Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng (; born 1962) is a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

with specialisation in theoretical

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

. She is a Chair Professor of Linguistics and Language at the Department of

Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

, and one of the founding members of the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition.

Academic life

After completing her BA and MA degree at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

, Cheng obtained her PhD in 1991 at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, where she studied with

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...

. From 1991 to 2000, she held a position at the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

, first as an assistant professor, then as an associate professor (with tenure), before moving to Leiden University. In 2012, she was nominated for the Regional Chair at the

University of Nantes Nantes University () is a public university located in the city of Nantes, France. In addition to the several campuses scattered in the city of Nantes, there are two satellite campuses located in Saint-Nazaire and La Roche-sur-Yon. The university ...

(France), where she was appointed for two years and lectured on East Asian Linguistics. Cheng has done extensive work on theoretical syntax, mostly from a comparative perspective, with the majority of her work concentrating on

Chinese language Chinese ( or ) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and List of ethnic groups in China, many minority ethnic groups in China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39& ...

s (

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...

, Wu, and Min) and

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...

( Zulu,

Chichewa Chewa ( ; also known as Nyanja ) is a Bantu language spoken in Malawi and a recognised minority in Zambia and Mozambique. The noun class prefix ''chi-'' is used for languages, so the language is often called or Chinyanja. In Malawi, the name wa ...

Bemba Bemba may refer to: Languages and ethnic groups * Bemba language, or Chibemba, a Bantu language spoken in Zambia * Bemba people, or AbaBemba, of Zambia * Bemba, a dialect of the Buyu language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo People * Jea ...

). Important contributions of her work to syntactic theory include her “ Clause Typing Hypothesis” (Cheng 1991), which led to a better understanding of the nature of triggers of operations in syntax and the role that sentence-final particles play in the triggering system. Her work on bare nouns and classifiers in Chinese languages (e.g., Cheng & Sybesma 1999) demonstrates that the count-mass distinction is also relevant in Chinese languages, albeit in the system of classifiers. Furthermore, this work has argued that bare nouns can have hidden structures, and that classifiers can be associated with definiteness. Cheng's joint work on Zulu with

Laura J. Downing Laura J. Downing (born 1954, Mitchel AFB, New York) is an American linguist, specializing in the phonology of African languages. Education and career Downing earned her B.S. in linguistics from Georgetown University in 1977, and her PhD in ling ...

(Cheng & Downing 2009, 2016) is a rare example of collaboration between a syntactician and a phonologist, demonstrating the necessity as well as benefits of such collaboration to the field. Importantly, it shows that prosodic phrasing in a language provides evidence for the syntactic structure of the language, work that she has continued in investigating Mandarin (Gryllia et al. 2020).

Honors and distinctions

Cheng was elected a member of

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

in 2016. In 2017 she was elected a member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (, KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam. In addition to various advisory a ...

. In 2024 she was elected as a Fellow of the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

. Cheng has served on the editorial board of many leading journals in linguistics. She is an advisory editor of ''

Linguistic Inquiry ''Linguistic Inquiry'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal in generative linguistics published by the MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambri ...

'', and an associate editor of

Language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

, and is on the editorial board of Journal of East Asian Linguistics, Contemporary Chinese Linguistics, Syntax: Journal of Theoretical, Experimental and Interdisciplinary Research, and

The Linguistic Review ''The Linguistic Review'' is a double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal covering linguistics established in 1981 and published by Walter de Gruyter. The editor-in-chief is Harry van der Hulst (University of Connecticut). Aims and scope The jou ...

. She was the Editor of ''Glot International'' between 1996 and 2003. (See, e.g., Cheng & Sybesma, eds., 2000.)

Selected publications

* ''On the typology of wh-questions'', 1991. PhD dissertation, MIT. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/13938 * ''More papers on wh-movement'', 1991. (Edited by Lisa Cheng and

Hamida Demirdache Hamida Demirdache is a French linguist specialising in syntax and semantics, known for her work on time and tense. Education Demirdache received her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991; her thesis, which dealt with resumpt ...

). ''MIT Working Papers in Linguistics'' #15. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/13938 *Cheng, Lisa L.-S., and Rint Sybesma. 1999. Bare and not-so-Bare Nouns and the Structure of NP. ''Linguistic Inquiry'' 30.4: 509–542. * ''The first Glot international state-of-the-article book: the latest in linguistics'', 2000. (Edited by Lisa Cheng and Rint Sybesma.) https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110822861/html *Cheng, Lisa L.-S. and John Rooryck. 2002. Licensing Wh-in-situ. ''Syntax'' 3: 1–19. * Kula, Nancy and Lisa L.-S. Cheng. 2007. Phonological and Syntactic Phrasing in Bemba Relatives. ''Journal of African Languages and Linguistics'' 28.2: 123–148. *Cheng, Lisa L.-S. 2009. Wh-in-situ from the 1980s to Now. ''Language and Linguistics Compass'' 3.3: 767-791. *Cheng, Lisa L.-S. and Laura Downing. 2009. Where is the Topic in Zulu? ''The Linguistic Review'' 26: 207–238. *Cheng, Lisa L.-S., Jenny Doetjes, Rint Sybesma and Roberto Zamparelli. 2012. On the Interpretation of Number and Classifiers. ''Rivista di Linguistica'' 24.2: 175–194. (Special Issue: The Structure and Interpretation of Nouns and Noun Phrases, Part II). *Cheng, Lisa L.-S. and Laura Downing. 2016. Phasal Syntax = Cyclic Phonology? ''Syntax'' 19.2:156-191. DOI: 10.1111/synt.12120. *Bonet, Eulàlia, Lisa L.-S. Cheng, Laura Downing and Joan Mascaró. 2019. (In)Direct ref-erence in the phonology-syntax interface under phase theory: a response to Modular PIC. ''Linguistic Inquiry'' 50.4: 751–777. DOI:10.1162/ling_a_00324. *Gryllia, Stella, Doetjes, Jenny, Yang, Yang, and Lisa L.-S. Cheng. 2020. Prosody, clause typing, and wh-in-situ: Evidence from Mandarin. ''Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology'' 11(1): 19, pp. 1–30. DOI: 10.5334/labphon.169.

References

External links

Faculty Webpage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cheng, Lisa) 1962 births Living people Generative linguistics MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni Members of Academia Europaea Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Syntacticians Women linguists Academic staff of Leiden University University of Toronto alumni University of California, Irvine faculty