JAMES MYERS
Graduate Institute of Linguistics National Chung Cheng University Min-Hsiung, Chia-Yi 621301 Taiwan Lngmyers at ccu dot edu dot tw
Teaching
I teach phonology, psycholinguistics, statistics, empirical methods, morphology, cognitive science (cotaught with faculty in psychology and philosophy), and other weird things.
Fall 2024
Office hours: Wednesday 10 am - 12 noon, or by appointment (made at least 24 hours ahead)
Old classes
Introduction to linguistics
Methods and history
Morphology
Phonology
Psycholinguistics
Statistics and mathematics
Writing systems
Research
My research program looks coherent to me anyway: it's all about trying to figure out the relationship between mental grammar and rote memory - a task that has led me in recent years into methodological questions. I mainly do phonology and morphology with a psycholinguistic edge, and have recently worked mainly on Chinese.
Web resources
Research works
Several of the PDFs below contain Chinese fonts, which may choke ordinary versions of Acrobat Reader. Email me if you fail to get a paper you want.
NOTE: If some papers don't open automatically when you click on the links, you can still save them directly to your computer and open them from there.
You can use the following menus to restrict display to certain types of works (e.g., only journal articles on the processing of Mandarin morphology). Click CHOOSE to choose. Click RESET to display everything again.
Area Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics
Approach Grammar Processing Methodology
Language Mandarin Southern Min English TSL
Publication type Book Journal article Book chapter Proceedings Conference talk Manuscript
Myers, J. (2019). The grammar of Chinese characters: Productive knowledge of formal patterns in an orthographic system. London: Routledge. [Revised paperback 2021] [Routledge book page]
Myers, J. (2024). Intuition, intonation, inconsistency, and innateness. Theoretical Linguistics, 50(3-4), 255-263.
Myers, J. (2024, October). Synchronic and diachronic ordering in Chinese character form patterns. Presented virtually at Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, October 23-25. Venice.
Myers, J. (2024, October). The “phonetics” of Chinese character stroke order. Invited talk at the 25th National Conference on Linguistics (NCL 2024), October 19. Hsinchu.
Myers, J. (2024, June). Prosody-like asymmetries in handwritten Chinese characters. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, June 17-19. Ottawa.
Myers, J. (2024). Interactions among patterns in Chinese character form. In J. Myers, J. & J. H-Y. Tai (Eds.) Looking at language from all sides 《語言面面觀》 (pp. 129-152). Taipei: Crane Publishing.
Myers, J. (2024, February). Quantitative evidence for a grammatical analysis of Chinese character component size. Poster presented at the 46th Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), February 27 - March 1. Ruhr University Bochum.
Myers, J. (2023). Nonstatistical things that linguists can do with R: A review with a case study on Chinese handwriting. In C.-J. C. Lin, A. Cherici, & B. Chen (Eds.) Proceedings of the 34th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-34). Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana University Bloomington.
Myers, J. (2023). Chinese character grammar and Chinese teaching. Presented at 中文識字與閱讀理解國際工作坊 (International Workshop of Chinese characters and reading), June 2-3, 2023. (Summary of Myers, 2022, Teaching Chinese character grammar)
Myers, J. (2023). Interactions among patterns in Chinese character form. National Chung Cheng University ms.
Myers, J. (2022). Teaching Chinese character grammar. Chinese Language Learning and Technology 《臺大華語文學習與科技》, 2(2), 1-37.
Myers, J. (2022, September). Thin & curvy: Unconscious knowledge of a subtle Chinese character stroke pattern. Presented online at The 34th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-34), September 23-25 (hybrid conference hosted at Indiana University Bloomington).
Myers, J. (2022). Wordhood and disyllabicity in Chinese. In C.-R. Huang, Y.-H. Lin, & I-H. Chen (Eds.) Cambridge handbook of Chinese linguistics (pp. 47-73). Cambridge University Press.
Myers, J. (2022). The lexical “morphology” and “phonology” of Chinese character form. Talk presented online at 35e Journées de linguistique d’Asie orientale [35th Paris Meeting on East Asian Linguistics], July 7-9.
Myers, J. & Chen, T.-Y. (2022). An online exploration of cross-linguistic variation in wordlikeness judgments. Poster presented online at Laboratory Phonology 18, June 22-25.
