Aotao (John) Xu

I recently completed my PhD program at the University of Toronto and the University of Melbourne, where I worked with Yang Xu, Lea Frermann and Charles Kemp. In my graduate work, I have focused on studying various aspects of the temporal evolution of the lexicon, primarily using large-scale corpus analyses, computational modelling, and information theory. In future work, I aim to extend my past research while also expanding into new research areas broadly aligned with my interests in linguistics and computational cognitive science.

Papers

• Xu, A., Kemp, C., Frermann, L., and Xu, Y. (2025). Modelling compounding across languages with analogy and composition. Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. [pdf]
• Xu, A., Kemp, C., Frermann, L., and Xu, Y. (2024). Word reuse and combination support efficient communication of emerging concepts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [link] [preprint] [supplementary material] [OSF]
• Xu, A., Kemp, C., Frermann, L., and Xu, Y. (2023). Predicting strategy choice in word formation: A case study of reuse and compounding. Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. [pdf]
• Xu, A., Kemp, C., Frermann, L., and Xu, Y. (2022). Word formation supports efficient communication: The case of compounds. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. [pdf]
• Xu, A., Stellar, J., and Xu, Y. (2021). Evolution of emotion semantics. Cognition. [pdf] [supplementary material] [GitHub]
• Xu, A., and Xu, Y. (2021). Chaining and the formation of spatial semantic categories in childhood. In Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. [pdf]
• Tanchip, C., Yu, L., Xu, A., and Xu, Y. (2020). Inferring symmetry in natural language. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2020. [pdf]
• Xu, A., Stellar, J., and Xu, Y. (2020). Prototype theory and emotion semantic change. In Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. [pdf]
• Xu, A., Ramiro, C., and Xu, Y. (2019). A predictability-distinctiveness trade-off in the historical emergence of word forms. In Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. [pdf]