 Apr 2026 (Thursday) Start Time: 4:00 pm Speaker: Prof. Feng Gangyi (Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages at The Chinese University of Hong Kong) Venue: CPD LG.08, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
“Iconicity and semantic transparency in Hong Kong Sign Language: Evidence from ratings and three guessing paradigms” published in Language and Cognition By HKU Linguistics Post date 2026-04-02 We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article in Language and Cognition by Arthur, Aaron, Mavies, Rachel, Judy and Youngah, titled Iconicity and semantic transparency in Hong Kong Sign Language: Evidence from ratings and three guessing paradigms. This study investigates how strongly signs in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) are perceived to resemble their meanings, a property known as iconicity, and how this relates to how easily meanings can be [...]
Thoughts on morphological spread Date: 9 Apr 2026 (Thu) Time: 4:00 pm Venue: CPD LG.08 Centennial Campus
Big questions, little data: exploiting NLP methods for language variation and change Date: 26 Mar 2026 (Thu) Time: 4:00 pm Venue: CPD LG.08 Centennial Campus
Outermost wins in Dinka and the theory of nonconcatenative morphology Date: 12 Mar 2026 (Thu) Time: 4:00 pm Zoom: https://hku.zoom.us/j/97684494584?pwd=beh8mFIFjrVVB2DMaSTj57UlveXCub.1 Meeting ID: 976 8449 4584 Password: 899952
Leveraging large language models to understand real-world language use Date: 5 Mar 2026 (Thu) Time: 4:00 pm Venue: CPD LG.08 Centennial Campus
A new method for the analysis of language contact situations Date: 26 Feb 2026 (Thu) Time: 4:00 pm Venue: CPD LG.08 Centennial Campus
Olguín Martínez, Jesús & Stefan Th. Gries. 2026. Syntax in Social Interaction: Syntax, Conversation, Discourse-Pragmatics, Lexicon, and Mode in if you ask me Constructions. Corpus-based studies across humanities (published online). https://doi.org/10.1515/csh-2025-0025 The study analyzes the syntax of if you ask me (e.g., she’s not ready for that kind of responsibility if you ask me) in a sample of 789 constructions from The Corpus of Contemporary American English. Special attention is paid to how the order of the protasis interacts with other domains in language use: speaker, function, lexicon, and type of communication mode. Using a predictive-modeling approach, we demonstrate that [...]
Olguín Martínez, Jesús & Stefan Th. Gries. 2026. The link between syntax, semantics, discourse, and lexicon in counteridenticals: A multivariate extension of co-varying collexeme analysis. Functions of Language (published online). https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.24101.olg The present study goes beyond traditional Usage-Based Construction Grammar research in that it pays close attention not only to the interaction of lexicon and syntax in language use, but also to how other analytic layers of analysis (e.g., discourse) can influence the compatibility of lexemes in particular slots of constructional schemas. The paper provides a novel way to explore the following question: how do syntax, semantics, discourse, and lexicon [...]
Filler-slot relations in language contact: Lexico-syntactic transference from a usage-based perspective – Jesús Olguín-Martinez Olguín Martínez, Jesús & Stefan Th. Gries. 2026. Filler-slot relations in language contact: Lexico-syntactic transference from a usage-based perspective. Review of Cognitive Linguistics (published online). https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00250.olg The study investigates the influence of Mexican Spanish similative (e.g., he swims like a fish) and pretence constructions (e.g., he swims as if he were a fish) on those found in four Mesoamerican languages: Huasteca Nahuatl, Papantla Totonac, San Gabriel Huastec, and Uxpanapa Chinantec. Using predictive modeling, we demonstrate that these indigenous languages have not only borrowed the markers komo [...]
A'ingae nasality always floats Abstract: The phonology of nasality in A'ingae (or Cofán, ISO 639-3: con) is complex and has received several treatments in the previous literature (e.g. Bennett et al., t.a.; Sanker, 2025; Sanker and AnderBois, 2024). In this talk, I focus specifically on nasality in the language's native roots, and observe a new restriction on its distribution: If present, nasality always "starts" from the left edge and extends through (a part of) the root. To account for this pattern, I propose that nasality in A'ingae is always a floating feature that associates from the left, and all segments [...]
