IN-DEPTH SEMINARS OF DISCIPLINARY AREA (SL) - MOD.3

The curriculum in Linguistic Sciences aims at the acquisition of theoretical knowledge and the development of critical skills that enable a comprehensive understanding of linguistic phenomena in all their complexity. It fosters the ability to design research projects aimed at gathering new data and conducting their analysis, with a view to proposing applied interventions with social and cultural impact. The curriculum encompasses a broad range of linguistic research perspectives—including formal, synchronic and diachronic, philological, sociolinguistic, computational, and language teaching approaches, also applied to bilingual and bimodal contexts. These are addressed through experimental methodologies that employ sophisticated instruments (such as eye-trackers and fNIRS) and advanced statistical analysis models.
This module is part of the doctoral program in Linguistic Sciences and is designed to provide an in-depth focus on topics related to Germanic Philology and Linguistics as well as Digital Philology.

- Knowledge and ability to apply philological methodologies for text analysis, including digital approaches, with particular emphasis on the use of EVT (Edition Visualization Technology) software
- Ability to critically analyse, evaluate, and synthesise new and complex ideas, contributing to the refinement of theoretical models and applied methodologies within the field of Germanic Philology and Linguistics
- Ability to communicate effectively with peers and the broader scholarly community in Germanic Philology and Linguistics, presenting one’s research both orally and in writing during the biannual evaluations of the current academic year

Knowledge and skills assessed during the selection process:
- Excellent knowledge of the main foundations of Germanic Philology and Linguistics
- Basic knowledge of general linguistics
- Good command of Digital Philology tools, including visualisation tools and XML editing software such as Edition Visualization Technology and Oxygen XML Editor

The course is structured into a series of sessions on Old High German, Old Saxon, and Middle Low German, along with a thematic seminar cycle.
1. Pragmatic, Graphematic, and Translation Aspects in Old High German and Middle Low German
Prof. Chiara De Bastiani (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), 14 hours
After an introduction to the linguistic profile (facies linguistica) of Old High German, the seminars will explore both the information-structural features of this historical stage of the language and their graphematic realisation, as well as translation strategies used in the Old High German version of Tatian’s Evangelienharmonie (Gospel Harmony).
The second part of the seminar series will focus on the linguistic profile of Middle Low German, examining translation phenomena from High German models and the distinctive orthographic practices found in incunabula.
2. Old Saxon among the Medieval Germanic Languages: Linguistic Profile and Pragmatic Features
Prof. Marina Buzzoni (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), 6 hours
The linguistic profile (facies linguistica) of Old Saxon is characterised by a set of phonological, morphological, and lexical features that distinguish it within the West Germanic group. Old Saxon reflects both internal influences, through contact with other Germanic varieties, and external ones, such as Ecclesiastical Latin. Studying its linguistic profile sheds light on the dynamics of evolution and diffusion of the medieval Germanic languages.
This seminar series aims to deepen the study of Old Saxon within the broader context of medieval Germanic languages, with particular attention to word order variation in relation to information structure.
3. Seminars with Digital Philology Experts Involved in the PRIN PNRR Project “Integrated Edition of the Leges Langobardorum”
(Buzzoni, Rosselli Del Turco, Malaspina, Venuti, Fischer)
This series of seminars with experts in Philology, including Digital Philology, is intended to explore the disciplinary areas intersected by the PRIN PNRR project “Integrated Edition of the Leges Langobardorum.”
The seminars will focus on philology and the history of the Latin language, including digital approaches. Topics will also include digital stemmatology and advanced techniques for the visualisation of integrated digital editions.

