Elaine Lau
Aloha!
Updates:
(08.08.2025)
Words to Action
This year, I am taking my research of syntactic acquisition out of my comfort zone with the Chinese languages to explore languages that I don't even know how to speak! Child language research need to expand beyond the well-studied languages!
Thanks to my wonderful collaborators and students, so far we have explored...
- Russian (with Anna Nishikina)
- Malaysian Chinese and English (with Tan Emelia Jo Wyn)
- Tagalog (with Nozomi Tanaka and Aster Leung)
and the Chinese acquisition and NCS studies are still going on.....
!!!!!WANTED!!!!!!
Looking for (part-time) research assistants!!! If you know of any good potentials that would be interested in working on a project in child language development in Chinese and/or non-Chinese languages in Hong Kong or literacy resources in local communities of Hong Kong, please feel free to let me know!
- RA #1: Cantonese / monolingual syntactic development / 2 yrs / PT/FT
- RA #2: Mandarin / monolingual syntactic development / 2 yrs / PT/FT
- RA #3: English / access to local ethnic minority community and/or knowing the language would be a bonus / 18mths / PT
present
Head, Research Office
Assistant Professor (Linguistics)
Yew Chung College of Early Childhood Education
Adjunct Professor
Department of Linguistics
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Honorary Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics
PAST
Research Associate
Centre for University & School Partnership (CUSP)
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Postdoctoral Fellow
CUHK Jockey Club AI for the Future Project
Faculty of Engineering
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Postdoctoral Fellow
Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre
University of Cambridge - Chinese University of Hong Kong Joint Laboratory for Bilingualism
PhD in Linguistics
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Advanced Graduate Certificate in Second Language Studies
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
MPhil in Linguistics
University of Hong Kong
Bachelor of Cognitive Science
University of Hong Kong
Research interests
Psycholinguistics
Language Acquisition (L1, L2, multilingual, heritage language)
Language Processing (comprehension vs. production)
Syntax
Chinese (including Cantonese, and Mandarin Chinese)
contact
[YCCECE] elaine.lau at yccece dot edu dot hk
[CUHK] elaine at cuhk dot edu dot hk