Prof. Jesus Olguin-Martinez, University of Hong Kong Linguistics Department D-CCCA: A database for syntactic typological research Syntactic typological databases have received a great deal of attention recently (e.g., The World Atlas of Language Structures online; Grambank; Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures online). These databases have contributed to our theoretical understanding of syntactic variation in typological perspective. However, much more work remains to be done. In particular, no syntactic typological database has focused on documenting groups of constructions that share similar semantic and pragmatic characteristics, as the following: (1) a. If you had gone, you would have seen her (standard [...]
"Precautioning purpose constructions in typological perspective: a functional trade-off between clause-linking devices and tense–aspect–mood (TAM) marking" Journal of World Languages Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2025. Precautioning purpose constructions in typological perspective: A functional trade-off between clause-linking devices and TAM marking. Journal of World Languages (published online).https://doi.org/10.1515/jwl-2025-0050 The study investigates how languages indicate precautioning purpose relations (e.g., I said it so that the child would not touch it) in a sample of 71 languages, focusing on the interaction between clause-linking devices and tense–aspect–mood (TAM) marking. It shows that languages either employ specialized clause-linking devices (e.g. equivalents of lest) or rely on non-specialized [...]
“Bottom-up modeling of phoneme learning: Universal sensitivity and language-specific transformation” published in Speech Communication We are pleased to announce the publication of a new paper titled “Bottom-up modeling of phoneme learning: Universal sensitivity and language-specific transformation” in the journal Speech Communication. This study was conducted by Frank and Youngah. The research investigates the emergence and development of universal phonetic sensitivity during early phonological learning using an unsupervised modeling approach. The authors trained autoencoder models on raw acoustic input from English and Mandarin to simulate bottom-up perceptual development, focusing on phoneme contrast learning. The results demonstrate that phoneme-like categories and feature-aligned [...]
Putting words together in the brain to produce complex words Date: 4 Dec 2025 (Thu) Time: 4:30 pm Venue: Rm 3.04, 3/F Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Uncovering the dynamics of language shift: Ideologies, repertoires, and displacement Date: 27 Nov 2025 (Thu) Time: 4:00 pm Venue: Rm 3.04, 3/F Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Researching the contact language Lingala in the margins: From Brazza to Cabinda and Rwanda Date: 20 Nov 2025 (Thu) Time: 4:00 pm Venue: Rm 3.04, 3/F Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
The interaction of standard negation in clauses of substitution: a typological account I am this year’s recipient of the Anna Siewierska Award from the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), recognizing the best article published in Folia Linguistica (FL). FL is one of the leading journals in linguistics, and SLE is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious professional organizations for linguists in Europe. The following is the paper that was the winner: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/flin-2023-2044/html?srsltid=AfmBOorRWgkLjSt4wJlQF9wNvwo9F17eqdmu7hUuh305-GgzbVBKXKEW Publications
2025. Similative-pretence constructions in language contact situations: A Usage-Based Construction Grammar perspective. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 12. 292-321 Similative-pretence constructions in language contact situations A Usage-Based Construction Grammar perspective Jesús Olguín Martínez | University of Hong Kong Stefan Th. Gries | Justus-Liebig University Giessen | UC Santa Barbara The present study introduces a method that can be used to explore in a quantitatively rigorous yet less demanding way (both in terms of data and statistical requirements) how constructional templates and their lexical preferences (lexico-syntactic transference) diffuse in language contact situations. The study investigates the influence of Mexican Spanish similative-pretence constructions on Huasteca Nahuatl similative-pretence constructions as a proof-of-concept [...]
2025. Exceptive constructions in Huasteca Nahuatl: On the interaction of syntax and discourse in language use. Studies in Language (published online) Exceptive constructions in Huasteca Nahuatl On the interaction of syntax and discourse in language use Jesús Olguín Martínez | University of Hong Kong The paper explores exceptive constructions (e.g., all my family went to the wedding except Mark) in Huasteca Nahuatl (Uto-Aztecan). It is shown that connected and free exceptives have developed intriguing discourse-pragmatic functions that have not been identified by previous studies. While connected exceptives (e.g., everyone except Pedro went to the meeting) indicate a surprising situation, free exceptives (e.g., everyone went to [...]
