About

Andrew Simpson is a Professor of Linguistics at USC Dornsife. His research specializes in the comparative syntax of East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian languages, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Burmese, Hindi, and Bengali. He holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), obtained in December 1995, and a B.A. in Modern Languages (French and German) from Bristol University, UK, completed in June 1984. His postdoctoral training was conducted at Frankfurt University from 1996 to 1998. Professor Simpson has contributed extensively to the field through numerous publications, including books such as 'New explorations in Chinese theoretical syntax' (2022), 'Language and society: an introduction' (2019), and edited volumes on Chinese syntax and linguistic identity. His work encompasses topics like grammatical roles, phase structure, and the syntax of various Asian languages, with a focus on how language relates to national identity and societal structures. He has held academic positions including a tenure-track appointment and a reader in linguistics at SOAS before his current role, and his research continues to influence the understanding of syntax and language structure in Asian languages.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Natural Language Processing
• Artificial Intelligence
• Philosophy
• Linguistics
• Political Science
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• The Syntax of Null Possessors with Kinship Terms and Body Part Nouns in Vietnamese

  Languages · 2025-06-27

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Bare nouns representing kinship terms (KNs) and body parts (BPNs) can be assumed to project a null possessor argument, which allows for the interpretation of such nouns relative to other linguistically present NPs. In Vietnamese, the distribution of KNs and BPNs is subject to different locality conditions and leads to the analysis of null possessors with KNs as covert anaphors, while null possessors with BPNs are null pronominals (pro). This contrasts with Mandarin Chinese, where it has been suggested that null possessors of KNs and BPNs are two different types of null anaphors. The observed distributional differences and analyses of bare KNs and BPNs in Vietnamese vs. Chinese raise questions of parametric variation with regard to null elements with parallel interpretive properties and also whether linking mechanisms may occur with other bare nouns without the projection of null possessors that are subject to binding theoretic locality restrictions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reflexivization and Mình-Exceptional Local Binding by a Monomorphemic Anaphor?

  Languages · 2025-02-27 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper considers the distribution of the anaphor mình in Vietnamese and whether mình can be locally bound in the absence of the reflexivizing element tự. The patterning of Vietnamese mình poses a potential challenge to theories of binding based on claims that anaphors that are monomorphemic reject local binding and are unable to reflexivize a predicate. The paper reports on an experiment designed to probe judgements of mình in local reflexive interpretations and concludes that, for many speakers from different regions of Vietnam, mình in object position may be interpreted reflexively with the subject of the same clause, without the need for tự. On the basis of patterns involving ellipsis and quantificational subjects, it is further shown that this is a genuine binding relation and not simple co-reference. Such conclusions are noted to have significant consequences for certain approaches to binding.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Specificity contrasts in Lalo Yi

  Studies in Language · 2024-04-25

  articleSenior author

  Abstract Lalo Yi (Tibeto-Burman; China) makes systematic distinctions in the encoding of specificity with numerically-quantified nominals. Whereas specific indefinite NPs involve the presence of an article nikhe in an NP-internal position [Noun nikhe Numeral Classifier], non-specific existentially-asserted indefinites require the use of a syntactically discontinuous floating quantifier pattern [NP…Numeral-Classifier…]. A third, distinctive patterning is found with weak, non-specific indefinites (indefinites that are not existentially asserted). This paper describes these previously undocumented contrastive forms in Lalo Yi and how the language has developed a strikingly transparent linking between morpho-syntax and semantics/pragmatics in the domain of nominal phrases.

  PublisherDOI

• THE USE OF CLASSIFIERS IN VIETNAMESE IN TYPICAL AND ATYPICAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT.

  PubMed · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The acquisition of numeral classifiers and their associated syntactic structures has been documented and studied in a broad range of East and Southeast Asian languages among typically-developing (TD) young speakers. However, little research has considered how classifiers are acquired by children with developmental language disorder (DLD). The current paper compares and analyzes the development of numeral classifier patterns among a set of Vietnamese speakers, TD and DLD, studied over three years, from kindergarten to second grade. The investigation highlights differences in the performance of children with TD and DLD and describes the areas of classifier use that seem to be most challenging. Children with DLD produced more errors of classifier omission in kindergarten, showed more random alternations in representational forms, and delays in the development of three element classifier structures. Findings are discussed in terms of future directions in the study of classifier use in Vietnamese speakers with DLD.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Floating quantifiers, specificity and focus in Lalo Yi

