Dr. Valentina Colasanti
Assistant Professor in Linguistics, C.L.C.S.
Biography
BA (Rome), MA (Rome), MPhil (Cantab), PhD (Cantab)
I am a linguist and a fieldworker. My research program is concerned with synchronic and diachronic Romance variation (especially Italo-Romance varieties) and how it challenges and refines the generative theory of language. I seek to integrate methods from both traditional Romance philology and modern syntactic theory, bringing them to bear on hand-collected data from closely related Romance varieties. I am particularly interested in microvariation and its significance for the study of the intersection between syntax and pragmatics; so much of my work focuses on nominal and clausal left-peripheral discourse phenomena such as matrix/embedded complementation, presentative particles, and discourse deixis.
Recently, I have focused on the pragmatico-syntactic contribution of gestures in southern Italy. This project was awarded a Research Incentive Scheme Award funded by the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Colasanti, Valentina, Not everything changes: acquisition failure and feature reassignment, Linguistics Research Colloquium, Ulster University, 28 June 2021, 2021
Colasanti, Valentina, Syntactically-integrated co-speech gestures: some preliminary evidence from the languages of Southern Italy, SuperLing Colloquium, University of Oslo, 4 June 2021, 2021
Colasanti, Valentina, Linguistically-integrated co-speech gestures in Southern Italo-Romance, Cambridge Italian Dialect Syntax-Morphology meeting, Helsinki University, 8-10 September 2021, 2021
Colasanti, Valentina, Criterial positions as diagnostics in Italo-Romance: some highs and lows, Revue roumaine de linguistique, (2021), 2021
Colasanti, Valentina, Linguistically-integrated gestures: a case study from the languages of Southern Italy, Linguistic Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Annual Meeting, Online, 6-9 September 2021, 2021
Sailor, Craig, Colasanti, Valentina, Co-speech gestures under ellipsis: a first look, Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, New Orleans, 2-5 January 2020, 2020, pp1 - 11
Colasanti, Valentina, Wiltschko, Martina, Spatial deixis, discourse deixis, and their interaction, Deixis in Language; From Gestures to Words (DEICTES19), Rijeka, 28-29 June 2019, 2019
Colasanti, Valentina, Wiltschko, Martina, Spatial and discourse deixis and the speech act structure of nominals, Proceedings of the Canadian Linguistic Association Annual Meeting (CLA), Canadian Linguistic Association Annual Meeting (CLA), Vancouver, 1-3 June 2019, Canadian Linguistic Association, 2019, pp1-14
Colasanti, Valentina, The rise of C-systems from Latin to Romance: a micro-diachronic analysis, Diachronic Generative Syntax 21 (DIGS 21), Arizona State University, 5-7 June 2019, 2019
Colasanti, Valentina, Silvestri, Giuseppina, Matrix complementizers in Italo-Romance, Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, New York, 3-6 January 2019, 2019
Colasanti, Valentina, 'La doppia serie di complementatori nei dialetti del Lazio meridionale: un approccio microparametrico', Revue de Linguistique Romane, 82, 2018, p65 - 91
Colasanti, Valentina, Wiltschko, Martina, Spatial and discourse deixis and the speech act structure of nominals, Canadian Linguistic Association Annual Meeting (CLA), Vancouver, BC, 1-3 June 2018, 2018
Colasanti, Valentina, Presentative particles in Romance and the Speaker-Addressee interaction, Eh-Lab. Syntax of Speech Act, University of British Columbia, 20 November 2018, 2018
'Matrix complementizers in Italo-Romance' in, S. Cruschina, A. Ledgeway and E. Remberger , Italian Dialectology at the Interface, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2018, pp155 - 183, [Colasanti, Valentina, Silvestri, Giuseppina]
Colasanti, Valentina, Romance morphosyntactic microvariation in complementizer and auxiliary systems, University of Cambridge, PhD, 2018
Colasanti, Valentina, On Factivity: speculations on the split-CP in Upper-Southern Italian Dialects, Generative Grammar @ Geneva, 11, (Special issue), 2018, 70 - 86
'Towards a microparameter C-hierarchy in Italo-Romance' in, G. Pană Dindelegan, R. Zafiu, A. Dragomirescu, A. Nicolae, and I. Nicula Paraschiv , Romance Syntax. Comparative and diachronic perspectives., Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017, pp191 - 227, [Colasanti, Valentina]
