About

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

In addition to teaching syntax and semantics at San José State University, I am also affiliated with the ERC-funded LeibnizDream project. I received my PhD from New York University. I’m from the southernmost city in Canada. 🇨🇦

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

Recent and upcoming

Presentations

Adjectives and language contact in Iu Mien. LSA 2025 talk (with Low Saelee).
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

Applicative recursion and nominal licensing. Linguistic Inquiry.
Adjective ordering in Iu Mien. Submitted, Proceedings of SEALS 33 (with Low Saelee).
Errors of multiple exponence in child English: A study of past tense formation. To appear, Morphology (with Johannes Hein, Imke Driemel, Fabienne Martin and Artemis Alexiadou).
Jim Wood: Icelandic nominalizations and allosemy. Folia Linguistica book review.
Ordering preferences in Ukrainian multiple wh-fronting. Proceedings of LSA 2024 (with Ruby Buenrostro).
Tagalog valency morphology and its neutralization. To appear, Proceedings of AFLA 30 (with Henrison Hsieh).

Publications

Dissertation and edited volume

Nie, Yining. 2020. Licensing arguments. New York University: PhD dissertation.
[lingbuzz]
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

Saelee, Low and Yining Nie. Submitted. Adjective ordering in Iu Mien.
Proceedings of SEALS 33. [paper]
Hein, Johannes, Imke Driemel, Fabienne Martin, Yining Nie and Artemis Alexiadou. To appear. Errors of multiple exponence in child English: A study of past tense formation.
Morphology. [paper]
Nie, Yining. 2024. Jim Wood: Icelandic nominalizations and allosemy.
Book review, Folia Linguistica 58(2): 571-579. DOI: 10.1515/flin-2024-2030 [paper]
Nie, Yining and Henrison Hsieh. To appear. Tagalog valency morphology and its neutralization.
Proceedings of AFLA 30. [paper]
Buenrostro, Ruby and Yining Nie. 2024. Ordering preferences in Ukrainian multiple wh-fronting.
Proceedings of LSA 2024. DOI: 10.3765/plsa.v9i1.5661
Nie, Yining. 2024. Applicative recursion and nominal licensing.
Linguistic Inquiry 55(4): 725-768. DOI: 10.1162/ling_a_00513
Hein, Johannes, Imke Driemel, Fabienne Martin, Yining Nie and Artemis Alexiadou. To appear. Errors of multiple exponence in child language.
Proceedings of WCCFL 40. [paper]
Lee, Soo-Hwan and Yining Nie. 2022. Korean case stacking and the nominal template.
Proceedings of PLC 45. [paper]
Nie, Yining. 2022. Turkish causatives are recursive: A response to Key 2013.
Linguistic Inquiry (early access). DOI: 10.1162/ling_a_00472
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. [paper]
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. [paper]
Nie, Yining. 2018. Contrast and prosody in derived environment effects.
Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 40. [paper]
Nie, Yining. 2017. Voice morphology and the features of transitivity.
New York University: ms. [paper]
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. [paper]
Nie, Yining. 2017. Phonetic enhancement and three patterns of English a-tensing.
Proceedings of PLC 40. [paper]
Nie, Yining. 2015. Tense and modality in French verbal morphology.
Proceedings of CLA 2015. [paper]

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.

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. [slides]
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]
Martin, Fabienne, Yining Nie, Silvia Silleresi, Chiara Dal Farra, Artemis Alexiadou and Maria Teresa Guasti. 2023. Agent bias in child Italian event descriptions.
LSA 2023, Denver, CO. [slides]
Silleresi, Silvia, Chiara Dal Farra, Yining Nie, Fabienne Martin, Artemis Alexiadou and Maria Teresa Guasti. 2022. The agent bias holds in production too: Event descriptions in child Italian.
BUCLD 47, Boston University. [slides]
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). [handout]