Yan Cong

丛芫

Hello!

My work explores language understanding in humans and machines, focusing on how they inform and enhance each other. Previously, I was an NLP researcher at the Feinstein Institutes. Before that, I completed my PhD in Linguistics from Michigan State University in August 2021, with an additional specialization in Cognitive Science. I have an MA in Second Language Studies from Hong Kong Baptist University.

Specializations

• Natural language understanding [Representative publication]

  Optimize language models to reason about enriched meanings effortlessly like humans do. If this optimization is successful, what does it imply about human cognition?

• Computational approach to language function and disfunction [Representative publication]

  Linguistic indices in language development, decline, and recovery

• Description and experiments in linguistic meaning [Representative publication]

  Gricean pragmatics; degree semantics; argument structure

[GitHub]    [Google Scholar]    [ResearchGate]    [OSF]    [NIH Biosketch]    [CV]

Email: cong4 at purdue dot edu

Last updated on Nov 2025