Myers, J. (2021). Areal script form patterns with Chinese characteristics. Written Language & Literacy, 24(2), 259-283. [Official page]
Myers, J. (2021). Meta-megastudies. In G. Libben, G. Jarema, & V. Kuperman (Eds.) Polylogues on the mental lexicon: An exploration of fundamental issues and directions, pp. 17-43. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Slight updating of the 2016 journal article of the same name, plus critiques by the other book contributors.
Chen, T.-Y., & Myers, J. (2021). Worldlikeness: A Web crowdsourcing platform for typological psycholinguistics. Linguistics Vanguard,7(s1), 20190011.
Myers, J. (2021). Levels of structure within Chinese character constituents. In Y. Haralambous (Ed.) Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century: From graphemes to knowledge, Part II (pp. 645-582). Paris: Fluxus Editions.
Myers, J. (2020, September). Grapheme size is processed like stress: Experimental evidence from Chinese script. Presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2020).
Myers, J., with Chen, X. (2019). 《漢字語法規則》概略 [Translation of Précis of The grammar of Chinese characters]. National Chung Cheng University ms.
Myers, J. (2019, December). 漢字結構是否相似於韻律結構？ Presented at 漢字的多元面向：跨領域對話的契機, National Tsinghua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
Tsay, J., Myers, J., & Tai, J. H-Y. (2019). A longitudinal study of communicative efficiency in Taiwan Sign Language and Mandarin. In KIKUSAWA Ritsuko and SANO Fumiya (Eds.) Senri Ethnological Studies, 101 [Minpaku sign Language Studies, 1], pp. 133-145. Osaka, Japan: National Museum of Ethnology.
Myers, J. (2019, September). What Chinese character structure tells us about reduplicative prosody. Presented at the The twelfth conference on Syntax, Phonology and Language Analysis (SinFonIJA 12). Brno, Czechia. [animated PPTX]
Myers, J. (2019). Précis of The grammar of Chinese characters. National Chung Cheng University ms.
Myers, J., & Chen, T.-Y. (2019, May). Variation in syllable decomposition across Sinitic languages. Presented at the 27th Annual Conference of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics (IACL-27). Kobe, Japan.
Myers, J. (2019, March). The influence of Chinese character form on neighboring orthographic systems. Presented at the 12th International Workshop of the Association for Written Language and Literacy (AWLL-12). Cambridge, UK.
Tsay, J., & Myers, J. (2018). Communicative efficiency in child Mandarin. Proceedings of the 32nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong.
Myers, J., & Chen, T.-Y. (2018, October). Productive knowledge of formal regularities in Chinese characters. ICPEAL 17 - CLDC 9, Taipei. (Warning: conference link may automatically open/download a PDF file, depending on your browser)
Myers, J. (2018). The influence of Chinese character form regularities on other orthographic systems. National Chung Cheng University ms. [rejected conference abstract: reviews]
Chen, T.-Y., & Myers, J. (2017). Worldlikeness: A Web application for typological psycholinguistics. National Tsing Hua University and National Chung Cheng University ms.
Myers, J. (2017, October). Prosodic structure in Chinese characters, revisited. 2017 ILAS Workshop on Phonetics and Phonology, Taipei.
Myers, J. (2017). Acceptability judgments. [Published online version] In M. Aronoff (Ed.) Oxford research encyclopedia of linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Myers, J. (2017). The time course of metalinguistic well-formedness judgments in a natural visual system. National Chung Cheng University ms (draft of withdrawn conference talk).
Myers, J., & Chen, T.-Y. (2017, September). Linguistic typology and cross-linguistic psycholinguistics. 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE-50), Zurich, Switzerland.
Chen, T.-Y., & Myers, J. (2017, September). Cross-linguistic variation in phonemic decomposition. 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE-50), Zurich, Switzerland.
Myers, J. (2017, June). Grammaticalization frozen in ink: Chinese character semantic radicals as proto-affixes. The 25th meething of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics (IACL25), Budapest.
Myers, J. (2017). Yet another statistics-for-linguists book. National Chung Cheng University ms.
Myers, J. (2017). Wordlikeness judgments and the syntactic categories of Chinese compound roots. National Chung Cheng University ms (rejected conference abstract).
