Research

Current projects:

Cantonese sentence processing & music processing: In one of the experimental conditions, I studied the processing of Cantonese relative clauses using self-paced reading, exploring the contributing factors of complexity (center-embedding vs. serial dependency) and modification (subject- vs. object-modification). Other conditions study the simultaneous processing of relative clauses and musical processions, as well as their interactions.

Phonotactics: This project explores the learning trajectory of Cantonese phonotactics and infants’ ability to discern legal vs. illegal phonotactic structures. From the perspective of statistical learning, we investigated the intricacies led by markedness, computational complexity and frequency of occurrences.

Discontinuous predicates: This project investigates the mechanisms of deriving Cantonese separable verbs, mainly focusing on the discussion about the reanalysis approach and the copy+delete approach (Yip et al., 2021).

Publication:

Tang, K.M.C. & Lai, R. (submitted). The Acquisition of Cantonese Phonotactics: the Interaction Between Structural Complexity and Distributional Statistics. Contact me for the current version.

MA Thesis:

Simultaneous Processing in Language and Music: A Study on Cantonese (Non)Musicians [paper]

Presentations:

Tang, K.M.C. & Lai, R. (2023, May) The acquisition of Cantonese phonotactics. Hanyang International Symposium on Phonetics and Cognitive Sciences of Language (HISPhonCog 2023). [Oral presentation]. Seoul, Korea.

Tang, K.M.C. (2022, Jun) Simultaneous Processing of Language and Music: Cognitive Difference between Musicians and Non-musicians. The Fifth Forum on Cantonese Linguistics (FoCaL-5) [Conference presentation]. Hong Kong.

Yip, K.F., Tang, K.M.C., Lee, T.M. & Chan S.L.S. (2022, May) Processing Discontinuous Predicates in Cantonese. The 6th Workshop on Innovations in Cantonese Linguistics (WICL-6)
[Conference presentation]. Ohio, United States [Zoom].

Tang,. K.M.C. (2021, Dec). Cantonese Relative Clause Processing. The Annual Research Forum 2021 of Linguistics Society of Hong Kong (LSHK-ARF 2021) [Conference presentation]. Hong Kong.

Lai, R. & Tang, K.M.C. (2021, Dec). The Acquisition of Cantonese Phonotactics. The Annual Research Forum 2021 of Linguistics Society of Hong Kong (LSHK-ARF 2021) [Conference presentation]. Hong Kong.

Tang, K.M.C., Li, C. & Lai, R. (2021, Dec). Bias in Statistical Learning. The Asia-Pacific Babylab Constellation (ABC) Conference [Conference presentation]. Hong Kong.

Tang, C. (Jul, 2021). Simultaneous Processing in Language and Music: A Self-paced Reading Study on Cantonese (Non)Musicians. Hong Kong Meetup of The Cognitive Science Society. Hong Kong.

Li, C., Tang, C., & Lai, R. (Dec, 2020). The Impact of Computational Complexity on Phonological Learning. The Annual Research Forum 2020 of Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK-ARF 2020). Online.

Tang, C. (Jun, 2020). The Acquisition of Cantonese Classifiers by Bilingual Children. The 3rd Forum on Cantonese Linguistics. Hong Kong. [slide]

Luk, P.S., Winterstein, G., & Tang, K.M.C. (Apr, 2020). Interpreting (in)definiteness in Cantonese: A pragmatic account. In 5th Workshop on Innovations in Cantonese Linguistics (WICL-5). Online.

Conference proceeding:

Winterstein, G., Tang, C. & Lai, R. (2020, May). Cantomap: a Hong Kong Cantonese MapTask Corpus. In The International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2020). Palais du Pharo. (Conference canceled)

http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2020/pdf/2020.lrec-1.355.pdf