Today's number is 8.1 (An alternative look at the number 8.)
I belong to the Computational Linguistics group, Department of Computer Science, here at the u(t). My thesis advisor is Prof. Suzanne Stevenson. I have recently defended my PhD. You can find my thesis here.
My primary research interest includes, but not restricted to, language acquisition. I was, at one time, very interested in the transferability of verb properties from the one language to the other. This idea stems from various (psycho)linguistic observations that one's native tongue is useful in acquiring a new language.2 I have compiled a list, though not exhaustive, of Chinese verb features that may be useful (or hindering) the acquisition of coarse-grained semantic verb classes in English. You can read more about my work in my cv page.
Besides multilinguality, I used to spend most of my time completely obsessed with ways of measuring semantic distance and the nondual nature of semantics.
I graduated from u(w) with a Double Honours Co-op in Combinatorics and Optimization and Computer Science. I worked briefly before coming to u(t).
Click here for my cv.
1 This is not my favorite translation. For the
curious, check out Bradford Hatcher's excellent
translation/commentary.
2 Note that the learning process is bi-directional. One's
native language is influenced by the second language as well. The
language interaction in learning can be seen in many Third Language
Acquisition studies.
My family name is 曾. (You can read Chinese? Check this out.3) Tsang is a British romanization. It is not pronounced "seng1". Oh dear. There's nothing fishy about me. For the correct pronunciation, see here (click on the loudspeaker icon under the "zang1" entry).
3 Hey look, I have no clue if that stuff is reliable. It's the internet man.
Snail mail: Why?
Flame mail: firstname_initial yc lastname_initial sang 圓圈(at) cs 點(dot) toronto 點(dot) educational