Chen, T.-Y., & Myers, J. (2017). Worldlikeness: A Web-based tool for typological psycholinguistic research. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 23(1), Article 4, 20-30.
Sybesma, R., Behr, W., Gu, Y., Handel, Z., Huang, C.-T. J., & Myers, J. (Eds.) (2017). Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. [Published online version]
Myers, J. (2017). Morphological processing of compounds, behavioral studies. [Published online version] In R. Sybesma, W. Behr, Y. Gu, Z. Handel, C.-T. J. Huang, & J. Myers (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics, vol. 3 (pp. 94-100). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
Myers, J. (2017). Psycholinguistics, overview. [Published online version] In R. Sybesma, W. Behr, Y. Gu, Z. Handel, C.-T. J. Huang, & J. Myers (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics, vol. 3 (pp. 473-484). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
Myers, J. (2017). Psychological reality of linguistic structure. [Published online version] In R. Sybesma, W. Behr, Y. Gu, Z. Handel, C.-T. J. Huang, & J. Myers (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics, vol. 3 (484-488). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
Myers, J. (2017). Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. [Published online version] In R. Sybesma, W. Behr, Y. Gu, Z. Handel, C.-T. J. Huang, & J. Myers (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics, vol. 3 (pp. 654-658). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
Myers, J. (2017). Sign languages, overview. [Published online version] In R. Sybesma, W. Behr, Y. Gu, Z. Handel, C.-T. J. Huang, & J. Myers (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Chinese language and linguistics, vol. 4 (pp. 88-92). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
Myers, J. (2016). Meta-megastudies. The Mental Lexicon, 11(3), 329-349.
Myers, J. (2016, December). Chinese character form and the mathematics of productivity. International Conference on Asian Linguistics 2016, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Myers, J. (2016, September). Word size in spoken and written Mandarin Chinese. 49th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE-49), Naples, Italy. [It was the third best poster at the whole dang blamed thing!]
Myers, J., & Chen, T-Y. (2016, July). The time course of sociolinguistic influences on wordlikeness judgments. In preconference proceedings of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) Tutorial and Research Workshop on Experimental Linguistics (ExLing-2016), Saint Petersburg, Russia. [Updated slides]
Myers, J. (2016). Knowing Chinese character grammar. Cognition, 147, 127-132. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.11.012. [Materials and raw data]
Myers, J. (2015). Markedness and lexical typicality in Mandarin acceptability judgments. Language & Linguistics, 16(6), 791-818.
Myers, J. (2015). What makes a good Chinese word? A novel test of morphological productivity. Talk presented at the 9th Conference of the European Association of Chinese Linguistics, Stuttgart, Germany.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2015). Trochaic feet in spontaneous spoken Southern Min. In H. Tao, Y.-H. Lee, D. Su, K. Tsurumi, W. Wang, & Y. Yang (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics, Vol. 2, 368-387. Los, Angeles: UCLA.
Myers, J. (2015). Stuck in the middle: Mandarin medials in articulation, parsing, and association. In Y. E. Hsiao & L.-H. Wee (Eds.) Capturing phonological shades within and across languages (pp. 101-119). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Myers, J. (2014, October). Neighborhood effects in wordlikeness judgments of nonlexical Mandarin disyllables. Ninth International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON, Canada.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2013, September). Distinguishing grammar from analogy in Mandarin wordlikeness judgments. Presented at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Split University, Croatia.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2013, June). Mandarin nonsense in the Taiwanese neighborhood. Presented at The 21st Annual Conference of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2013, May). Modeling universal and lexical influences on phonotactic judgments. Presented at The 4th International Theoretical Phonology Conference, National Chengchi University, Taipei.
Lai, Y.-D., & Myers, J. (2012). The recognition of spoken mono-morphemic compounds in Chinese. Taiwan Journal of Linguistics, 10 (2), 41-88.
Myers, J. (2012). Chinese as a natural experiment. In G. Libben, G. Jarema, & C. Westbury (Eds.), Methodological and analytic frontiers in lexical research (pp. 155-169). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Slight updating of Myers, J. (2010). Chinese as a natural experiment. The Mental Lexicon, 5 (3), 423-437. doi:10.1075/ml.5.3.09mye.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2012, November). Phonotactic knowledge and Universal Learning. Presented at The Workshop on Phonological Markedness, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2012, September). The interaction of markedness and experience in phonotactic judgments. Presented at SLE 2012: 45th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Stockholm, Sweden.
