Jincheng Liu

Biography

Professor Jincheng Liu is a linguist specializing in Chinese syntax and semantics. His research interests include Chinese syntax and semantics, the history of the Chinese language, second language acquisition of Chinese, and Chinese pedagogy. Prior to joining the University of Notre Dame, he taught at the University of California, Davis (2008–2011) and Princeton University (2011–2016), where he also served as a trainer and admissions officer for both students and instructors in the Princeton in Beijing Program (2013–2016).

He is the co-author of two modern Chinese readers, Eyes on China (《我看中国》, 2019) and Small Things Writ Large (《小中见大》, 2026), both published by Princeton University Press. His paper, “The Realis Imperfective Marker -zhe in Chinese,” received the Sun Dejin Young Scholar Theses Award at the 7th International Forum on Linguistics and Chinese Education, held at Peking University in 2024.

Dr. Liu serves on the editorial board of Chinese as a Second Language, the flagship journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA), and leads Chinese Grammar Instruction and Research, a CLTA-affiliated Special Interest Group. He and Professor Yongping Zhu received the Asian Research Collaboration Grant to organize the Linguistic Research and Language Teaching Innovation Forum at Notre Dame Beijing, in collaboration with Beijing Normal University, in summer 2025. In addition, he received the International Research Travel Grant, as well as funding from the Liu Institute and the Franco Family Institute, to support his 2024 research on the acquisition of near-synonymous sentential constructions by learners of Chinese as a foreign language.