Chao Li taught at Peking University for three years before coming to the U.S. and pursing his PhD studies. He joined CSI in the fall of 2007 after he obtained his doctoral degree in linguistics. Dr. Li has a wide range of linguistic interests. He is primarily interested in syntax, syntax-semantics interface, information structure, and linguistic typology. In addition, he is interested in morphology (especially morphosyntax). Finally, he has interest in language acquisition and sentence processing. All the above interests form a coherent whole. That is, as a student of linguistics, Dr. Li is interested in the interactions among the different components of language as a complex system, in formulating theories to account for such interactions, and in testing these theories with crosslinguistic comparison, the study of language acquisition and the research in language processing.

Degrees

BA, Hebei Normal University

MA, Peking University

PhD, Yale University

Scholarship / Publications

Dr. Li has published one book (Mandarin Resultatives: Where Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics Meet, 2008) and a number of articles on different subfields of linguistics. In the areas of syntax and syntax-semantic interface, he has published articles on, for example, argument realization, the resultative construction and the “possessor-raising” construction in Mandarin, the historical development of the bei-constructions in Chinese, the double-nominative construction in Mandarin, and the verbal nouns in Celtic languages. In the subfield of morphology, he has published papers on the case-marking patterns of Nepali and the headedness of Mandarin resultative verb compounds. In the area of typology, he has published papers on the typologization of languages along the line of topic prominence and subject prominence and papers on the typology of causatives and resultatives.