1 e 2: Old High German, Old Saxon, and Middle Low German
Salmons, J. (2012). A History of German. Oxford Linguistics. Capitoli 4-5
De Bastiani, C. (2024). Untersuchungen zur frühneuhochdeutschen und mittelniederdeutschen Syntax anhand des ‚Wiedererzählen im Norden ‘-Korpus (WiN-Korpus). In Mittelniederdeutsch zwischen Korpuslinguistik und Literaturwissenschaft (pp. 95-122). Universitätsverlag Göttingen. https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2024-2619
Fleischer, J. (2009). Paleographic clues to prosody?–Accents, word separation, and other phenomena in Old High German manuscripts. Information Structure and Language Change. New approaches to word order variation in Germanic. Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs, 203, 161-89
Lasch, Agathe: Mittelniederdeutsche Grammatik. Tübingen 1914 (2. Aufl. 1974/Nachdruck 2011), Lübben, August/Walther.
Linde, Sonja. (2009). "Aspects of word order and information structure in Old Saxon." In Information Structure and Language Change: New Approaches to Word Order Variation in Germanic, a cura di Roland Hinterhölzl e Svetlana Petrova, pp. 367–389. Berlino: Mouton de Gruyter.
Norton, Juliana & Sapp, Christopher D. (2021). Dialectal Variation in Old Saxon and the Origins of the Hêliand Manuscripts. Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 120(4), 516–544.
Pakis, Valentine A. (Ed.). (2011). Perspectives on the Old Saxon Heliand: Introductory and Critical Essays, with an Edition of the Leipzig Fragment. West Virginia University Press.
Petrova, S., Solf, M., Ritz, J., Chiarcos, C., & Zeldes, A. (2009). Building and using a richly annotated interlinear diachronic corpus: The case of Old High German Tatian. In Traitement Automatique des Langues, Volume 50, Numéro 2: Langues anciennes [Ancient Languages] (pp. 47-71).
Rauch, Irmengard. (1992). The Old Saxon Language: Grammar, Epic Narrative, Linguistic Interference. Peter Lang. Walkden, George. (2016). The HeliPaD: A Parsed Corpus of Old Saxon. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 21(4), 559–571.
Sapp, C. (2016). Word order patterns in the Old High German right periphery and their Indo-European origins. Diachronica. International Journal for Historical Linguistics, 33(3), 367-411. Schlachter, E. (2009). Word order variation and information structure in Old High German: An analysis of subordinate dhazs-clauses in Isidor. Hinterhölzl/Petrova (eds.), 223-250.
Versloot, A., & Adamczyk, E. (2017). Geography and Dialects of Old Saxon. In J. Hines & N. IJssennagger (Eds.), Frisians and their North Sea Neighbours: from the Fifth Century to the Viking Age (pp. 125–148). Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.
3. Seminars with Digital Philology Experts Involved in the PRIN PNRR Project “Integrated Edition of the Leges Langobardorum”
Buzzoni, Marina e Roberto Rosselli Del Turco. (2024). Towards an integrated digital edition of the Leges Langobardorum , Me.Te. Digitali. Mediterraneo in rete tra testi e contesti in UMANISTICA DIGITALE, Bologna, AlmaDL, pp. 226-231, Convegno: Me.Te. Digitali. Mediterraneo in rete tra testi e contesti, 28-30/05/2024
Cacioli Giulia, Giacomo Cerretini, Chiara Di Pietro, Sara Maenza, Roberto Rosselli Del Turco and Simone Zenzaro. (2022). “There and back again: what to expect in the next EVT version”. In Ciracì, Miglietta, Gatto (eds.), AIUCD 2022 - Digital cultures. Intersections: philosophy, arts, media. Proceedings of the 11th AIUCD conference, Lecce, 1-3 June 2022: 212-217. http://amsacta.unibo.it/6848/
Venuti, Martina, Angelo Mario Del Grosso, Federico Boschetti, Luigi Tessarolo, Alessia Prontera, Dylan Bovet, Gianmario Cattaneo, Valeria Melis. (2023). La ‘Galassia MQDQ:’ un concetto di filologia tradizionale, digitale, sostenibile in MAGAZÈN 4, pp. 71-120.

The assessment of learning outcomes for the disciplinary in-depth seminar will be carried out as part of the regular biannual evaluations required for current doctoral candidates.

not present

No grades are assigned for the learning assessments; only progression to the following academic year is considered

In-person interactive seminars, hands-on sessions

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development