Myers, J. (2012, August). Levels of analysis in the generalization of Chinese character regularities. Presented at CogSci 2012: The 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Sapporo, Japan.
Myers, J. (2012). Cognitive styles in two cognitive sciences. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2067-2072). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Ruan, J.-C., Hsu, C.-W., Myers, J., & Tsay, J. S. (2012). Development and testing of transcription software for a Southern Min spoken corpus. International Journal of Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing, 17 (1), 1-26.
Myers, J. (2012). Testing adjunct and conjunct island constraints in Chinese. Language and Linguistics, 13 (3), 437-470. [SSCI] Data file: synexp.txt
Chen, S.-W., Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (officially 2010, though only appeared in 2012). Testing the allomorph selection hypothesis in Taiwanese tone sandhi. In L. E. Clemens & C.-M. L. Liu (Eds.) Proceedings of the 22nd North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-22) & the 18th International Conference on Chinese Linguistics (IACL-18), vol. 1 (pp. 283-300). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
Myers, J. (2012). All about fruit. National Chung Cheng University ms.
Myers, J. (Ed.). (2012). In search of grammar: Empirical methods in linguistics. Language and Linguistics Monograph Series 48. Taipei, Taiwan: Language and Linguistics.
Myers, J. (2012). Methods in search of grammar, grammar in search of methods. In J. Myers (Ed.) In search of grammar: Empirical methods in linguistics (pp. 1-27). Language and Linguistics Monograph Series 48. Taipei, Taiwan: Language and Linguistics.
Myers, J. (2012). Testing phonological grammars with lexical data. In J. Myers (Ed.) In search of grammar: Empirical methods in linguistics (pp. 141-176). Language and Linguistics Monograph Series 48. Taipei, Taiwan: Language and Linguistics.
Ann, J., Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2011). Lexical and articulatory influences on phonological processing in Taiwan Sign Language. In R. Channon & H. van der Hulst (Eds.) Formational units in sign language (pp. 107-124). Berlin: De Gruyter.
Myers, J., Tsay, J. S., & Su, S.-F. (2011). Representation efficiency and transmission efficiency in sign and speech. In J. Chang (Ed.) Language and cognition: Festschrift in honor of James H-Y. Tai on his 70th birthday (pp. 171-199). Taipei: Crane Publishing.
Myers, J. (2011, September). The psychological reality of formal regularities in Chinese characters. Talk presented at the 7th Conference of the European Association of Chinese Linguistics, Venice, Italy.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2011, July). Phonetic, phonotactic, and neighborhood effects on syllable production in child Southern Min. Poster presented at the 12th International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Montreal, Canada.
Myers, J. (2010). Chinese as a natural experiment. The Mental Lexicon, 5 (3), 423-437. doi:10.1075/ml.5.3.09mye. Updated slightly as Myers, J. (2012). Chinese as a natural experiment. In G. Libben, G. Jarema, & C. Westbury (Eds.), Methodological and analytic frontiers in lexical research (pp. 155-169). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Myers, J., & Ko, Y. (2010, August). An experimental test of the temporal sequence principle in Chinese. Poster presented at the Seventh International Conference on Cognitive Science, Beijing, China.
Lin, Y.-L., & Myers, J. (2010, February). Testing universal grammar in phonological artificial grammar learning. Talk presented at the International Conference on Linguistic Evidence 2010, Tübingen, Germany.
Tsay, J., & Myers, J. (2009). The morphology and phonology of Taiwan Sign Language. In J. H-Y. Tai & J. Tsay (Eds.) Taiwan Sign Language and beyond (pp. 83-129). Chia-Yi, Taiwan: The Taiwan Institute for the Humanities, National Chung Cheng University.
