Hakyung Sung

Contact

hksung001 [at] gmail [dot] com

About Me

I am an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the Departments of Psychology and Modern Languages and Cultures at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Beginning in August 2026, I will join the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa as an incoming faculty member in the Department of Second Language Studies.

My research lies at the intersection of applied and computational linguistics, where I explore lexicogrammatical complexity and sophistication in second language production through NLP-based corpus analysis. To support this work, I construct annotated treebanks and evaluate language models for their accuracy in tagging and parsing linguistic features. I am also interested in leveraging large language models to enhance linguistic annotation and analyze learner language.

Education

University of Oregon, Linguistics, PhD; Computer Science, MS, 2021.9–2025.6
Seoul National University, English Language Education, MA, 2016.3-2018.2
Ewha Womans University, English Language and Literature, BA, 2011.3-2016.2

Publications

Sung, H., Shin, G-H., Jung, B-K., & Shin, J-E. (to appear). L2K-ARG: Introducing and Evaluating a Learner Corpus of Korean Argumentative Writing. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research.
Kyle, K., & Sung, H. (to appear). Tagging and Parsing. International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (3rd ed.).
Sung, H., & Shin, G-H. (to appear). Parser agreement and disagreement in L2 Korean UD: Implications for human-in-the-loop annotation. In Proceedings of the 20th Linguistic Annotation Workshop (LAW-XX).
Sung, H., & Kyle, K. (2025). ASC analyzer: A Python package for measuring argument structure construction usage in English texts. In Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Construction Grammars and NLP, 41–49, Association for Computational Linguistics.
Sung, H., & Shin, G-H. (2025). Towards robust morphosyntactic analysis of L2 Korean: Evaluating and fine-tuning a Korean language model. Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing.
Sung, H., & Wolf, MK., Suhan, M., & Kyle, K. (2025). Lexical richness in young English learners’ writing: A focus on opinion and listen-write task types. Assessing Writing.
Sung, H., & Kyle, K. (2025). Usage-based analysis of L2 oral proficiency: Characteristics of argument structure construction use. Studies in Second Language Acquisition.
Sung, H., Csuros, K., & Sung, M-C. (2025). Comparing human and LLM proofreading in L2 writing: Impact on lexical and syntactic features. In Proceedings of the 20th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications.
Sung, H., Shin, G-H., Lee, C., Sung, Y-K., & Jung, B-K. (2025). UD-KSL Treebank v1.3: A semi-automated framework for aligning XPOS-extracted units with UPOS tags. In Proceedings of the 19th Linguistic Annotation Workshop (LAW-XIX).
Sung, H., & Shin, G-H. (2025). Second language Korean Universal Dependency treebank v1.2: Focus on data augmentation and annotation scheme refinement. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Resources and Representations for Under-Resourced Languages and Domains (RESOURCEFUL-2025).
Sung, H., & Kyle, K. (2024). Leveraging pre-trained language models for linguistic analysis: A case of argument structure constructions. In the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2024.
Sung, H., & Shin, G-H. (2024). Constructing a dependency treebank for second language learners of Korean. In LREC-COLING 2024.
Sung, H., & Kyle, K. (2024). Annotation scheme for English argument structure constructions treebank. In Proceedings of the 18th Linguistic Annotation Workshop (LAW-XVIII).
Sung, H., Cho, S., & Kyle, K. (2024). An empirical evaluation of lexical diversity indices in L2 Korean writing assessment. Language Assessment Quarterly, 1-22.
Sung, H., & Shin, G-H. (2023). Diversifying language models for lesser-studied languages and language-usage contexts: A case of second language Korean. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023.
Kyle, K., Sung, H., Eguchi, M., & Zenker, F. (2023). Evaluating evidence for the reliability and validity of lexical diversity indices in L2 oral task responses. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1-22.
Sung, H., & Shin, G-H. (2023). Towards L2-friendly pipelines for learner corpora: A case of written production by L2-Korean learners. In Proceedings of the 18th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications, 72-82, Association for Computational Linguistics.
Kyle, K., & Sung, H. (2023). An argument structure construction treebank. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Construction Grammars and NLP, 51–62, Association for Computational Linguistics.
Sung, H. (2019). Korean EFL learners’ processing of English caused-motion construction, English Teaching, 74(1), 49-73.

Other Scholarly Outputs

Linguistic analysis tools: ASC tagger, ASC analyzer, Korean lexical complexity analyzer
Treebanks: ASC treebank, UD KSL treebank
Pretty docs: LxGrTgr, TAALED