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 language acquisition. I have a particular interest in causative constructions and Austronesian languages.

In addition to teaching syntax and semantics at San José State, I am also affiliated with the ERC-funded LeibnizDream project. I received my PhD from New York University.

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

Recent

• Agent bias in child Italian event descriptions.
  LSA 2023 talk (with Fabienne Martin, Silvia Silleresi, Chiara Dal Farra, Artemis Alexiadou and Maria Teresa Guasti), Denver, CO. [slides]

• Recursion and thematic relations in causatives.
  BCGL 15 talk, CRISSP, KU Leuven. [slides]

• Errors of multiple exponence in child language.
  Proceedings of WCCFL 40 (to appear, with Johannes Hein, Imke Driemel, Fabienne Martin and Artemis Alexiadou). [paper]

• Korean case stacking and the nominal template.
  Proceedings of PLC 45 (with Soo-Hwan Lee). [paper]

• Turkish causatives are recursive: A response to Key 2013.
  Linguistic Inquiry squib (online early). DOI: 10.1162/ling_a_00472 [paper]

Publications

Dissertation

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

Papers

• Nie, Yining. Accepted with revisions. Applicative recursion and nominal licensing.
  Linguistic Inquiry (email me for a copy).

• Nie, Yining. To appear. Turkish causatives are recursive: A response to Key 2013.
  Linguistic Inquiry. DOI: 10.1162/ling_a_00472 [paper]

• Hein, Johannes, Imke Driemel, Fabienne Martin, Yining Nie and Artemis Alexiadou. To appear. Minimizing and maximizing 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]

• 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]

Recent/Selected Talks

• 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. [slides]

• Hein, Johannes, Fabienne Martin, Yining Nie and Artemis Alexiadou. 2022. Errors of multiple exponence in child language.
  WCCFL 40, Stanford University (virtual). [slides]

• Martin, Fabienne, Yining Nie, Artemis Alexiadou and Maria Teresa Guasti. 2021. Wearing causation on its sleeve: Overt cause in child French causatives.
  BUCLD 46, Boston University. [slides]

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