About

I am a linguist specializing in comparative syntax and morphology, especially in the domain of argument structure. My research integrates syntactic theory, typology and experimental methods. I have a particular interest in causative constructions and Austronesian languages.

At SJSU, I teach syntax and semantics and advise projects in theoretical and experimental syntax. I am also affiliated with the ERC Synergy Project LeibnizDream and DFG Scientific Network Applicative alternations across languages (AAAL). I received my PhD from New York University and am from the southernmost city in Canada. 🇨🇦

How to pronounce my name: [jɪˈnɪŋ ˈniː], I also accept [ˈjɪnɪŋ]

Recent and upcoming

Presentations

• Adjectives are not verbs in Iu Mien. LSA 2025 talk (with Low Saelee).
• Voice-over-Voice causatives. Converging On Causal Ontology Analyses (COCOA), Structures Formelles du Langage, CNRS/Paris 8 invited talk.
• Does occluding the agent’s body affect Italian children’s production of argument structure? GALA 16 talk (with Chiara Dal Farra, Silvia Silleresi, Fabienne Martin, Artemis Alexiadou and Maria Teresa Guasti).
• Distinguishing Tagalog valency and voice. AFLA 31 invited talk.

Papers

• Adjectives are not verbs in Iu Mien. Proceedings of LSA 2025 (with Low Saelee).
• Tagalog valency morphology and its neutralization. To appear, Studia Linguistica (with Henrison Hsieh).
• Adjective ordering in Iu Mien. To appear, Proceedings of SEALS 33 (with Low Saelee).
• Errors of multiple exponence in child English: A study of past tense formation. Morphology (with Johannes Hein, Imke Driemel, Fabienne Martin and Artemis Alexiadou).
• Turkish causatives are recursive: A response to Key 2013. Linguistic Inquiry.
• Applicative recursion and nominal licensing. Linguistic Inquiry.
• Jim Wood: Icelandic nominalizations and allosemy. Folia Linguistica book review.
• Ordering preferences in Ukrainian multiple wh-fronting. Proceedings of LSA 2024 (with Ruby Buenrostro).

Publications

Dissertation and edited volume

• Nie, Yining. 2020. Licensing arguments. New York University: PhD dissertation.
  ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005283

• Manova, Stela, Harald Hammarström, Itamar Kastner and Yining Nie. 2020. What is in a morpheme? Special issue of Word Structure 13(1). Edinburgh University Press. ISSN: 1750-1245

Papers

In reverse order of publication. Please see my CV for full citations.

• Nie, Yining and Henrison Hsieh. To appear. Tagalog valency morphology and its neutralization.
  Studia Linguistica. [paper]

• Saelee, Low and Yining Nie. To appear. Adjective ordering in Iu Mien.
  Proceedings of SEALS 33. [paper]

• Saelee, Low and Yining Nie. 2025. Adjectives are not verbs in Iu Mien.
  Proceedings of LSA 2025. DOI: 10.3765/plsa.v10i1.5890

• Nie, Yining. 2025. Turkish causatives are recursive: A response to Key 2013.
  Linguistic Inquiry 56(2): 401–414. DOI: 10.1162/ling_a_00472

• Hein, Johannes, Imke Driemel, Fabienne Martin, Yining Nie and Artemis Alexiadou. 2024. Errors of multiple exponence in child English: A study of past tense formation.
  Morphology (published online). DOI: 10.1007/s11525-024-09434-x

• Nie, Yining. 2024. Applicative recursion and nominal licensing.
  Linguistic Inquiry 55(4): 725–768. DOI: 10.1162/ling_a_00513

• Nie, Yining. 2024. Jim Wood: Icelandic nominalizations and allosemy.
  Book review, Folia Linguistica 58(2): 571–579. DOI: 10.1515/flin-2024-2030 [paper]

• Buenrostro, Ruby and Yining Nie. 2024. Ordering preferences in Ukrainian multiple wh-fronting.
  Proceedings of LSA 2024. DOI: 10.3765/plsa.v9i1.5661

• Hein, Johannes, Imke Driemel, Fabienne Martin, Yining Nie and Artemis Alexiadou. 2024. Errors of multiple exponence in child language.
  Proceedings of WCCFL 40. lingref.com/cpp/wccfl/40/paper3704.pdf

• Lee, Soo-Hwan and Yining Nie. 2022. Korean case stacking and the nominal template.
  Proceedings of PLC 45. repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/45338

