Yukun Yu

My research focuses on how children acquire language, particularly examining syntactic adaptation in early word learning. Through looking-time experiments with children aged 18-48 months, I've demonstrated that preschoolers modify their expectations about ambiguous syntactic contexts based on recent input, with these adaptation effects lasting up to one day in 3-year-olds. I provided the first evidence that even toddlers as young as 18 months can adjust syntactic expectations in response to recent experiences.

Beyond syntax acquisition, my work also looks at real-time language processing, investigating how children integrate verb semantics with situation models during comprehension. Using eye-tracking methodology, I've shown that children aged 4-5 can process subtle word presuppositions and use them predictively. My ongoing projects examine verb-bias learning in ambiguity resolution and syntactic bootstrapping mechanisms.