Dr. Valentina Colasanti
Assistant Professor in Linguistics, C.L.C.S.
Biography
BA (Rome), MA (Rome), MPhil (Cantab), PhD (Cantab)
I am a linguist, dialectologist and fieldworker. My main research interests include comparative diachronic and synchronic morpho-syntax of the Romance languages (especially Italo-Romance varieties), syntactic theory, and historical linguistics. The main goal of my research is to bring together traditional Romance philological scholarship and modern syntactic theory. I am particularly interested in the significance of microvariation for the study of the syntax-pragmatics interface.
I am working on topics such as diachronic and synchronic complementation, auxiliary selection, gesture, and clausal and nominal speech act syntax. I am also interested in language documentation, fieldwork methodologies, and data elicitation.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
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
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, 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, 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, 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, 'La doppia serie di complementatori nei dialetti del Lazio meridionale: un approccio microparametrico', Revue de Linguistique Romane, 82, 2018, p65 - 91
Colasanti, Valentina, Romance morphosyntactic microvariation in complementizer and auxiliary systems, University of Cambridge, PhD, 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, Presentative particles in Romance and the Speaker-Addressee interaction, Eh-Lab. Syntax of Speech Act, University of British Columbia, 20 November 2018, 2018
Colasanti, Valentina, On Factivity: speculations on the split-CP in Upper-Southern Italian Dialects, Generative Grammar @ Geneva, 11, (Special issue), 2018, 70 - 86
Colasanti, Valentina, Matrix complementizers in Italo-Romance, Eh-Lab. Syntax of Speech Act, University of British Columbia, 6 October 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, Feature reassignment and microparametric change in Italo-Romance, XLV Romance Linguistics Seminar, University of Cambridge, Trinity Hall, 5-6 January 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, 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. An acquisition-based approach to complementation from Latin to Romance, Linguistic Association of Great Britain Meeting, University of Kent, 4-7 September 2017, 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]
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, 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, 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, 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, On Triple Complementation in Upper-southern Italian Dialects, Structure, Use and Meaning (SUM), University of Brasov, Romania, 21-24 September 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, 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, 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, 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
- 2021