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Dr. Valentina Colasanti
Assistant Professor in Linguistics, C.L.C.S.

Biography

BA (Sapienza, Rome), MA (Sapienza, Rome), MPhil (Cantab), PhD (Cantab)

I am a linguist.

My research profile is situated at the interface between theoretical generative linguistics and Romance linguistics (especially focused on the Italo-Romance sub-family of languages spoken in Italy). Most of my publications contribute to the field of theoretical linguistics as applied to the Romance languages. In the last six years, I have extended my domain of investigation to the study of spoken phenomena at the interface between syntax and semantics.

In 2019, after taking up an assistant professorship in linguistics at Trinity College Dublin, my interests grew further into the study of phenomena expressed in the visual-gestural modality. Such phenomena have been almost entirely overlooked in theoretical linguistics. I began to study gestures from a purely formal perspective for the first time, drawing empirically from the languages of Southern Italy. My main project, Gestural Grammar: Investigating Gesture in Southern Italy (GestuGram; PI: Colasanti), received funding from the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute (2020-23), the Higher Education Authority of Ireland (2021-23), the Provost's Office of Trinity College Dublin (Provost's PhD Project Award; 2021-25), and Enterprise Ireland (2023-25).

In 2020, I established the 'Gestural Grammar Lab' at Trinity College Dublin after successfully competing for funding from (i) the Trinity Long Room Hub (Arts and Humanities Research Institute), (ii) the Higher Education Authority of Ireland, (iii) the Provost of Trinity College Dublin, and (iv) the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Trinity College Dublin. I am currently the director of the GestuGram Lab, which so far comprises two PhD students, one lab manager, five research assistants, and two fieldworkers.

Publications and Further Research Outputs

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Colasanti, Valentina, Functional gestures as morphemes: Some evidence from the languages of Southern Italy, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 8, (1), 2023, p1 - 45 Journal Article, 2023 DOI

Colasanti, Valentina, Auxiliary selection in Southern Lazio. Some implications for Romance microvariation and its limits, L'Italia Dialettale, LXXXIV, 2023, p97 - 150 Journal Article, 2023 URL

Colasanti, Valentina, Gestural focus marking, Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics, 9, ((4)/5), 2023, p1 - 39 Journal Article, 2023 DOI

Colasanti, Valentina, Cuonzo, Clara, Gestural focus marking in Italo-Romance, Romance Languages: Recent Contributions to Linguistic Theory, Harvard University, 28-29 April 2022, 2022 Conference Paper, 2022 URL

Colasanti, Valentina, Micro-contact in Southern Italy: language change in Southern Lazio under pressure from Italian, Languages, (7), 2022, p286 Journal Article, 2022 URL

Colasanti, Valentina, Cuonzo, Clara, Gestural focus marking, PerForum. Forum on Performativity in Language and Beyond, University of Oslo, 3 June 2022, 2022 Conference Paper, 2022 URL

Colasanti, Valentina, Il riciclaggio della deissi spaziale in deissi discorsiva nell'italo-romanzo, XXXe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, Campus de Guajara - Universidad de La Laguna, 4-9 July 2022, 2022 Conference Paper, 2022 URL

Colasanti, Valentina, Criterial positions as diagnostics in Italo-Romance: some highs and lows, Revue roumaine de linguistique, LXVI , (2-3), 2021, p265 - 282 Journal Article, 2021 TARA - Full Text

Colasanti, Valentina, Linguistically-integrated co-speech gestures in Southern Italo-Romance, Cambridge Italian Dialect Syntax-Morphology meeting, Helsinki University, 8-10 September 2021, 2021 Conference Paper, 2021 URL

Colasanti, Valentina, Gestural fieldwork: a case study from Southern Italy, Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 6, SOAS London, 16-18 December 2021, 2021 Conference Paper, 2021 URL

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 Conference Paper, 2021 URL

Colasanti, Valentina, Syntactically-integrated gestures in Southern Italy, Going Romance 35, University of Amsterdam, 1-3 December 2021, 2021 Conference Paper, 2021

Craig Sailor and Valentina Colasanti, Co-speech gestures under ellipsis: a first look, Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), New Orleans, 2-5 January, 2020, pp1 - 11 Conference Paper, 2020 URL

