Queenie Chan joined the Department of Linguistics MA program in the Fall of 2014 and successfully defended her thesis, Cantonese Jihgei:  Subject-object Asymmetry & Non-Subject Antecedent Potential, on February 3, 2017.  Queenie was supervised by Dr. Chung-hye Han (Senior Supervisor) and Dr. Keir Moulton (Supervisor).

During the duration of Queenie’s MA program she worked as a TA for many undergraduate classes, and her interests led her to work in the Experimental Syntax Lab. Here Queenie talks about the process of writing and defending her MA thesis.

How did you define your thesis topic?

For my MA thesis, I conducted two experimental studies on Cantonese long distance anaphor and its antecedent potential. When I first entered the MA program I was really intrigued by the experimental work done at the Experimental Syntax Lab. My supervisor Dr. Chung-hye Han and I came up with the idea of my MA thesis as we talked about my research interests in experimental syntax, Cantonese, and anaphoric relations.

What was the writing process like for you?

It took me a bit more than two semesters to write my thesis. The writing process definitely wasn’t easy! I had a good start—I was feeling very motivated and I started on the easier chapters first (where I described the two experiments I conducted and presented relevant experimental results). But after that things went downhill quickly. It was a real challenge to finish my chapter on literature review.

What was your experience leading up to and during the defence?

I was both dreading it and excited about it! I was worried about a lot of things—forgetting what to say during my presentation, finding typos on my slides, getting challenging questions (the list goes on), but at the same time, I was so excited about so close to finishing my MA. Now I feel great! It was such a fantastic feeling to finish the defence, and to finally have time to just relax.

What’s next for you?

I’m actually teaching LING 222 this summer so I’ll be around for another semester. After that, I plan to work in industry.

Congratulations Queenie!