IN-DEPTH SEMINARS OF DISCIPLINARY AREA (SL) - MOD. 1

The curriculum in Language Sciences is aimed at the acquisition of theoretical knowledge and the development of critical skills that allow doctoral students to understand linguistic phenomena in all their complexity, developing the ability to plan research aimed at the acquisition of new data and their analysis, as well as at proposing applicative interventions with social and cultural impact. The curriculum includes a wide range of linguistic research perspectives (formal, synchronic and diachronic, philological, sociolinguistic, computational, language teaching analysis, also applied to bilingual and bimodal contexts), also addressed with experimental methodologies that use sophisticated instruments (eye-tracker, fNIRS) and advanced statistical analysis models.
The main training goal of this module is to support the acquisition and consolidation of both theoretical and applied knowledge in linguistics, including theoretical linguistics and sociolinguistics.

Doctoral students will acquire theoretical and applied knowledge related to phenomena and issues within the formal analysis of Romance and Balkan languages, variation in contact and multilingualism, sociolinguic attitudes in perception and production.

Good knowledge of formal linguistics, sociolinguistics, and Italian linguistics.
Excellent command of the languages of instruction (Italian and English).

The seminars, designed to explore specific subject areas in greater depth, are organized into four thematic clusters

Prof. Giuliana Giusti, Ca’ Foscari, 8 hours (first semester)
Feature sharing and agreement in nominal expressions, from an Italo-Romance perspective
This module presents Giusti’s (2015) analysis, which distinguishes three syntactic relations: Agreement between a lexical head argument and a functional head of the phase; Concordance between the non-interpretable features of a modifier and the interpretable and non-interpretable features of the head of the phase; and the extended projection of the head. The phenomena covered are: the syntax of possessive expressions; the syntax of indefinite determiners; the syntax and semantics of the weak definite article.

Prof. Francisco Ordóñez, Stony Brook University, 10 hours (first semester)
Variation and Evolution of D in Romance
This seminar analyses the variation and evolution of clitics, determiners and demonstratives in Romance languages (Catalan, Spanish and Latin American varieties) through a decompositional analysis. The main topics include:
1) Determiner systems: A comparison between systems based on ‘ille’ (such as Italian) and those based on ‘ipse’ (such as Sardinian or Balearic Catalan), investigating why clitics derive solely from the ‘ille’ system.
2) Clitics and infinitives: The interaction between clitics and infinitive markers, with a focus on the morphological differences between proclisis and enclisis analysed through the ‘Morphology-as-Syntax’ theoretical framework
3) SE constructions and ‘smuggling’: An analysis of passive and impersonal constructions, positing the hypothesis that the clitic SE is doubled by a null pronoun PRO

Dr Piergiorgio Mura, University for Foreigners of Siena, 6 hours, 1st semester
Planning research in sociolinguistics: methodological approaches and case studies on production and perception
The first part of the course introduces research questions and experimental methods in sociolinguistics, with particular attention to the distinction between sociolinguistics – understood as a linguistic discipline that takes social facts into account – and the sociology of language, which takes linguistic facts into account, as well as the difference between micro- and macrosociolinguistics. The second part will be application-oriented and will present a number of case studies in which specific methodologies are employed to analyse variation in linguistic production and differences in perception amongst speakers.

Prof. Iliyana Krapova, Ca’ Foscari, 6 hours, second semester
Language contact in southern Italy: The case of Greek-speaking minorities
This seminar offers an introduction to the main concepts of contact linguistics through an analysis of the Greek-Italian language area of southern Calabria and Salento. Particular attention will be paid to the Greek varieties historically spoken in southern Italy, their relationship with local Romance dialects and with Italian, and the phenomena of convergence that have developed in a situation of prolonged contact.
The aim of the seminar is to demonstrate how the Greek-Italian area constitutes a unique laboratory for the study of historical multilingualism, the formation of linguistic areas, and the processes of preservation, transformation and gradual decline of minority languages.