Myers, J. (2009, May). Cognitive, bio-, and psycholinguistics: Methods vs. hypotheses. Invited keynote speech, the 3rd Conference on Language, Discourse and Cognition (CLDC 2009), National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Myers, J. (2009). Automated collection and analysis of phonological data. In S. Featherston & S. Winkler (Eds.) The fruits of empirical linguistics: Volume 1: Process (pp. 151-176). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Myers, J., & Li, Y. (2009). Lexical frequency effects in Taiwan Southern Min syllable contraction. Journal of Phonetics, 37, 212-230. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2009.02.002 [SSCI]
Myers, J. (2009). The design and analysis of small-scale syntactic judgment experiments. Lingua, 119, 425-444. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2008.09.003 [SSCI] [Supplementary material]
Myers, J. (2009). Syntactic judgment experiments. Language & Linguistics Compass, 3 (1), 406-423. doi:10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00113.x
Myers, J. (2008, December). Empirical motivation for transparent interactions in the English lexicon. Invited colloquium talk, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2008, July). Memory and handedness effects on phonological judgments. Talk presented at the 18th International Congress of Linguists, Seoul, Korea.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2008). Neutralization in Taiwan Southern Min Tone sandhi. In Y. E. Hsiao, H.-C. Hsu, L.-H. Wee, and D.-A. Ho (Eds.) Interfaces in Chinese phonology: Festschrift in honor of Matthew Y. Chen on his 70th birthday (pp. 47-78). Language and Linguistics Monograph Series Number W-8. Taipei, Taiwan: Academia Sinica.
Myers, J. (2007). Bridging the gap: MiniCorp analyses of Mandarin phonotactics. In R. Colavin, K. Cooke, K. Davidson, S. Fukuda, & A. Del Guidice (Eds.) WECOL 2007: Proceedings of the thirty-seventh Western Conference on Linguistics, Vol. 18 (pp. 137-147). University of California, San Diego.
Ann, J., Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2007, December). Lexical and articulatory influences on the perception and production of words in Taiwan Sign Language. Poster presented at the 12th International Conference on the Processing of East Asia Related Languages, Tainan, Taiwan.
Huang, Y.-Y., & Myers, J. (2007, December). Morphological priming in suffixed and compound word in Chinese. Poster presented at the 12th International Conference on the Processing of East Asia Related Languages, Tainan, Taiwan.
Myers, J. (2007). MiniJudge: Software for small-scale experimental syntax. International Journal of Computational Linguistics and Chinese Language Processing, 12 (2), 175-194.
Myers, J. (2007). Linking data to grammar in phonology: Two case studies. Concentric, 33 (2), 1-22.
Myers, J., Huang, S.-F., & Tsay, J. (2007). Exact conditional inference for two-way randomized Bernoulli experiments. Journal of Statistical Software, 21, Code Snippet 1, 2007-09-02. [SCIE]
Myers, J. (2007). Generative morphology as psycholinguistics. In G. Jarema & G. Libben (Eds.), The mental lexicon: Core perspectives (pp. 105-128). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Myers, J. (2007, July). Frequency effects in lenition and the challenge of lexicalized markedness. Talk presented at the Workshop on Variation, Gradience and Frequency in Phonology. Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA.
Myers, J. (2007, April). Grammar & evidence: What are they anyway? Talk presented at the International Workshop on Grammar & Evidence, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan.
Myers, J. (2007, April). The components of phonological data. Talk presented at the International Workshop on Grammar & Evidence, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan.
Myers, J., Taft, M., & Chou, P. (2007). Character recognition without sound or meaning. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 35 (1), 1-57. [A&HCI]
Myers, J., & Tai, J. H.-Y. (2007). A critical review: The handbook of East Asian psycholinguistics, vol. 1: Chinese, by Ping Li, Li Hai Tan, Elizabeth Bates, & Ovid J. L. Tzeng (eds.) Cambridge University Press, 2006. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 35 (1), 145-175.
Myers, J., Huang, Y.-C., & Wang, W. (2006). Frequency effects in the processing of Chinese inflection. Journal of Memory and Language, 54 (3), 300-323. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2005.11.005 [SSCI]
Myers, J. (2006). Processing Chinese compounds: A survey of the literature. In G. Libben and G. Jarema (Eds.). The representation and processing of compound words (pp. 169-196). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Myers, J. (2006). MiniJudge: Software for minimalist experimental syntax. Proceedings of ROCLING 18 Conference on Computational Linguistics and Speech Processing (pp. 271-285). Hsinchu, Taiwan, September. [An updated version is here.]
