My research projects 🪴

(📄: published paper; 📝: manuscript; 💬: invited talk; 👩🏻‍🏫: presentation)

1. Information structure of sign languages

My dissertation: Information Structure of the Clause-final Position in Hong Kong Sign Language

(Committee: Diane Lillo-Martin, Zeljko Boskovic, Magdalena Kaufmann, Jon Gajewski, Kathryn Davidson)

My dissertation was motivated by the observation that across many unrelated sign languages, focus-related elements often appear in the clause-final position, including wh-questions, Question Answer Pairs, focused phrases (e.g., ONLY-phrases), and negatives. I investigated the syntactic, prosodic, and semantic properties of constructions that make use of the clause-final position, and how such usage is systematically related to information structure at the right-periphery. This project was awarded a Linguistics Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).

Wh-questions

Gan, Linghui (under review). Wh-questions in Hong Kong Sign Language. 📝

Gan, Linghui (2022, May). Syntactic structure of argument wh-questions in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) [conference presentation (stage)], The 28th Annual Conference of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics (IACL-28). Hong Kong, China. (slides) 👩🏻‍🏫

Gan, Linghui (2020). Wh-Questions in Mandinka. Unpublished manuscript, University of Connecticut. 📝

Gan, Linghui (2019). Wh-questions in Hong Kong Sign Language [Unpublished Master thesis]. University of Amsterdam. 📝

Gan, Linghui & Zaman, Nazmul (2018). How Similar Are Creole and Sign Languages? A Typological Study on Wh-Questions. Unpublished manuscript, University of Amsterdam. 📝

Gan, Linghui & Gladys Tang (2016, October). Acquisition of wh-question in Hong Kong Sign Language by deaf bilingual children [conference presentation (stage)], Hong Kong Speech and Hearing Symposium 2016. Hong Kong, China. 👩🏻‍🏫

Question Answer Pairs

Gan, Linghui (in prep.). Question Answer Pairs in sign languages, insights from Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL). 📝

Gan, Linghui (2025, January). Question Answer Pairs in Hong Kong Sign Language [conference presentation (poster)]. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR 2025). Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (poster) 👩🏻‍🏫

Gan, Linghui (2022). Question Answer Pairs in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL). Proceedings of the Fifty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS 58), edited by Lucas Fagen, Sam Gray, Quain, Stephanie Reyes, and Irene Tang, 103–18. 📄

Word order and focus

Gan, Linghui & Gajewski, Jon (upcoming). Why do sign languages make prominent use of the sentence final position? [conference presentation (stage)]. Interdisciplinary Workshop on Sign Language Grammars, Parsing Models, & the Brain. Leipzig, Germany. 👩🏻‍🏫

Gan, Linghui (2025, May). Information Structure of the clause-final position in Hong Kong Sign Language [invited talk], NYU Syntax Brown Bag, New York University. New York, USA. (slides) 💬

Gan, Linghui (2025, April). Correlation between focus and the clause-final position in Hong Kong Sign Language [conference presentation (stage)], 43rd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 43). Seattle, USA. 👩🏻‍🏫

Gan, Linghui (2025, February). Last but not least: Focus and the clause-final position in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) [invited talk], Department of Linguistics, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Hong Kong. 💬

Gan, Linghui (2025, January). Correlation between word order and information structure in Hong Kong Sign Language [conference presentation (poster)]. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR 2025). Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (poster) 👩🏻‍🏫

Gan, Linghui (2022). Scope Relation and Structure Hierarchy in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL): Exploring Ditransitives. Proceedings of the 30th Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe (ConSOLE XXX), edited by Annie Holtz, Iva Kovac, and Rasmus Puggaard-Rode, 201–19. Leiden: Published by Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/series/sole. (conference presentation slides)📄

Role shift and indexicality

Gan, Linghui (in prep.) Perspective blend and indexical shift in Hong Kong Sign Language. 📝

Gan, Linghui (2023). Perspective blend and indexical shift in Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) [conference presentation (stage)]. The 53th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS-53). Gottingen, Germany. 👩🏻‍🏫

Gan, Linghui (2021). Shifted Indexicals in Hong Kong Sign Language with(-out) Role Shift. The FEAST Journal (Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign language Theory), 4, 74–86. https://doi.org/10.31009/FEAST.i4.06. 📄

Gan, Linghui (2021, June). Indexical shift with(-out) role shift: Evidence from Hong Kong Sign Language [conference presentation (poster)]. Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory (FEAST 2021). Hong Kong. (poster) 👩🏻‍🏫

2. Bimodal Bilingualism & Language acquisition of deaf children

Gan, Linghui, Llerena, Angelica, & Lillo-Martin, Diane (upcoming). What does bimodal bilingual acquisition look like in deaf children with hearing parents? [conference presentation (stage)]. Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) 50. Boston, USA. 👩🏻‍🏫

Lillo-Martin, Diane, Gan, Linghui, Hochgesang, Julie, & Deborah Chen Pichler (2024, August). Assessing the Development of ASL by Deaf Children: Longitudinal Spontaneous Production Data [conference presentation (stage)]. Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory (FEAST 2024). Ann Arbor, USA. (slides) 👩🏻‍🏫

Chen Pichler, Deborah, Mary Cecilia Conte, Patrice Creamer, Martin Dale-Hench, Elaine Gale, Linghui Gan, Corina Goodwin, Shengyun Gu, Kaj Kraus, Margaret Chui-Yi Lee, Diane Lillo-Martin, Jeffrey Levi Palmer, Bettie Petersen, & Meghan Shaw (2024). Profile of a Family’s Bimodal Bilingual Development. BUCLD 48: Proceedings of the 48th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, edited by Hayat Abdullah Ali AlThagafi and Jupitara Ray, 158–68. http://www.lingref.com/bucld/48/BUCLD48-12.pdf 📄

Gan, Linghui & Lillo-Martin, Diane (in prep.). Linguistic analysis of code blending by adult ASL-English bilinguals. 📝

3. Sociolinguistics related to Deaf communities

Zheng, Xuan, Gan, Linghui, & Zhang, Wanhong (2021). Exploring the Necessity of Legal Recognition of Chinese Sign Language: From International Experience to Local Practice. Unpublished manuscript. 📝

Gobbo, Federico, Gan, Linghui & Zheng, Xuan (2022). Contested Linguistic Heritages: CODAs and Denaskuloj in Comparison. Proceedings of the International Conference on “Minority Languages Spoken or Signed and Inclusive Spaces, 44–49. Suresnes: INSHEA Publishing department. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5834265. 📄

Gan, Linghui & Gobbo, Federico (2019). Attitudes towards the Official Recognition of Hong Kong Sign Language by Hong Kong Citizens. Journal of Linguistics and Education Research 02(02): 1–16. Link. 📄