Keith Tse's blog

I am a linguist and I publish blogs regularly on a variety of topics, namely languages/linguistics, history/politics, drama/literature, numbers/mathematics and philosophy/reflexion. Please feel free to comment and get in touch! #keithtselinguist #humanlinguist #numbersandwords 組合與位置，構造和意思 組合與位置，構造和意思

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New blogpost: Save Cantonese

New blogpost: High Cantonese: Hong Kong's Linguistic and Cultural Heritage

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British Academy Early Career Researcher

British Academy Early Career Researcher

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Many thanks to @arika virapongse @kathleen stein-smith @alex lancaster for their participation and organisation of the event!

'Chinese dialectal grammar: book launch for "Human Connection and Linguistic Interfaces"'

After the launch of Independent Linguists Meet (ILM) led to regular gatherings of fellow independent linguists at Ronin and IGDORE, a discov

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Independent Linguists Meet (2025-)

Independent Linguists Meet (2025-)

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Call for Papers: Linguistic Interfaces and Human Connection

The Independent Linguists Meet (ILM) invites interested authors to submit proposals for chapter contributions exploring the intersections of language, identity, and the digitally mediated communication. We have updated the Call for Papers to provide clearer guidance on the thematic focus and narrative directions. If you have already submitted an abstract, no changes are necessary—your submission…

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Going Romance 2025

The following presentation was delivered orally at Going Romance 2005 in University of Venice on 4th December 2025: Here are the recordings on YouTube and Vimeo. It was a really good and enjoyable event!

Going Romance 2025

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Save Cantonese Volunteer Spotlight

I am greatly honoured to have been interviewed by Save Cantonese and featured in their blogpost. I hope to continue my contribution to them for many years to come! 

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Trial and Error

One of man’s most powerful instinct is curiosity, which underlies all our inventions, innovations and achievements. A powerful saying from Steve Young, author of ‘Great Failures of the Extremely Successful: Mistakes, Adversity, Failure and Other Steppingstones to Success‘: ‘If necessity is the mother of invention, then failure must be its father‘. Failures and setbacks are often prerequisites for…

Trial and Error

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The Great Revenge

There are many great events in history, especially in the past decade: The Great Recession (taking after The Great Depression in the 1930s), The Great Resignation. I guess another ‘Great’ that we could mention is ‘The Great Revenge’ which, as I have mentioned before, is crucial to my mode of working/thinking. We all fail at some point in our lives, and depeneding on one’s definition of ‘failure’,…

The Great Revenge

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Mental avenue

One would think that ideally the path to greatness and success is nice and smooth and the minds of successful people are always happy and calm. No. It is utterly naive to judge others solely on their outward appearance and think that just because they look happy and confident, they must also be so inside. There have been numerous studies and interviews that show that behind every successful…

Mental avenue

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Light Verbs

In the formal analysis of verbs, there is a tradition of decomposing and unifying different types of verbs in terms of arguments, which can fall into different thematic roles, as well as semantic primitive notions of DO, BECOME and BE that denote agency, change and state respectively. This forms the basis for argument and event structure in formal syntax where not only the arguments that saturate…

Light Verbs

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Inauguration of Independent Linguists Meet

At the inaugural meeting of Independent Linguists Meet held on 6th June 2025, I presented the following presentation on my origins and developments as a linguist, which has been uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo:   

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Derivational Economy and Linguistic Interfaces: Grammaticalization and ‘lateral’ grammaticalization

The following presentation ‘Derivational Economy and Linguistic Interfaces: Grammaticalization and “lateral” grammaticalization’ was presented online at the 2025 4th Conference in Biolinguistics and Language Acquisition (2025 第四届生物語言學暨語言習得研討會) at Beijing Foreign Studies University (北京外國語大學): 

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Derivational Economy and Linguistic Interfaces: Grammaticalization and ‘lateral’ grammaticalization

The following presentation ‘Derivational Economy and Linguistic Interfaces: Grammaticalization and “lateral” grammaticalization’ was presented online at the 2025 4th Conference in Biolinguistics and Language Acquisition (2025 第四届生物語言學暨語言習得研討會) at Beijing Foreign Studies University (北京外國語大學). 

Derivational Economy and Linguistic Interfaces: Grammaticalization and ‘lateral’ grammaticalization

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Inauguration of Independent Linguists Meet

At the inaugural meeting of Independent Linguists Meet held on 6th June 2025, I presented the following presentation on my origins and developments as a linguist, which has been uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo . 

Inauguration of Independent Linguists Meet

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Tossed about

Multitasking is indeed a useful technique, but it is only effective if one knows how to use it effectively. A famous saying in Chinese, ‘water can float your boat but can also capsize it’ (水能載舟，也能覆舟). The same technique (here time management in the form of doing multiple things concurrently) can help you reach high levels of productivity but it can also impede you if it is somehow misused or not…

Tossed about

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Traveling by numbers

Traveling is always stressful for me, since, in addition to frantically trying to catch my mode of transport (train, plane) to the final destination, I am paranoid about losing things. As a result, I am usually super-cautious in handling my belongings while on the move, which I achieve by number-coding my stuff e.g. purse wallet keys phone coat passport rucksack laptop suitcase This is a pretty…

Traveling by numbers