Our enthusiastic congratulations to Ka Fai (Gary) Law in winning 1st Place in the Humanities Oral /Talk Presentation at the 40th Edward F. Hayes Advanced Research Forum, held on Friday, 6 March 2026! Yay! Gary, a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese Linguistics, presented on “The Production of Cantonese Sentence-Final Particles: Immersed Speakers vs. Heritage Speakers.” 

The presentation is based on part of his dissertation research on Perception and Production of Sentence-Final Particles by Cantonese Speakers from Diverse Backgrounds, which is advised by Professor Marjorie Chan, with committee members Professors Mineharu (“JJ”) Nakayama (DEALL) and Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (Linguistics).  

DEALL also had a second grad student, namely, Yuyang Han, presenting at the Humanities Oral/Talk Presentations. That means that two of the nine presenters in that session were from DEALL! Of the remaining seven presenters, two were from English, two from Linguistics, and one each from Anthropology, Musicology, and Department of Agricultural Communication, Education, and Leadership.  

Yuyang Han, a first-year Ph.D. student in DEALL, presented on a topic based on her term paper in Chinese 7385 (Chinese Dialects) in Autumn 2025: “Singing the Wrong Tongue: Dialectal Dissonance and the Performance of Authenticity in Silent Honor.”  

The Edward F. Hayes Advanced Research Forum, as indicated on its website, “showcases the innovative and exemplary research being conducted by Ohio State graduate students and postdoctoral scholars across the full range of graduate degree programs and research topics and facilitates fruitful exchanges between graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, faculty, the administration, and the public. … Cash prizes, totaling more than $17,000, will be awarded to the top-judged presentations in each academic area for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars [with] separate sessions for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.” 

Co-sponsors and organizational/operational support for the forum: Council of Graduate Students, Graduate School, Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, Enterprise for Research, Innovation, and Knowledge (ERIK), and Office of Student Life.