Wei-Wei Lee is a PhD student working on syntax and language change issues in the Austroasiatic language family (see project link below). The Austroasiatic languages are spoken in a vast but discontinuous area from Central India in the west to Malaysia and Vietnam in the east, plus the Nicobar Islands. Only three Austroasiatic languages have an official status; nearly all of the languages are spoken by minority groups. The main focus of Wei-Wei's current research lies on the Palaungic subgroup, in particular Palaung Ruching, a language primarily spoken in Central Myanmar, in addition to Southern China and Northwestern Thailand.
 
Wei-Wei previously studied at Utrecht University, University of Padova, and obtained her MA in Linguistics from Leiden University. It was during her MA that she discovered the realm of linguistic typology and fieldwork. Her MA thesis described aspects of a highly endangered Austronesian language spoken on Taiwan.

The development of verb-initial structures cross-linguistically