鈥婭 first got interested in cognitive linguistics through food! I was highly interested in the commonalities and differences in cooking verbs in Mandarin, English, and two Austronesian languages in Taiwan (Amis and Bunun). For instance, there is a verb in Bunun that specifically means 鈥渂reak the long vegetable in half鈥� that has no equivalent in Mandarin or English.
From cooking verbs, I started looking at word meaning in general. I was fascinated by the elasticity of word meaning. How can word meaning (seemingly stabilized lexicalization patterns) be stretched, extended, or mutated during communication in context?
I began in linguistics, and conducted linguistic analyses of conceptual metaphors. Then I began to wonder how metaphors are represented in the mind, brain, and body. In addition, crosslinguistic differences were intriguing especially in speakers of multiple languages like me, so I study language and thought issues in bilinguals. In my postdoctoral years, I expanded my research to include emotion factors. I looked at whether emotion sensitizes prediction in language, and how people decode implied emotion in sentences through combinatorial semantics. I now have my own team of students looking at these fascinating issues, as a baby直播app at the University of Arizona.
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