Biography

Romance languages constitute a rich area of linguistic variation yet to be properly explored. The superficial similarities among varieties and the inheritance of a long-standing prescriptive tradition have contributed to keep the highly valuable internal variation of this family in the shade. The aim of my research is to explore one of the many puzzles of Romance, that is verb-placement, and try to provide a non-stipulative account for this phenomenon. The first step of my work will thus include the collection of as many data as possible, across a selection of both standard and non-standard varieties, in the strong belief that the theory must always be driven by data. Hopefully, my reasearch will demonstrate the importance of looking at intra-Romance variation in detail, not only to achieve a more complete descriptive adequacy, but also because this may provide a challenge for those theoretical approaches whose adequacy crucially relies on the apparent homogeneity of this family.