Colasanti, Valentina, Zero > Multiple > Single. An acquisition-based approach to complementation from Latin to Romance, Linguistic Association of Great Britain Meeting, University of Kent, 4-7 September 2017, 2017
Colasanti, Valentina, Feature reassignment and microparametric change in Italo-Romance, XLV Romance Linguistics Seminar, University of Cambridge, Trinity Hall, 5-6 January 2017, 2017
Colasanti, Valentina, Zero > Multiple > Single. An acquisition-based approach to complementation from Latin to Romance, 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, University of Zurich, 10-13 September 2017, 2017
Colasanti, Valentina, Zero > Multiple > Single. Complementation from Latin to Romance, Going Romance 31, University of Bucharest, 7-9 December 2017, 2017
Colasanti, Valentina, On Triple Complementation in Southern Lazio dialects, Proceedings of Structure, Use and Meaning, Structure, Use and Meaning, Brașov, 21-24 September 2016, 2017, 71 - 81
Colasanti, Valentina, Matrix complementizers in Italo-Romance, Eh-Lab. Syntax of Speech Act, University of British Columbia, 6 October 2017, 2017
Colasanti, Valentina, On Factivity: speculations on the split-CP in Upper-Southern Italian dialects, 1st SynCart Workshop. From Maps to Principles: Syntactic Cartography and Locality, Chiusi, Italy, 11-15 July 2016, 2016
Colasanti, Valentina, What has and hasn't changed? Parametric change and morphosyntactic exaptation in Romance,, Formal Approaches to Romance MicrovariationWorkshop (FARM), University of Bucharest, 25-26 November 2016, 2016
Colasanti, Valentina, La doppia serie di complementatori nei dialetti del Lazio Meridionale: un approccio microparametrico, XXVIII Congresso Internazionale di Linguistica e Filologia Romanza, 'Sapienza' University of Rome, 18-23 July 2016, 2016
Colasanti, Valentina, Dual complementizer System in Southern Lazio Dialects: a microparametric approach, 44th Romance Linguistics Seminar, University of Cambridge, Trinity Hall, 4-5 January 2016, 2016
Colasanti, Valentina, Silvestri, Giuseppina, Beyond Force, mood and modality: matrix complementizers in upper-southern Italian dialects, 11th Cambridge Italian Dialect Syntax-Morphology Meeting, University of Vienna, 4-6 July 2016, 2016
Colasanti, Valentina, Silvestri, Giuseppina, (Beyond) Force, Mood and Modality: matrix complementizers in Italian dialects, 9th Brussels Conference on Generative Linguistics (BCGL 9): Phase Theory, University of Brussels, 13-14 December 2016, 2016
Colasanti, Valentina, Methodological issues in collecting data. A data-driven investigation of microvariation in Southern Lazio, Workshop on Collecting data on microvariation in Romance. Methodological issues, University of Bucharest, 26 November 2016, 2016
Colasanti, Valentina, On Triple Complementation in Upper-southern Italian Dialects, Structure, Use and Meaning (SUM), University of Brasov, Romania, 21-24 September 2016, 2016
Colasanti, Valentina, Dual complementizer systems in Southern Lazio Dialects, Romance Syntax Workshop, University of Bucharest, 27-28 November 2015, 2015
Colasanti, Valentina, The Complementiser System of Cepranese, University of Cambridge, MPhil, 2015
Research Expertise
Projects
- Title
- Gestural Grammar: Investigating Gestures in Southern Italy (GestuGram)
- Summary
- Humans communicate using not only language, but the gestures that accompany it. Gestures are movements of the hands and body often paired with speech, and emerging research suggests that they are integrated with the grammar of language. Hence, the study of language is incomplete without the study of gesture. While gesture is universal, individual gestures vary across languages. For example, in Neapolitan, a particular gesture can transform a statement (e.g. Mario has a car.) into a question (e.g. Does Mario have a car?). Thus, gestures are not simply 'ornamental', but can make grammatical contributions akin to the syntactic strategies of e.g. English (subject- auxiliary inversion). Drawing from the gesture-heavy languages of southern Italy, this project aims to develop a grammar of gesture.
- Funding Agency
- Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute
- Date From
- 2020
- Date To
- 2023
Recognition
Memberships
The Philological Society, UK
Société de Linguistique Romane
Societas Linguistica Europaea
Scholar, St John's College, Cambridge