  Journal of East Asian Linguistics · 2024-03-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Lalo Yi presents a distribution of numeral-classifier pairs that appears to be the complete inverse of the norm found in other numeral-classifier languages. With many numerically-quantified, discourse-new referents, Lalo Yi permits only the use of a floated pattern, and it is not possible to combine numerals and classifiers with NPs as in other numeral-classifier languages. This patterning presents a clear challenge to the oft-adopted assumption that floating quantifiers are derived from non-floated forms by applications of movement (stranding), and potentially favors a base-generation/adverbial approach. A broader consideration of Lalo Yi, however, leads to the proposal that the occurrence of the floating pattern results from a combination of two occurrences of movement—DP movement to a low focus position/FocP, followed by NP-raising to a higher case position. Obligatory stranding of the DP remnant containing numeral-classifier pairs is suggested to result from the FocP being a (low) criterial position in the sense of Rizzi (in: Cheng and Corver (eds) Wh-movement: moving on, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 97–134, 2006), requiring freezing-realization of the DP in SpecFocP but permitting sub-extraction of NP to satisfy case requirements licensed by a higher functional head. Quite generally, it is suggested that the paradigm in Lalo Yi demonstrates the grammaticalization of an optional tendency found elsewhere in numeral-classifier languages to use special forms for the specific and non-specific indefinite interpretations of numerically-quantified nominals. Additionally, the paper contributes to the growing description and typology of low focus phenomena across languages and observations of variation in the ways that focus may be realized in different languages.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• AN ARGUMENT FOR NON‐AGREE‐DRIVEN MOVEMENT

  Studia Linguistica · 2023-12-12 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract This paper argues for the occurrence of movement that is not the by‐product of an Agree relation in which a probe searches for a goal. The hypothesis that not all instances of movement might be feature‐driven was entertained in early Minimalism, but it has nevertheless become widely assumed that all instances of syntactic movement should be attributed to the operation of Agree. Here, using complex patterns of DP‐internal movement in Bangla, we argue that certain instances of syntactic movement may indeed take place without Agree. Taking the Phase Impenetrability Condition/PIC as the signature property of phases, and sensitivity to the PIC to be indicative of Agree‐related movement, we show that some occurrences of movement within a single domain are constrained by the PIC, while others are not.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• In defense of verb‐stranding <scp>VP</scp> ellipsis

  Syntax · 2023 · 8 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Computer Science

  Abstract This remark offers arguments against recent challenges to analyses that postulate verb‐stranding VP ellipsis (Idan Landau, “On the nonexistence of verb‐stranding VP‐ellipsis,” 2020, Linguistic Inquiry 51.2.341–365; Satoshi Oku, “A note on ellipsis‐resistant constituents,” 2016, Nanzan Linguistics 11.56–70). The article defends the verb‐stranding‐VP‐ellipsis hypothesis, arguing that it remains the strongest hypothesis available to account for many instances of ellipsis with null objects in languages such as Hindi, Bangla, and Japanese.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Introduction to the special issue on Mongolian

  Journal of East Asian Linguistics · 2023-11-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Vietnamese children with and without DLD: Classifier use and grammaticality over time

  Journal of Communication Disorders · 2022-12-30 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  INTRODUCTION: One way to identify Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is to establish clinical markers in a language to serve as reliable indicators of the disorder. This study embarks on the search for clinical markers for Vietnamese using longitudinal data from children with and without DLD. METHODS: We matched ten children previously classified with DLD to ten with typical development (TD) by age and gender. Participants completed a story generation task at three time points: kindergarten, first, and second grade. Overall grammatical development was measured using mean length of utterance, MLU, and proportion of grammatical utterances, PGU. We examined a language-specific feature, classifiers, in terms of accuracy (omission errors), diversity (number of different classifiers), and productivity, or the use of classifiers in constructions of two-to-three elements (classifier+noun, numeral+classifier+noun). Longitudinal change and group differences were examined using linear mixed modeling, supplemented by linguistic analysis. RESULTS: Both groups increased in MLU and PGU over time. The DLD group performed lower in kindergarten and continued to show lower performance over time on these measures. Classifier omission errors decreased over time with no group differences. Classifier diversity increased across groups, with lower performance by the DLD group in kindergarten and over time. For classifier productivity, TD children used classifiers in multiple constructions in kindergarten and maintained the same level over time. In contrast, children with DLD had minimal use of three-element constructions in kindergarten but increased in productivity over time. CONCLUSIONS: Children with DLD produce shorter utterances with relatively more grammatical errors compared to their TD peers in the early school years. Though no longer committing classifier omission errors, children with DLD showed more restricted use of classifiers in terms of the number of different classifiers and constructions produced. Findings inform the search for Vietnamese clinical markers of DLD.

  PublisherDOI

• Null Anaphora in Vietnamese

  2022-06-09

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter describes the distribution, interpretation, and licensing factors of null anaphora in Vietnamese, and argues that null subjects and objects in Vietnamese may arise as the result of different mechanisms, either being lexically available as ‘null pronouns’ or arising as the result of a process of syntactic ellipsis applying directly to objects (argument ellipsis) or larger constituents such as verb phrases (VP ellipsis). The chapter also considers the occurrence of null adjunct interpretations, and suggests that such these are not produced by any syntactic process but arise as the result of the pragmatic enrichment of a discourse, in ways akin to the use of scene-setting adverbials.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Saurov Syed

  University of Auckland

  15 shared

• Tanmoy Bhattacharya

  University of Delhi

  9 shared

• Zoe Wu

  6 shared

• Arunima Choudhury

  6 shared

• Mythili Menon

  Wichita State University

  5 shared

• Yaqing Hu

  University of Southern California

  5 shared

• Pauliina Raento

  4 shared

• Binh Ngo

  Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City

  3 shared