Minqi Liu

I recently earned my Ph.D. degree in Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in June 2023 and started working in the UCLA Language Acquisition Lab, where I conduct various infant linguistic experiments and manage the lab.

I am primarily interested in first language (L1) acquisition and theoretical syntax. I employ experimental methods to address core issues in children’s syntactic development and believe that L1 data can inform linguistic theory in meaningful ways. My recent research focuses on the L1 development of syntactic locality constraints through lens of constructions triggering locality difficulties (‘Intervention Effects’) in child grammar, such as sluicing or passive constructions in Mandarin Chinese.

Besides L1 acquisition and syntax, I am also working on Mandarin-speaking children’s second language (L2) English, especially how their perception and production of consonant clusters reveal their grammatical sensitivity to sonority sequencing. I have also conducted fieldwork on San Cristóbal Lachirioag Zapotec, an under-documented language spoken in Oaxaca in south-western Mexico, and Tonggu Gan, a non-Mandarin Chinese dialect spoken in Jiangxi in south China.

Before entering the Ph.D. program at UCLA, I earned my B.A. in Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University, China.