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 as a series of seminar sessions:

1. Introduction to Comparative Morphosyntax: Tense and Aspect in Romance and Germanic Languages
Prof. Alessandra Giorgi (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), 4 hours
2. Techniques for Eliciting Syntactic Data from Dialects
Prof. Nicola Munaro (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), 2 hours
3. The Nominal Morphology of the Ancient Germanic Languages
Prof. Marina Buzzoni (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), 2 hours
4a. “String Theory”: From Data Models to Generative Modelling
Prof. Emmanuela Carbé (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), 2 hours
4b. Domain-Specific Languages in Philology and Linguistics
Prof. Federico Boschetti (VeDPH and CNR-ILC), 2 hours
5. The Syntactic Reconstruction of Proto-Germanic
Prof. Chiara De Bastiani (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), 2 hours
6. Syntactic Phenomena in Old English
Prof. Chiara De Bastiani (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), 2 hours
7. Old High German as a Null-Subject Language
Prof. Federica Cognola (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), 2 hours
8. Generative AI in the Field of Scholarly Digital Editions (Part 1 and Part 2)
Prof. Franz Fischer (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and VeDPH), 4 hours
9. The Glossary of Lombard Terms in the Leges Langobardorum Project
Prof. Roberto Rosselli Del Turco (University of Turin), 4 hours
10. The Verbal Morphology of the Ancient Germanic Languages
Prof. Marina Buzzoni (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and VeDPH), 2 hours
11. Machine Learning for the Encoding of Structured Texts
Prof. Paolo Monella (Kore University of Enna), 2 hours

Comrie, B. 1974. Tense. Oxford: OUP; Comrie, B. 1985. Aspect. Oxford: OUP; Dahl, O. 2000. Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe. Berlin-New York: De Gruyter; Ramchand, G. 2008. Verb meaning and the lexicon. Cambridge: CUP; Cornips, Leonie & Cecilia Poletto. 2005. “On standardising syntactic elicitation techniques”. Lingua 115.7: 939-957; Fulk, R.D. 2018. A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages. Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins; Harbert, W. 2010. The Germanic Languages. Cambridge: CUP (in particular, Chapter 4: The Germanic nominal system, 89-269); Ciula, A., Eide, Ø., Marras, C. & Sahle, P. 2023. Modelling Between Digital and Humanities: Thinking in Practice. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers; de Schryver, G. M. 2023. "Generative AI and Lexicography: The Current State of the Art Using ChatGPT". International Journal of Lexicography 36(4): 355-387; Parr, Terence. 2010. Language Implementation Patterns: Create Your Own Domain-Specific and General Programming Languages. Raleigh, NC: Pragmatic Bookshelf; Beurer-Kellner, Luca, Marc Fischer, and Martin Vechev. 2023. “Prompting Is Programming: A Query Language for Large Language Models.” Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages 7, PLDI, Article 186 (June 2023): 1–24. doi:10.1145/3591300; Walkden, G. 2014. Syntactic reconstruction and Proto-Germanic, Oxford: Oxford University Press; De Bastiani, C. 2022. The reanalysis of VO in the history of English: Evidence for a language-internal account, English Historical Linguistics: Change in structure and meaning. Papers from the XXth ICEHL, Los, Bettelou, Claire Cowie, Patrick Honeybone & Graeme Trousdale (eds.); Hinterhölzl, R. & Petrova, S. (eds.). 2009. Information Structure and Language Change: New Approaches to Word Order Variation in Germanic. Berlin: de Gruyter (a selection); Meurman-Solin, A., López-Couso M.J. & Los, B. (eds.). 2012. Information structure and syntactic change in the history of English. Oxford University Press (a selection); van Kemenade, A. & Links, M. 2020. “Discourse particles in early English: Clause structure, pragmatics and discourse management”, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1): 3. doi: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1020 ; Axel, K. 2007. Studies on Old High German Syntax. John Benjamins, capitolo 6 (293-327); Cognola, F., & Walkden, G. 2019. Pro-drop in interrogatives and declaratives: A parallel study of Old High German and Old Italian. Linguistik Online, 100(7), 95-140. https://doi.org/10.13092/lo.100.6020 ; Cognola, F. 2023. Free inversion in Old High German and Cimbrian. On the status of tho/da as CP-expletives and their connection with pro-drop in JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SYNTAX, vol. Vol. 7, pp. 1-63. https://historicalsyntax.org/hs/index.php/hs/issue/view/51 ; Pollin Ch., Fischer F., Sahle P., Scholger M. & G. Vogeler. 2025. When it was 2024 – Generative AI in the Field of Digital Scholarly Editions. In: Zeitschrift für digitale Geisteswissenschaften 10. 10.07.2025. HTML / XML / PDF. DOI: 10.17175/2025_008; Jurafsky, D. and Martin, J. H. 2026. Speech and Language Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, and Speech Recognition, with Language Models, 3rd edition. Online manuscript released January 6, 2026. https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3 .

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

The instructor is responsible for ensuring the authenticity and originality of all examinations and coursework. In cases of suspected academic misconduct, an additional on-site assessment may be required during the exams, which may differ from the standard format.

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