Myers, J. (2006). Linguistics as cognitive psychology. Pre-Conference proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics & 10th International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics Joint Meeting (pp. 150-174). Taipei, Taiwan, May.
Myers, J. (2006, December). Isolating grammar in phonological data. Talk presented at the 2nd Workshop on Phonology in Taiwan, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
Myers, J., Libben, G., & Derwing, B. (2006, October). Form and meaning in the reading of Chinese compounds. Talk presented at the Fifth International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Montreal, Canada. [Click here for a sampler of the R code used to run the analyses.]
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2006, September). The relative efficiency of Taiwan Sign Language and (signed) Chinese. Talk presented at the First International Conference of Comparative Study of East Asian Sign Languages, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan.
Li, Y., & Myers, J. (2006, June). Lexical frequency effects in Southern Min syllable contraction. Poster presented at Laboratory Phonology 10, Paris, France.
Myers, J. (2006, April). MiniJudge: Software for minimalist experimental syntax. Paper presented at the 4th Workshop on Formal Syntax & Semantics (FOSS-4), Chiayi, Taiwan.
Myers, J. (2006). Tone circles and chance. National Chung Cheng University ms. [ROA 843-0606]
Myers, J. (2006). An experiment in minimalist experimental syntax. National Chung Cheng University ms. [Click here for files to help you replicate the analyses in the paper]
Li, Y., & Myers, J. (2005). Modeling variation in Taiwan Southern Min syllable contraction. Taiwan Journal of Linguistics, 3 (2), 79-118.
Myers, J., & Tai, J. H-Y. (Eds.) (2005). Special issue on Taiwan Sign Language. Language and Linguistics, 6 (2).
Myers, J., & Tai, J. H-Y. (2005). Preface to special issue on Taiwan Sign Language. Language and Linguistics, 6 (2), 181-185.
Myers, J., Lee, H.-H., & Tsay, J. (2005). Phonological production in Taiwan Sign Language. Language and Linguistics, 6 (2), 319-359.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2005). The processing of phonological acceptability judgments. Proceedings of Symposium on 90-92 NSC Projects (pp. 26-45). Taipei, Taiwan, May.
Myers, J., & Li, Y. (2005, May). Frequency effects and Optimality Theory. Paper presented at the First Theoretical Phonology Conference, Taipei, Taiwan. [ROA 810-0306]
Myers, J. (2005, April). Empirical methods for rationalist linguistics. Paper presented at the 3rd Workshop on Formal Syntax & Semantics (FOSS-3), Hsinchu, Taiwan.
Myers, J., Derwing, B., & Libben, G. (2004). The effect of priming direction on reading Chinese compounds. Mental Lexicon Working Papers, 1, 69-86. University of Alberta, Canada.
Wang, W., & Myers, J. (2004, June-July). The processing of affixation and compounding in Chinese. Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Windsor, Canada.
Myers, J., Libben, G., & Derwing, B. (2004, June-July). The nature of transparency effects in Chinese compound processing. Poster presented at the Fourth International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Windsor, Canada.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2004, June). Exploring performance-based predictors of phonological judgments in Mandarin. Poster presented at Laboratory Phonology 9, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2003). Investigating the phonetics of Mandarin tone sandhi. Taiwan Journal of Linguistics, 1 (1), 29-68.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2003). A formal functional model of tone. Language and Linguistics, 4 (1), 105-138.
Myers, J., Derwing, B., & Libben, G. (2003, October). The parameters of compound processing in Chinese. Paper presented at the International Mental Lexicon Research Group Meeting, Vienna, Austria.
Myers, J., Tsay, J., & Lee, H.-H. (2003, March). The processing of handshape change in Taiwan Sign Language. Paper presented at the International Symposium on Taiwan Sign Language Linguistics, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan.
Myers, J. (2002). Exemplar-driven analogy in Optimality Theory. In R. Skousen, D. Lonsdale and D. B. Parkinson (Eds.) Analogical Modeling: An exemplar-based approach to language (pp. 265-300). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Myers, J. (2002). An analogical approach to the Mandarin syllabary. Journal of Chinese Phonology, 11, 163-190.
