As a specialist in theoretical and applied linguistics, Kuo-ming Sung is looking for the "universals" that tie all languages together. His research interests focus on generative phonology and comparative syntax between Indo-European languages and East Asian languages. Despite the superficial differences among them, Sung searches for the underlying common principles that govern the structure of all languages, by examining cross-linguistic data.
Son of a high school principal, Sung, associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures, was born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan, and taught English at a prep school while fulfilling his two-year required military obligation. He joined the Lawrence faculty in 1994 after spending three years as a Chinese lecturer at UCLA and was promoted to his current rank in 2000.
The author of ten published articles, Sung presented the paper, "Subjectivity and Constraints on Embedding" in June at the Ninth International Conference on Chinese Linguistics at the National Singapore University. His first book, Jufa Lilun Gaiyao (Introduction to Syntax), was published in 1997 by the Chinese Social Sciences Press in Beijing, and he currently is working on a second book, A Reference Grammar of Mandarin Chinese. In the latter, which he is writing as a comprehensive reference tool to be used by language professors and students alike, Sung is combining his theorical research with pedalogical grammar to explain why languages function the way they do.
He has been actively involved with Lawrence's National Security Education Program grant-supported Building Bridges through Practical Chinese internship program and made three trips to China in the summers of 1997-99 to visit with students who were there participating in the program. He will be returning to Asia in 2001 as field director of the Associated Colleges in China program, a Chinese-language program based at Beijing's Capital University of Economics and Business.
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