Elaine Lau
conference PRESENTATIONS
Pan, Xuqing, Melinda Wang, Elaine Lau, Maggie Chan, and Cathy Hung. (2024). What will children do when hearing praises of others: the effect of overhearing praises on young children’s persistence. Paper presentation at PECERA 2024 Conference, Tokyo, Japan.
Lau, Elaine. (2024). Using linguistic microvariations in child language acquisition: A case of passives in Cantonese and Mandarin. Paper presentation at The NINJAL-UHM Linguistics Workshop 2024, Honolulu, Hawai’i.
Lau, Elaine. (2023). Minimal variations in closely related languages can lead to differences in age of acquisition: Implications for multilingual acquisition in early childhood. Paper presentation at PECERA 2023 Conference, Bali, Indonesia.
Lau, Elaine. (2023). Integrating Morphosyntactic and Discourse Cues to Process Sentences: Insights from Turkish, Cantonese, and English. Symposium presentation at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) 2023 Biennial Meeting, Salt Lake City, USA. (with Özge Günay & Duygu Özge, Jacky Chan et al., and Charles C.-J. Lin)
Yin, Hongbiao, Alan Cheung, Winnie W. Y. Tam, and Elaine Lau. (2023, May). Facilitating play-based learning for whole-child development in Hong Kong Kindergartens. Paper presented at the 2023 Annual Meeting of American Educational Research Association (Virtual), Chicago, USA.
Zhuang, Kristen (Qiqi), and Elaine Lau. (2022). Take it or deny it? – The effect of conflicting sociopragmatic norms and values in L1 and L2 on the response strategies to compliments by Chinese ESL learners. Poster presenting at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD), Boston, USA. [PDF]
Yin, Hongbiao, Winnie. W. Y. Tam, and Elaine Lau. (2022). Facilitating teacher self-efficacy in Hong Kong kindergartens: The significance of emotional paths. Paper presented at the 2022 Annual Meeting of American Educational Research Association, San Diego, USA.
Lau, Elaine, and Virginia Yip. (2019). The curious case of the obligatory agent: Acquisition of passives (bei/jiao/rang/gei) in Mandarin. Poster presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD), Boston, USA. [PDF]
Lau, Elaine. (2019). The effect of animacy: agency or subjecthood? Poster presented at the NINJAL-UHM Linguistics Workshop on Syntax-Semantics Interface, Language Acquisition, and Naturalistic Data Analysis, Hawaii, USA. [PDF]
Lau, Elaine. (2018). Default animacy configuration is not always preferred: the effect of animacy on the acquisition of passives. Poster presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD), Boston, USA. [PDF]
Grüter, Theres, Elaine Lau, and Wenyi Ling. (2018). How classifiers facilitate processing in L2 Chinese. Talk presented at the 2nd International Symposium on Bilingual Processing in Adults and Children (ISBPAC), Braunschweig, Germany.
Lau, Elaine, Ziyin Mai, and Virginia Yip. (2017). Syntactic optionality delays acquisition: late acquisition of passives in Mandarin vs. early acquisition in Cantonese. Talk presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD), Boston, USA. [PDF]
Grüter, Theres, Elaine Lau, and Wenyi Ling. (2017). L2 listeners rely on the semantics of classifiers to predict. Poster presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD), Boston, USA. [PDF]
Lau, Elaine. (2017). Topicality makes the subject salient: The key to the universal subject preference in the acquisition of relative clauses. Poster presented at IASCL2017: 14th International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Lyon, France.
[PDF]
Grüter, Theres, Elaine Lau, and Wenyi Ling. (2017). Shape classifiers and referential processing in Mandarin: Noun class trumps semantics. Poster presented at the 30th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Boston, USA. [PDF]
Wu, Jasper, Gillian Yeung, Jeremy Ng, and Elaine Lau. (2016). Intra-sentential code-switching of Cantonese-English bilinguals in Hong Kong: An experimental approach for the evaluation of the Matrix Language Frame model. Talk presented at the Annual Research Forum of the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Lau, Elaine. (2016). Distinguishing ambiguity: Cantonese speakers not using prosody to disambiguate surface identity in syntax. Poster presented at the 5th Joint Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the Acoustical Society of Japan, Honolulu, USA.
Lau, Elaine. (2016). AI > IA: The effect of animacy in the production of Cantonese relative clauses. Poster presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD), Boston, USA.
Lau, Elaine. (2016). The curious case of resumptive pronouns in Cantonese relative clauses. Poster presented at The Workshop on Experimental Approaches to East Asian Linguistics, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, USA.