Myers, J., & Gong S-P. (2002). Cross-morphemic predictability and the lexical access of compounds in Mandarin Chinese. Folia Linguistica, 26 (1-2), 65-96. [A&HCI]
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2002). Grammar and cognition in Sinitic classifier systems. Proceedings of the First Cognitive Linguistics Conference, 199-216. National Chengchi University, Taiwan.
Tsay, J., & Myers, J. (2002, December). Frequency effects in the production of Southern Min reduplication. Paper presented at the Tenth International Conference on Cognitive Processing of Chinese and Other Related Asian Languages (ICCPCORAL2002), Taipei.
Myers, J., & Lai, Y-D. (2002, December). The auditory lexical access of monomorphemic compounds. Paper presented at the Tenth International Conference on Cognitive Processing of Chinese and Other Related Asian Languages (ICCPCORAL2002), Taipei.
Myers, J., & Huang, Y.-C. (2002, October). Frequency effects in the processing of Chinese inflection. Paper presented at the Third International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, Banff, Alberta, Canada.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2002). Neutralization in Taiwanese tone sandhi. National Chung Cheng University ms. [revised, after dropping an experiment, as Myers & Tsay (2008)]
Tsay, J., & Myers, J. (2001). Processes in the production of Taiwanese tone sandhi: an acoustic phonetic study. The Proceeding of the 5th National Conference on Modern Phonetics, 233-237. Tsinghua University, Beijing. [superceded by Myers & Tsay (2002)]
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2001). Testing a production model of Taiwanese tone sandhi. Proceedings of the Symposium on Selected National Science Council Projects in General Linguistics from 1998-2000, 257-279. National Taiwan University, Taipei. [superceded by Myers & Tsay (in prep.)]
Lee, H.-H., Tsay, J., & Myers, J. (2001, December). Handshape articulation in Taiwan Sign Language and Signed Chinese. Paper presented at the Conference on Sign Linguistics, Deaf Education and Deaf Culture in Asia, Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Myers, J. (2000). Rules vs. analogy in Mandarin classifier selection. Language and Linguistics, 1 (2), 187-209.
Myers, J., & Tsay, J. (2000). The acquisition of the default classifier in Taiwanese. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Chinese Languages and Linguistics, 7, 87-106. Chiayi, Taiwan.
Tsay, J., Myers, J., & Chen X-J. (2000). Tone sandhi as evidence for segmentation in Taiwanese. Child Language Research Forum, 30, 211-218.
Myers, J. (2000, June). Possible syllables in Mandarin: computer modeling and behavioral data. Paper presented at the First Taiwan Cognitive Science Conference, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan.
Myers, J., Gong S-P, & Shen Z-G. (1999, July). The semantic content of the general classifier in Mandarin. Paper presented at the International Association of Chinese Linguistics Eighth Annual Conference, Melbourne, Australia.
Myers, J. (1999). Lexical phonology and the lexicon. National Chung Cheng University ms. [ROA 330-0699]
Myers, J. (1997). Canadian Raising and the representation of gradient timing relations. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, 27 (1), 169-184.
Myers, J. & Guy, G. R. (1997). Frequency effects in Variable Lexical Phonology. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 4 (1), 215- 228.
Myers, J. (1997, June). Yi-sandhi in Mandarin and the lexical/postlexical distinction. Paper presented at the Sixth International Conference on Chinese Linguistics, Leiden University, Netherlands.
Myers, J., Jusczyk, P. W., Kemler Nelson, D. G., Charles-Luce, J., Woodward, A., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (1996). Infants' sensitivity to word boundaries in fluent speech. Journal of Child Language, 23, 1-30. [SSCI]
Tsay, J., & Myers, J. (1996). Taiwanese tone sandhi as allomorph selection. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 22, 394-405.
Myers, J. (1996, June). Prosodic structure in Chinese characters. Poster presented at the Fifth International Conference on Chinese Linguistics, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan.
