Nianpo Su

Lecturer in Chinese

Office: 501 Kent Hall
Office Hours: MW 4:10-5:10 PM
Phone: TBD
Email: ns3834@columbia.edu

Educational Background

Ph.D. in Linguistics, Cornell University, 2026
B.A. in  Japanese Language and Literature, Tsinghua University, 2021

Research Interests

Theoretical syntax
Syntax-semantics interface
Experimental semantics
East Asian linguistics
Second language acquisition

Nianpo Su joined Columbia University as a full-time Lecturer in Chinese in the fall of 2026. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Cornell University, with a minor in Cognitive Science. Her dissertation, titled “Classifiers and DP Structure: Marking Definiteness and Beyond”, investigates how classifier languages encode definiteness, using both theoretical and experimental approaches. She has conducted fieldwork on Nuosu Yi and Northern Qiang, two minority languages spoken in Southwest China. Her research on definiteness in Nuosu Yi was published in Glossa in 2025. Before joining Columbia, she taught Chinese language courses at Cornell University.

Publications

Nianpo Su & Helena Aparicio. (forthcoming). Two types of demonstratives: Experiments in Mandarin and Nuosu Yi. Proceedings of the 36th Semantics and Linguistic Theory.

Nianpo Su. (2025). Classifiers and DP structure in Nuosu Yi: Evidence from tone. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 10(1).

Nianpo Su. (2025). A head movement analysis of Nuosu Yi CLF-D order. Proceedings of the 48th Annual Penn Linguistics Conference.

Nianpo Su & Helena Aparicio. (2023). NPI licensing and intrusion effects in Japanese. Proceedings of the 58th Chicago Linguistics Society Annual Meeting.

Nianpo Su & Yunchuan Chen. (2022). Can the head quantifier phrase reconstruct in doubly embedded Chinese relative clauses? Proceedings of the 45th Annual Penn Linguistics Conference.