Xinyu Zhu
Doctoral Student in Literature - Xinyu’s thesis is entitled ‘Adverbial Flexibility: A Minimalist Approach'
Research project title
Adverbial Flexibility: A Minimalist Approach
Supervisors
Prof Michelle Sheehan + Dr William van der Wurff
Contact details
Email: x.zhu28@newcastle.ac.uk
Research interests
- Generative Syntax: the syntax of adverbs with multiple placements; Chinese dialects syntax (esp. Wu Chinese)
- Minimalist Program: merge; labeling; workspaces
- Probabilistic linguistics
- Syntactic Cartography: split-VPs; left periphery in Chinese & dialects
A brief outline of my research project
My research is centred upon adverbial flexibility in English and varieties of Chinese. By adverbial flexibility, I mean the variable placements of adverbs and other flexible phenomena in terms of the syntax of adverbs. Based on the framework of minimalism, my research will investigate the syntactic distribution of adverbs at a fine-grained level, focusing on adverbs which fall outside previous approaches.