Shijie Zhang

Researcher

A bit about Shijie Zhang

I am finishing my PhD in Linguistics at Lancaster University under the supervision of Dr. Silke Brandt and Dr. Vittorio Tantucci. My PhD research focuses on the acquisition and use of Mandarin relative clauses by Mandarin monolingual and Mandarin-English bilingual children, as well as adult Mandarin first and second language speakers and learners. By using a combination of corpus analyses and experimental comprehension tasks, it mainly looks at crucial factors that influence relative-clause processing such as discourse context, grammatical weight and information status, and how cross-linguistic influence differentiates bilinguals from monolingual peers.

My Role in LuCiD

I am a postdoctoral research associate working on the Understanding the factors influencing the comprehension and production of complex sentences work package, led by Prof Anna Theakston and Dr. Silke Brandt. In this work package, we will use a range of methods (e.g., corpus analysis, eye tracking, picture selection tasks, and picture description tasks) to understand how children learn to comprehend and produce complex sentences.

LuCiD publications (1) by Shijie Zhang

Zhang, S., Junge, B., Lieven, E., Brandt, S., & Theakston, A. (2023). The Competition Between Processing and Discourse-Pragmatic Factors in Children's and Adults' Production of Adverbial When-Clauses Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research

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