Waltraud Paul

Waltraud Paul is a Research Director at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), affiliated with the Center for Linguistic Research on East Asia (CRLAO) since 1994. She is a member of Research Team II focusing on Formal Syntax and Semantics of Contemporary East Asian Languages: Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese. Her work is centered at the Condorcet Campus in Aubervilliers, France.

Dr. Paul's primary research focuses on the syntax of modern Mandarin Chinese, with additional work in diachronic syntax of Chinese. Her specific interests include the structure of the extended VP in Mandarin, the ba-construction, focus cleft constructions (shi...de), left periphery and low IP areas including topic markers and sentence-final particles, adjective vs verb distinctions, adjectival modification, double object constructions, syntax/semantics mismatches, and serial verb constructions. She has made significant contributions to understanding the formal structure of Chinese syntax within broader linguistic theory.

Her recent publications demonstrate continued engagement with fundamental questions in Chinese syntax, particularly regarding sentence-final particles, aspect marking, small clauses, and topic prominence. Her work consistently bridges theoretical linguistics with detailed empirical analysis of Chinese language phenomena.

Dr. Paul serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious linguistics journals, including Glossa (associate editor since 2016, interim co-editor-in-chief in 2015), Linguistic Inquiry (associate editorial board since 2018), and previously Lingua (2010-2015) and Linguistics Notebooks – Asia - Oriental (co-editor-in-chief 1992-2000).

She has authored two influential books: "New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax" (2015) and "The Syntax of Verb-Object Phrases in Chinese: Constraints and Reanalysis" (1988), both contributing significantly to the field of Chinese linguistics and theoretical syntax more broadly.