Research研究

Question. How can a word form serve as both a noun and a verb, as in a hammer and to hammer, while remaining easy to interpret? My dissertation, The Post-Emergence Development of Established Noun-to-Verb Conversions in Modern English (1920s–2010s): An Efficient Communication Perspective, treats this flexibility as a test case for efficient communication.

Findings. Across the past century, more frequent conversion accompanies more predictable contexts. Lexical properties, including semantic diversity, are associated with verbal expansion; growing flexibility also comes with restructuring of nominal and verbal meanings. Together, these studies connect contextual predictability, lexical meaning, and historical change.

问题： 同一个词形为何既能作名词又能作动词（如 a hammer 与 to hammer），却仍然易于理解？我的博士论文 The Post-Emergence Development of Established Noun-to-Verb Conversions in Modern English (1920s–2010s): An Efficient Communication Perspective 将这种灵活性作为检验高效交际的案例。

发现： 近一百年来，转类使用越频繁，其所在语境的可预测性越高。包括语义多样性在内的词汇属性与动词用法的扩展相关；灵活性的增强还伴随着名词义与动词义的语义重组。这些研究将语境可预测性、词汇意义与历时演变联系起来。

Large historical corpora also make other long-term changes visible: linguistic positivity in American English over two centuries, the use of numbers in TIME magazine from 1923 to 2008, and linguistic complexity in scientific writing from 1821 to 1920.

大规模历时语料库也让其他长期变化得以显现：两个世纪以来美国英语的语言积极性、1923–2008 年 TIME 杂志中的数字使用，以及 1821–1920 年科技写作的语言复杂度。

Collaborative projects apply the same corpus-based and quantitative methods to L2 writing: measuring proficiency through linguistic complexity and tracing the progressive construction in EFL writing.

在合作项目中，我将同样的语料库与定量方法用于二语写作研究：以语言复杂度衡量语言水平，追踪英语作为外语（EFL）写作中进行体构式的发展。