Research

My interests are experimental psycholinguistics (especially artificial language learning), language evolution, language processing, efficient communication and the law of abbreviation, proper names and compositionality, and onomastics.

Projects

• 2026

  Does word class matter when speakers abbreviate? Evidence from sentence completion and dyadic communication

  MSc dissertation, University of Edinburgh

  I tested how word class, frequency and the pressure to communicate affect abbreviation. I ran artificial language experiments in English and Chinese, and an English communication game played in pairs. I built the experiments in jsPsych with a Python WebSocket server for real-time play, and analysed the data in R with logistic and mixed-effects regression. People were reluctant to shorten place-names, but personal names showed no reliable effect of the same kind.

• 2025

  From Cantonese Alleyways to Imperial Avenues: Onomastics in Hong Kong's Street-Names

  BA dissertation, University of Nottingham

  I built a corpus of 4,585 official Hong Kong street-names with their English and Chinese forms, and archived it openly on OSF. I adapted the Australian National Placenames Survey typology to a bilingual setting. The English and Chinese generic terms line up systematically, but not one to one. I also proposed "two-character stitching" as a word-formation pattern to test in experiments. An essay from this work was a joint winner of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland Essay Prize in 2025.

• 2024

  Usage labels in early nineteenth-century German-English dictionaries

  Research Assistant, University of Nottingham

  I studied evaluative usage labels in bilingual dictionaries. I chose the source dictionaries, designed the sampling method, and combined frequency analysis with close reading of selected lemmas. I presented the results as a poster, which won the runner-up presentation prize.

Publications

• In press
  Lin, X. From Cantonese Alleyways to Imperial Avenues: Onomastics in Hong Kong's Street-Names. Innervate.

Talks

• 2025
  Lin, X. From Cantonese Alleyways to Imperial Avenues: Onomastics in Hong Kong's Street-Names. Paper at the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland Autumn Conference (online), 25 October 2025.