I presented my work on Mandarin sluicing constructions (part of my first quantifying paper) at 2024 LSA Annual Meeting, which took place from Jan 4-7, 2024 at Sheraton New York Times Square.
Please find below the title and a short abstract of my presentation:
Title: The distribution of the copula shi in Mandarin embedded and matrix sluicing
Abstract: In Mandarin sluicing, the copula shi may precede the wh-phrase and it's sometimes optional. This study investigates experimentally exactly when shi is optional. Many existing analyses claim that shi is optional only when the wh-phrase is complex. I present 2 naturalness rating experiments showing that shi is only optional in matrix sluicing, regardless of the wh-phrase. I argue that a general preference for complex wh-phrases gave the illusion that shi can be optional when the wh-phrase is complex. These findings challenge the assumptions existing analyses make about when shi is optional, thereby questioning their explanations for why shi is optional.