'Matrix complementizers in Italo-Romance' in, S. Cruschina, A. Ledgeway and E. Remberger , Italian Dialectology at the Interface, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2019, pp155 - 183, [Colasanti, Valentina, Silvestri, Giuseppina] Book Chapter, 2019 TARA - Full Text URL

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 Conference Paper, 2019 URL

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, 2019 Conference Paper, 2019 URL

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 Conference Paper, 2019

Colasanti, Valentina, Silvestri, Giuseppina, Matrix complementizers in Italo-Romance, Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, New York, 3-6 January 2019, 2019 Conference Paper, 2019 URL

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, edited by Dick, Carrie , 2019, pp1-14 Conference Paper, 2019 TARA - Full Text

Colasanti, Valentina, On Factivity: speculations on the split-CP in Upper-Southern Italian Dialects, Generative Grammar @ Geneva, 11, (Special issue), 2018, 70 - 86 Journal Article, 2018 TARA - Full Text

Colasanti, Valentina, 'La doppia serie di complementatori nei dialetti del Lazio meridionale: un approccio microparametrico', Revue de Linguistique Romane, 82, 2018, p65 - 91 Journal Article, 2018 TARA - Full Text

Colasanti, Valentina, Romance morphosyntactic microvariation in complementizer and auxiliary systems, University of Cambridge, PhD, 2018 Thesis, 2018 URL

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 Conference Paper, 2017

On Triple Complementation in Southern Lazio dialects in, Structure, Use and Meaning, Brașov, 2017, 71 - 81, [Colasanti, Valentina] Book Chapter, 2017 TARA - Full Text

Colasanti, Valentina, Zero > Multiple > Single. Complementation from Latin to Romance, Going Romance 31, University of Bucharest, 7-9 December 2017, 2017 Conference Paper, 2017

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 Conference Paper, 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 Conference Paper, 2017

'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] Book Chapter, 2017 URL

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 Conference Paper, 2016

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 Conference Paper, 2016 URL

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 Conference Paper, 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 Conference Paper, 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 Conference Paper, 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 Conference Paper, 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 Conference Paper, 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 Conference Paper, 2016

Colasanti, Valentina, Dual complementizer systems in Southern Lazio Dialects, Romance Syntax Workshop, University of Bucharest, 27-28 November 2015, 2015 Conference Paper, 2015

Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications

Valentina Colasanti, The syntacticisation of gestures. The contribution of the Romance languages of Italy, Cambridge Italian Dialect Syntax-Morphology Meeting, University of Manchester, 25--27 June 2024, 2024 Invited Talk, 2024 URL

Colasanti, Valentina, Spatial and discourse deixis and the interactional structure of nominals: Romance and beyond, Romance Linguistic Circle, online, 28 November, 2021, University of Cambridge/University of Newcastle Invited Talk, 2021 URL

Colasanti, Valentina, Investigating Gesture in Southern Italy, Linguistics Research Seminars, online, 10 November, 2021, Trinity College Dublin Invited Talk, 2021 URL

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 Invited Talk, 2021 URL

Colasanti, Valentina, Linguistically-integrated gestures: a case study from the languages of Southern Italy, SyntaxLab, online, 19 October, 2021, University of Cambridge Invited Talk, 2021

Colasanti, Valentina, Not everything changes: acquisition failure and feature reassignment, Linguistics Research Colloquium, Ulster University, 28 June 2021, 2021 Invited Talk, 2021 URL

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 Invited Talk, 2018

Colasanti, Valentina, Matrix complementizers in Italo-Romance, Eh-Lab. Syntax of Speech Act, University of British Columbia, 6 October 2017, 2017 Invited Talk, 2017

Research Expertise

Projects

  • Title
    • Gestural Grammar: Investigating Gestures in Southern Italy (GestuGram)
  • Funding Agency
    • Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute
  • Date From
    • 2020
  • Date To
    • 2023

Keywords

diachronic syntax; gesture; ITALO-ROMANCE; LANGUAGE VARIATION; ROMANCE LINGUISTICS; Syntax; syntax-pragmatics interface

Recognition

Memberships

The Philological Society, UK 2014 – present

Société de Linguistique Romane 2016 – present

Societas Linguistica Europaea 2016 – present

Scholar, St John's College, Cambridge 2014 – present