Baldissera, Valeria. 2013. Il dialetto grico del Salento: Elementi balcanici e contatto linguistico. PhD diss. Ca' Foscari
Bernstein, J., F Ordóñez, F Roca (2025) On the (non) isomorphism of Romance definite articles and clitic pronouns: a diachronic perspective, Journal of Historical Syntax 9 (2-10), 1-24.
Bernstein, J., Ordóñez, F., & Roca, F. (2019). On the emergence of personal articles in the history of Catalan. Cycles in language change, 88-108.
Bernstein, J., Ordóñez, F., & Roca, F. (2021). Emphatic elements and the development of definite articles: Evidence for a layered DP in early Romance. Journal of Historical Syntax, 5(16-25), 1-32.
Cardinaletti A., U. Shlonsky (2004) Clitic Positions and Restructuring in Italian. Linguistic Inquiry,
Collins, Ch. (2026) Principles of Argument Structure. MIT Press.
Condemi, Filippo. 1987. Grammatica grecanica. Reggio Calabria: Cooperativa Contezza.
Giusti, Giuliana (2015). Nominal Syntax at the interfaces, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Giusti, Giuliana (2021). A Protocol for Indefinite Determiners in Italian and Italo-Romance. In Tabea Ihsane (ed.), Disentangling Bare Nouns and Nominals Introduced by a Partitive Article, Amsterdam, Brill, 261-299.
Giusti, Giuliana (2022). Aggettivi possessivi in alcune varietà italoromanze antiche e moderne. Storie e Linguaggi 8, 117-143.
Giusti, Giuliana (2025) On (in)definite ART in Italian and Italo-Romance varieties. Intercultural Pragmatics 22(3), 545-571.
Guardiano, Cristina & Melita Stavrou. 2014. Greek and Romance in Southern Italy: History and contact in nominal structures. L’Italia dialettale 75. 121–147.
Karanastasis, Anastasios. 1992. Origine e sviluppo dei dialetti italogreci. In Giovanni Ruffino (a cura di), Studi linguistici e filologici offerti a Girolamo Caracausi, 177–183. Palermo: Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani.
Katsoyannou, Marianna. 1995. Le parler gréco de Gallicianò (Italie): Description d’une langue en voie de disparition. Paris: Université Paris VII–Denis Diderot. Tesi di dottorato.
Ledgeway, Adam, Norma Schifano & Giuseppina Silvestri. 2024. Patterns of infinitival and finite complementation in Griko and Salentino. L’Italia dialettale 85. 101–122.
Ledgeway, Adam. 2013. Greek disguised as Romance? The case of Southern Italy. In Mark Janse, Brian D. Joseph, Angela Ralli & Metin Bagriacik (a cura di), Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory, 184–228. Patras: Laboratory of Modern Greek Dialects, University of Patras.
Manolessou, Io. 2005. The Greek dialects of Southern Italy: An overview. Kampos: Cambridge Papers in Modern Greek 13. 103–125.
Ordóñez, F. (2021). On the Nature of the Impersonal SE: Why Italian is not like Catalan and Spanish. In Unraveling the complexity of SE (pp. 137-160). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Ordóñez, F., L. Repetti (2014) On the morphological restriction of hosting clitics in Italian and Sardinian dialects, Italia dialettale 75, 173-199.
Pellegrino, Manuela. 2021. Greek Language, Italian Landscape: Griko and the Re-storying of a Linguistic Minority. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rohlfs, Gerhard. 1967. Greek remnants in Southern Italy. The Classical Journal 62(4). 164–169.
Szabó, Anita Noémi. 2010. Tratti linguistici in comune nei dialetti italogreci e italiani dell’Italia meridionale, con particolare riguardo all’uso dell’infinito. Verbum: Analecta Neolatina 12(2). 552–569.
Torcolacci, Giuseppe & Athina Ioanna Leivadara. 2019. The nature of infinitives in Griko-Greek dialects of Southern Italy. In Ioanna Kappa & Marina Tzakosta (a cura di), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory, 193–205. Patras: University of Patras.

The assessment of the in-depth learning will be carried out through the regular semester evaluations (oral and written presentations and reports) scheduled for the enrolled PhD students.

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.

Non prevista

Interactive in-person seminars