Yang Wang

I am a 5th-year PhD candidate in the Linguistics department at UCLA. I am broadly interested in how structural properties of natural languages, especially (morpho-)phonology, are represented, computed and learned. To address these questions, I seek converging evidence from different methodologies, including traditional/formal linguistic analyses, mathematical investigations, computational modeling, and experimental studies.

My dissertation studies the computational nature and properties of the copying operation in human languages, focusing on reduplication in the phonology and morphology interface. I am advised by Tim Hunter and Bruce Hayes. My committee members are Claire Moore-Cantwell, Kie Zuraw, and Colin Wilson. I also work with Megha Sundara and I am a member of the UCLA Language Lab.