Dr Sandra Paoli

Research profile:

My main research interests revolve around grammaticalization (in its functional conception), especially in Romance. While I am generally interested in the grammaticalization of morpho-syntactic structures, in recent years my focus has shifted towards historical pragmatics and the role played by language use in motivating and driving structural change. Furthermore, I am interested in the synchronic micro-variation within Romance (with a focus on Italo-Romance and other lesser-known Romance varieties) as a potential reflection of language change in progress. Specific topics on which I have worked include the development of pronominal forms, the acquisition (L1) of functional categories, grammaticalization and spread of specific forms of the verb ‘to have’ in Italo-Romance, post-verbal negators, so-called go-past and go-future in Gallo-Romance and the development of discourse and modal particles.

I am available to supervise prospective graduate students who wish to work on any of the areas above.

For a fuller profile, see here.