Lau, Elaine, and Stephen Matthews. (2016). A patient-subject construction in Cantonese. Talk presented at the 20th International Conference on Yue Dialects, Hong Kong.
Lau, Elaine. (2016). The curious case of resumptive pronouns in Cantonese relative clauses. Poster presented at The Workshop on Experimental Approaches to East Asian Linguistics, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, USA.
Lau, Elaine, and Theres Grüter. (2015). The informativity of classifiers in the processing of Chinese by non-native speakers. Poster presented at the 28th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Lau, Elaine, and Theres Grüter. (2014). Real-time processing of classifier information by L2 speakers of Chinese. Talk presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD), Boston, MA, USA.
Lau, Elaine. (2010). Complete uniformity: Early acquisition of the passive in Cantonese. Talk presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD), Boston, USA.
Chan, Angel, Elaine Lau, Elena Lieven, and Michael Tomasello. (2008). Cantonese children’s processing of relative clauses: cross-linguistic comparisons with English and German children. Poster presented at the International Congress for the Study of Child Language (IASCL), Edinburgh, UK.
Lau, Elaine, and Angel Chan. (2007). Cantonese children’s acquisition of relative clauses: cross-linguistic comparisons with English and German children. Talk presented at the Interdisciplinary Approaches to Relative Clauses, Cambridge, UK.
Lau, Elaine. (2006). Acquisition of relative clauses by Cantonese children. Poster presented at the Conference on Language Acquisition in the Chinese Context (LACC), Hong Kong.
invited talks
Lau, Elaine. (2022). Eyes - Window to the mind: Incremental language processing in L1 vs. L2 Chinese speakers (眼睛 - 探索心智之窗: 比較中文母語者和中文學習者在實時語言處理上的異同), Invited talk at the Department of Chinese Language Studies,
the Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Lau, Elaine. (2021). R&D+ = Research and Design: New mentality for the future generation. Invited talk at the SD+ Forum (Creative Education), the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Lau, Elaine. (2021). The Developing Grammar: Milestones in the development of Cantonese and Mandarin. Invited talk at the Department of Educational Psychology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Lau, Elaine, and Li, Scarlet W. Y. (2019). Bilingualism: Unleashing your cognitive powers. Invited talk at the Rotaract Club of Tai Po 2018 - 2019 Annual General Meeting cum Professional Development Talk, Hong Kong.
Lau, Elaine. (2018). Know a little more about your child’s language development, Panel talk at the Symposium on Childhood Bilingualism and Heritage Language Acquisition, Shenzhen, China.
Lau, Elaine. (2018). Acquisition of passive voice: Cantonese vs. Mandarin, Invited talk at the Department of English Language & Literature, National University of Singapore, Singapore,
Lau, Elaine. (2017). Processing of Chinese classifiers in L1 vs. L2: What linguistic cues are used to make prediction? Invited talk at the International Conference on Bilingualism: Language & Heritage. Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Lau, Elaine. (2017). Experimental research methods in child language acquisition research. Research training workshop at The School of Chinese as a Second Language, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Lau, Elaine, and Ziyin Mai. (2017). Passive constructions in child Cantonese and Mandarin. Invited talk at the Annual Meeting of the Taiwan Society for Cognitive Neuroscience (臺灣認知神經科學學會年會暨研討會), Taipei, Taiwan.
Lau, Elaine. (2017). Eyes are the window to language processing: Eyetracking in incremental language processing research. Invited talk at the 6th International Symposium on Chinese Language Teaching for Young Scholars (第六屆中青年學者漢語教學國際學術研討會), Beijing, China.
Lau, Elaine. (2016). A multi-factorial perspective on the acquisition of Cantonese relative clauses. Invited seminar at HKU Linguistics Seminar Series, Department of Linguistics, The University of Hong Kong.
Lau, Elaine. (2015). Online processing of classifier information by native and non-native speakers of Chinese. Invited seminar at Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Lau, Elaine. (2014). The informativity of classifiers in the processing of Chinese by native and non-native speakers. Invited seminar at the Cognition & Hemispheric Asymmetry Lab, The University of Hong Kong.
Lau, Elaine. (2011). Being faithful: tone-melody relationship in Cantonese. Invited talk at the International Conference on Bilingualism and Comparative Linguistics, Hong Kong.
Lau, Elaine. (2007). Acquisition of Relative Clauses by Cantonese Children. Invited seminar at the Linguistics Department Tuesday Seminar, Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Lau, Elaine. (2006). The Acquisition of Cantonese Relative Clauses: an Experimental Approach. Invited seminar at the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Lau, Elaine. (2006). Properties of Chinese syntax and the Syntactic Development of Cantonese Children. Invited seminar at the Department of Linguistics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.