Kemler Nelson, D. G., Jusczyk, P. W., Mandel, D. R., Myers, J., Turk, A., & Gerken, L. A. (1995). The head-turn preference procedure for testing auditory perception. Infant Behavior and Development, 18, 111-116. [SSCI]
Myers, J. (1995, June). Nonlocal dissimilation in Mandarin syllables. Paper presented at the Joint Meeting of the Fourth International Conference on Chinese Linguistics and the Seventh North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Myers, J. (1995, September). The categorical and gradient phonology of variable t-deletion in English. Paper presented at the International Workshop on Language Variation and Linguistic Theory, University of Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Luce, P. A., Lyons, E. A., & Myers, J. (1994). The abstractness and specificity of lexical representations in memory: implications for models of spoken word recognition. Proceedings of the 1994 International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, Yokohama, Japan, S03-1.1 - S03-1.4.
Myers, J. & Luce, P. A. (1994, June). The representation of the place of nasal stops in word recognition. Paper presented at the Acoustical Society of American Spring Meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Myers, J. (1994). Rules, constraints and lexical phonology in Glenoe Scots. SUNY-Buffalo ms.[ROA 41-1294]
Myers, J. (1993, May). The abstractness of lexical representations. Paper presented at the Acoustical Society of American Spring Meeting in Ottawa, Canada.
Myers, J. (1993, April). Linguistic evidence for the function of prosodic and segmental processes. Paper presented at the Forum on Information-Based Linguistics, Tucson, Arizona.
Myers, J. (1992). The ordering of postlexical rules in English. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 18, 180-191.
Myers, J. (1989). Allomorphy in Tagalog reduplication. Proceedings of the Western Conference on Linguistics, 2, 211-222.
Myers, J. (1989, December). 'Spirantization' in Moore. Paper presented at Linguistics Society of America Winter Meeting, Washington, DC.
Biography
I was born in California but left before developing a phoneme inventory. I grew up in Shorewood, Wisconsin (on the fringes of Milwaukee), and got a BA in mathematics at Carleton College (Minnesota) in 1988. While still there I realized I was only a pretend mathematician, so the math department let me do my senior project on formal language theory. Meanwhile I was taking classes from Mike Flynn, who had just come from a job in the University of Arizona Linguistics Department. And that's where I ended up getting my PhD in 1993, with Mike Hammond (whose previous job had been in Milwaukee) as my thesis director. Of course, while in Arizona I realized I was only a pretend linguist too, so even though my thesis was nominally about phonological theory, it also had a lot of speech errors, experiments and other psycholinguistic mumbo-jumbo in it. My first job was back in the Rust Belt, as a shamefully lackadaisical postdoc in an NIH training grant with the "Spoken Language Group" (mainly psychologists) at SUNY-Buffalo (1993-1995). There I did stuff (see above) with Paul Luce (whose actual homepage is apparently top-secret) and the late great Peter Jusczyk, meanwhile coming to realize that I was, of course, only a pretend psychologist. My next job was one semester at York University in Toronto, teaching intro phonology and doing stuff (see above) with sociolinguist Greg Guy, and then I lucked onto a calendar-year job at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, teaching intro phonology and psycholinguistics (1996).
Eventually, after all of these wanderings, I came to realize that I was only a pretend American, so I fled the country to my current job at National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan, where I've been since 1997. They made me a full professor a while back (the main benefit so far is I have to go to more meetings). Fortunately my banishment coincided with the rise of the Web, so I still stay in active contact with folks in exotic countries, in particular Bruce Derwing and Gary Libben, both at the University of Alberta at Edmonton, with whom I've done some stuff (see above), and along with whom I play a small role on the editorial board of the new journal The Mental Lexicon.
Taiwan is, of course, The Renegade Province That China Vows to Reunite With The Mainland, By Force If Necessary. It is no longer the paradise of cheap pirated crap (that's China). Also, "Taiwan" is not synonymous with "Taipei," which is a three-hour drive (90 minutes by high-speed rail) from Chiayi county where I live, which is near the Tropic of Cancer, where the weather is somewhat better (though the earthquakes are worse, and ironically so is the air, since the rich Taipei factory owners put all their factories down here). My life here's pretty good, though my Chinese still sucks (scientists have proven that after five years of immersion in an L2 environment, you're basically screwed). Taiwan is a veritable cornucopia for (psycho)linguistics, since there are so many languages here; so far I've done stuff on Mandarin, Southern Min (Taiwanese), Taiwan Sign Language, and a tiny smattering on Formosan (Austronesian) languages.