PhD project (2023-)

My PhD project investigates how Evaluative Morphology (diminutives, augmentatives and pejoratives) are influenced in language contact, assessing the replicability of EM-suffixes and functions and aiming to provide the first account on the cross-linguistic tendencies of EM in contact.

I am interested to see how sociolinguistic factors and typological distance intertwine in shaping the outcome of language contact; and to explore the mechanisms through which morphemes are replicated.

I am doing this through the comparison of three case studies of Romance – non-Romance language contact:

• Basque in contact with Ibero- and Gallo-Romance varieties,

• Maltese in contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and

• Griko in contact with Salentino (Italo-Romance).

Following Gardani (2008, 2012, 2018, 2020), I am exclusively looking for full integration of morphemes into RL, i.e. the spread of a foreign formative to RL-native bases.

Basque leiha-t-ila 'window.DIM' <  Bq. leiho 'window'     + Ib-Rom. -ila/ilo [DIM]

Maltese sakran-azz 'drunkard' <  Mt. sakran 'drunk'     + It-Rom. -azzo/azza [PEJ]

Griko kater-eddha 'daughter.DIM/AMEL' <  Gr. katera 'daughter'     + Sal. -eddha [DIM]

Furthermore, I am interested to see how far along each Recipient Language gets in the tripartite model of language change (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968; Timberlake, 1977), and what linguistic and extra-linguistic factors influence the extent of change.

I am specifically investigating...

(1) a potential hierarchy of the functional types of EM in replication, 

(2) the base selection preferences of replicated morphemes, and

(3) how EM-related tendencies of grammatical gender influenced under contact.

Walser German (2022)

My MPhil project (at the University of Cambridge) explored the replication of Romance (specifically, Gallo-Italic) Evaluative Morphology in Walser German.

The frequentative in Hungarian (2021)

My BA dissertation (at the University of Cambridge) aimed to study the two layers of meaning conveyed by Hungarian frequentative suffixes in the Evaluative Morphology framework of Grandi and Körtvélyessy (2015).