• Martin, Fabienne, Yining Nie, Artemis Alexiadou and Maria Teresa Guasti. 2022. Wearing causation on its sleeve: Overt cause in child French causatives.
  Proceedings of BUCLD 46. lingref.com/bucld/46/BUCLD46-38.pdf

• Kouneli, Maria and Yining Nie. 2021. Across-the-board tonal polarity in Kipsigis: Implications for the morphology-phonology interface.
  Language 97(2): e111–e138. DOI: 10.1353/lan.2021.0030 [paper]

• Nie, Yining. 2020. Morphological causatives are Voice over Voice.
  Word Structure 13(1): 102–126. DOI: 10.3366/word.2020.0161 [paper]

• Manova, Stela, Harald Hammarström, Itamar Kastner and Yining Nie. 2020. What is in a morpheme? Theoretical, experimental and computational approaches to the relation of meaning and form in morphology.
  Word Structure 13(1): 1–21. DOI: 10.3366/word.2020.0157 [paper]

• Nie, Yining. 2019. Raising applicatives and possessors in Tagalog.
  Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 4(1), 139: 1–30. DOI: 10.5334/gjgl.941

• Warstadt, Alex, Yu Cao, Ioana Grosu, Wei Peng, Hagen Blix, Yining Nie, Anna Alsop, Shikha Bordia, Haokun Liu, Alicia Parrish, Sheng-Fu Wang, Jason Phang, Anhad Mohananey, Phu Mon Htut, Paloma Jeretic and Samuel R. Bowman. 2019. Investigating BERT’s Knowledge of Language: Five Analysis Methods with NPIs.
  Proceedings of EMNLP 2019. DOI: 10.18653/v1/D19-1286

• Hsieh, Henrison and Yining Nie. 2018. Where (and what) the Tagalog kung-CPs are.
  McGill Working Papers in Linguistics 25. people.linguistics.mcgill.ca/~mcgwpl/McGWPL/2018v25n01/2018-25-1_Hsieh_Nie.pdf

• Nie, Yining. 2018. Contrast and prosody in derived environment effects.
  Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 40. twpl.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/twpl/article/view/29188

• Nie, Yining. 2017. Voice morphology and the features of transitivity.
  New York University: ms. ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003750

• Nie, Yining. 2017. Why is there NOM-NOM and ACC-ACC but no ERG-ERG?
  Proceedings of NELS 47. [paper]

  • Supersedes: Nie, Yining. 2016. Why is there NOM-NOM but no ERG-ERG?
    Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 36. twpl.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/twpl/article/view/26702

• Nie, Yining. 2017. Phonetic enhancement and three patterns of English a-tensing.
  Proceedings of PLC 40. repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/45143

• Nie, Yining. 2015. Tense and modality in French verbal morphology.
  Proceedings of CLA 2015. cla-acl.ca/pdfs/actes-2015/Nie-2015.pdf

Presentations

Recent and selected presentations that have not (yet) appeared in a paper version. Feel free to email me for other materials not listed here.

• Saelee, Low and Yining Nie. 2025. Adjectives are not verbs in Iu Mien.
  LSA 2025, Philadelphia. [slides]

• Nie, Yining. 2024. Voice-over-Voice causatives.
  COCOA, SFL, CNRS/Université Paris 8. [slides]

• Dal Farra, Chiara, Silvia Silleresi, Fabienne Martin, Yining Nie, Artemis Alexiadou and Maria Teresa Guasti. 2024. Does occluding the agent’s body affect Italian children’s production of argument structure?
  GALA 16, NOVA University of Lisbon. [slides]

• Nie, Yining. 2024. Distinguishing Tagalog valency and voice.
  AFLA 31, University of Massachusetts Amherst. osf.io/7n6p2

• Nie, Yining, Fabienne Martin, Chiara Dal Farra and Silvia Silleresi. 2024. Interpreting causatives: The case of faire se in French and Italian.
  LSA 2024, New York City. [poster]

• Nie, Yining. 2022. Recursion and thematic relations in causatives.
  BCGL 15, CRISSP, KU Leuven, Belgium. [slides]

• Hsieh, Henrison and Yining Nie. 2020. Tagalog gerunds are antipassive.
  “Remarks: the Legacy” Workshop, GLOW 43, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (virtual). osf.io/ztnek