Boer Fu

付波儿 [ fu pwo əɻ ] / Boer Fu [ boəɹ fu ]

boerfu[at]mit.edu

About me

I am a recent Linguistics PhD graduate from MIT. My research is mostly focused on phonology. I have worked on Mandarin diminutive r-suffixation, tone 3 sandhi, Mongolian vowel harmony.  The question that interests me is how speakers learn the sound system of their language, and what this process can inform us about the way languages change over time.  At the moment, I'm working on the segment status of Mandarin glides using a language game experiment. I'm also developing a reduplication diagnostic for uncovering the underlying representation of Mandarin tones. I dabble in semantics, with a focus on negation in biased questions.

A little bit more about me

I was born in a town named Fuxin in the Liaoning Province of China, where there is a significant Mongolian population. I moved to Shanghai when I was 4 years old and grew up there. I am learning French at the moment. In my free time, I play the violin/Irish fiddle, watch soccer, look at diachronic maps and dinosaur bones.