Welcome Linguistics grad cohort of 2019!

We are so happy to officially introduce the new Linguistics cohort of Fall 2019! Give a warm welcome to the new cohort when you see them around!

Samir Alam

I’m from San Jose and did my BA in Linguistics at UC Berkeley. I’m interested in Syntax, Semantics, and Information Structure. I like hiking and running.

Nicky Hoover

Hi, all! I’m Nicky. I’ve spent most of my life in northern California, but I did my undergraduate work in linguistics at the University of Arizona in Tucson. I also minored in Spanish and mathematics there. Aspects of all three of those showed up in my thesis, in which I described and implemented a minimal-input algorithm for automatic syllabification using a corpus of fixed-meter Spanish poetry. Aside from computational approaches and phonology, my linguistics interests include aspects of phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics (and particularly sound-meaning interface issues). I’m happy to be here at USC!

When not working on linguistics, I enjoy doing crosswords, playing tabletop games, tinkering with computers, reading and writing poetry, and spending time with cats. (Note: the cat in the photo is not mine.)

Elango Kumaran

Hi, I’m Elango Kumaran. I grew up in LA, went to UC Berkeley for undergrad, and am finishing up an MA at Queen Mary University of London. I’ve mostly worked on agreement, and am generally a boring person.

Jun Lyu

Hi fellow linguists! I’m Jun Lyu. I come from China and feel honored to be selected by the department to start my new academic life in LA. I graduated with a BA in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language and an MA in Linguistics from Shanghai International Studies University. Interestingly, my MA adviser Dr. Fuyun Wu, also graduated from USC. My first trip to USC happened 4 years ago when I came here to attend CUNY-28, my very first academic conference. Four years later, here I am again, officially as a PhD student! Everything is meant to be.

My current research is mainly focused on the processing of pronouns. I look forward to breaking new ground in this line of research at USC under the supervision of Elsi. I also look forward to meeting everyone and getting to know them as colleagues, friends, and mentors. I’m new to the area, so please let me know any nice place to hang out and to feast on the amazing food in LA (so far my  favorite restaurant is Eastern Cafe. Hope I don’t look too pathetic to you :P)! Oh, I almost forgot. I am a big fan of Chibi Maruko-chan and Doraemon!

Yubin Zhang

Hi everyone! My name is Yubin Zhang. I come from Chengdu, China, which is the home of the giant panda and Sichuanese spicy cuisine. I spent four years in Beijing, China, studying Chinese linguistics and psychology, and then moved to Edinburgh, Scotland for another year of graduate study in phonetics. After graduation, I worked in a research position in Hong Kong for two years. I did some studies regarding the influences of orthographic knowledge on speech perception during these two years. My research concerns phonetics and phonology, sound change, speech production and perception. Specifically, I am interested in tonal and laryngeal phenomena. For my graduate studies in USC, I plan to explore these phenomena from the perspective of speech articulation and production. Besides language and linguistics, I love music, cooking, travelling, culture, and history. I love to immerse myself in a new environment and have profound conversations with people from different cultural backgrounds. That might be the reasons why I also love fieldwork (the non-academic part of it). I look very much forward to starting my new life here in LA and getting to know you all!