Research
I study linguistic meaning using formal, experimental, and diachronic methods. My empirical focus is on Mandarin and Classical Chinese, alongside cross-linguistic work.
Much of my recent work concerns negation: expletive negation in Mandarin (e.g., negation under yiqian 'before' interacting with Aktionsart and grammatical aspect); the processing of meta-linguistic negation drawing on experimental evidence from negated tautologies.
A second strand concerns diachronic formal semantics. With Paloma Jeretič, I have been investigating the light verb modal dé (meaning 'to get; to obtain' when used as a lexical verb) in Chinese, and we have been building structured historical corpora that track the development of dé across historical stages of Chinese.
I also work on definiteness from a cross-linguistic perspective: two types of definites in Kono, based on my own fieldwork, and the definite system of Mandarin.
Publications
Bian, Mingyang & Paloma Jeretič. To appear. The Story of a Light Verb Modal in Chinese. Proceedings of the 38th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-38).
Bian, Mingyang. To appear. Interpreting Negation under Yiqian ‘before’ in Mandarin Chinese. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 30.
Bian, Mingyang. To appear. Two Types of Definites in Kono (Sierra Leone). Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 33.1: Proceedings of PLC 50.
Talks and Presentations
Invited
2026. Interpreting Negation under Yiqian ‘before’ in Mandarin Chinese. The Negation Network.
Peer-reviewed conference presentations
2026. The Story of a Light Verb Modal in Chinese (with Paloma Jeretič). The 38th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-38), George Washington University.
2026. Two Types of Definites in Kono (Sierra Leone). The 50th Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC 50), University of Pennsylvania.
2025. Interpreting Negation under Yiqian ‘before’ in Mandarin Chinese. Sinn und Bedeutung 30, Goethe University Frankfurt.
2025. Processing Meta-linguistic Negation: Evidence from Negated Tautologies. The 11th Experimental Pragmatics Conference (XPrag 2025), University of Cambridge.
2022. A Free-Relative Analysis of a Correlative-like Structure in Mandarin Chinese. Linguistics and English Language Postgraduate Conference (LELPGC22), University of Edinburgh.
Colloquium talks
2025. Interpreting Negation under Yiqian ‘before’ in Mandarin Chinese. 11th Mid-Atlantic Colloquium of Studies in Meaning (MACSIM), Johns Hopkins University.
2024. A Commitment-based Analysis of Believe as an Implicature Trigger. 10th Mid-Atlantic Colloquium of Studies in Meaning (MACSIM), University of Maryland.
2023. A Commitment-based Analysis of Believe as an Implicature Trigger. Integrated Language Sciences and Technology (ILST), University of Pennsylvania.
2022. A Commitment-based Analysis of Believe as an Implicature Trigger. Edinburgh Meaning Science Group (EMSG), University of Edinburgh.