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Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

 

Professor Ioanna Sitaridou

Photo of Ioanna Sitaridou
Position(s): 
Professor of Spanish and Historical Linguistics
Co-Director for the Cambridge Centre for Greek Studies
Fellow, Tutor and Director of Studies in Linguistics and Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics PIB and YA, Queens’ College
Department/Section: 
Spanish & Portuguese
Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages & Linguistics
Contact details: 
Telephone number: 
+44 (0)1223 331 943
College: 
Location: 

Queens' College
Cambridge
CB3 9ET

 

About: 

Prior to her Cambridge appointment in 2004 Prof. Ioanna Sitaridou worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Centre on Multilingualism at the University of Hamburg, investigating word order in Old Romance and the licensing/loss of null subjects in the history of French and Occitan (2002-2005), with Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jürgen Meisel.

She received her PhD in Romance linguistics at the University of Manchester (2002) under the supervision of Prof. Nigel Vincent. She holds an MA in Linguistics from University College London (UCL) (1998). She also holds a BA in French Philology from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1997), part of which was spent under the Erasmus scheme at the University of Lisbon (1997) studying Portuguese and Romance linguistics with Prof. Ana Maria Martins.

Her main areas of research are comparative and diachronic syntax of the Romance languages, in particular 13th Century Spanish, as well as dialectal Spanish; and dialectal Greek, especially Pontic Greek. The areas in which she carries out research are: the relationship between syntactic change and acquisition, language contact, micro-variation and change, heritage languages and change, and phylogenies.

Her research has been funded thrice by British Academy and several times by the Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme 2014; in 2019 she won a competitive CAPES grant at the UFB in Salvador, Brazil for Romance syntax; research buyout from ISWOC at Oslo (2012) for Old Ibero-Romance syntax; and a CRASSH fellowship (2008) for a project on Old Romance word order.

She has published many papers in Glossa, Lingua, Diachronica, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, among others, and her book on Word Order in Old Ibero-Romance (with Prof. Montserrat Batllori) will appear by CUP in 2022. For her research on Romeyka she was awarded the Stanley J. Seeger Visiting Research Fellowship in Hellenic Studies by Princeton University in Spring 2011; a Research Fellowship at the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University in Winter 2015; and the Chaire internationale 2020 du Labex EFL. Her work on Romeyka has featured in national and international media (the Today programme in BBC Radio 4, The Independent, Der Spiegel, Sabah, etc.). She uses this research and the resulting publicity to educate on bilingualism, promote linguistic self-esteem, especially for female speakers in remote areas of Turkey.

Prof. Sitaridou welcomes inquiries from potential MPhil and PhD students with research interests relevant to her interests.

 

Teaching interests: 

Historical; Acquisition; Sociolinguistics; Variation; Heritage languages; Fieldwork and Revitaliation of endangered languages.

 

Research interests: 

Dialectal and diachronic syntax: word order phenomena, null subjects, complementation, infinitives, null objects, subjunctive obviation

Micro-variation

Acquisition (especially L2 and heritage languages) and language change

Language Contact

Syntactic phylogenies and reconstruction

 

Published works: 

 

FORTHCOMING

  1. Bouzouita M. And I Sitaridou. (2022). ‘El orden de palabras en español medieval.’ Lingüística histórica del español / The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Historical Linguistics, Steven Dworkin, Gloria Clavería y Álvaro Octavio de Toledo (Eds.) (pp. 1–15). Oxon: Routledge. 
  2. Sitaridou, I. (2022). Hyperbaton in Greek. Encyclopedia of Greek Language and Linguistics, Georgios K. Giannakis (Ed.), Leiden/Boston: Brill.
  3. Lavidas, Nikolaos, Bergs, Alexander, van Gelderen, Elly and Sitaridou, Ioanna (eds). 2022. The Naxos Papers. Vol. II: On Language Change in Indo-European. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 250pp.
  4. Sitaridou, I. (2022). ‘On the redundancy of a theory of language contact: Cue-based reconstruction in a socio-linguistically informed manner’. In N. Lavidas and K. Nikiforidou, Language change: Theory and Methodologies in the 21st century (pp. 1–43). Leiden: Brill. 

 

JOURNALS (REFEREED)

  1. Neocleous, N. & I. Sitaridou (2022). ‘Never Just Contact. The rise of final auxiliaries in Asia Minor Greek’. Diachronica 16.1. 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.17048.neo
  2. Giannakou, Aretousa & Sitaridou, Ioanna. 2022. (In)felicitous use of subjects in Greek and Spanish in monolingual and contact settings. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 7(1). 1–33. https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5812 
  3. Txuss Martin, Ioanna Sitaridou & Wolfram Hinzen (2021). Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics, 2021, 10 / 2, 238–263. https://doi.org/10.7557/1.10.2.6252
  4. Batllori, M. & I. Sitaridou. (2020). Fronting in Old Spanish. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1). 1–39. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.893
  5. Giannakou, A. & I. Sitaridou (2020). Microparametric variation in the syntax of Spanish and Greek pronominal subjects. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics. 1–42. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.960
  6. Schreiber L. & I. Sitaridou (2017). Assessing the sociolinguistic vitality of Romeyka: An attitudinal study. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 1–17
  7. Michelioudakis, D. & I. Sitaridou. (2016). ‘Recasting the multiple-wh typology: Evidence from Pontic Greek varieties’. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics. 1–33 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.72
  8. Guardiano, C., Michelioudakis, D., Ceolin, A., Irimia, M. A., Longobardi, G., Radkevich, N., Silvestri, G. & Sitaridou, I. (2016). South by Southeast. A syntactic approach to Greek and Romance microvariation. L’Italia dialettale. 1–63
  9. Michelioudakis, D. & Sitaridou, I. (2016). Recasting the typology of multiple wh-fronting: Evidence from Pontic Greek. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 1(1), 40. 1–33.  https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.72
  10. Sitaridou, I. (2016). Reframing the phylogeny of Asia Minor Greek: The view from Pontic Greek. CHS Research Bulletin, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University 4, 1. 1–17. 
  11. Sitaridou, I., Whimpanny, H. & Ayres, L. (2015). Variation and Optionality in Clitic climbing in Argentinean Spanish. Isogloss 1, 1. 247–291. 
  12. Alboiu, G., Hill, V. & Sitaridou, I. (2015). Discourse Driven V-to-C in Early Modern Romanian. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 33, 4. 1057–1088. 
  13. Sitaridou, I. (2014). Modality, antiveridicality, and complementation: The Romeyka infinitive as a negative polarity item. Lingua. 118–146.
  14. Sitaridou, I. & Kaltsa, M. (2014). Contrastivity in Pontic Greek. Lingua. 1–27. 
  15. Sitaridou, I. (2014). The Romeyka Infinitive: Continuity, Contact and Change in the Hellenic varieties of Pontus. Diachronica 31, 1. 23–73. 
  16. Jaspal, R. & Sitaridou, I. (2013). Coping with Stigmatized Linguistic Identities: Identity and Ethnolinguistic Vitality Among Andalusians. Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research 13(2). 95–119.
  17. Sitaridou, I. (2012). A comparative study of word order in Old Romance. Folia Linguistica 46(2), ‘The pace of Grammaticalisation in Romance’ (guest eds. Anne Carlier, Béatrice Lamiroy & Walter De Mulder). 553–604. 
  18. Sitaridou, I. (2011). Word order and information structure in Old Spanish. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, Special issue on ‘Word Order and Information Structure’ (eds. Montserrat Battlori &Maria Lluïsa Hernanz). 159–184. 
  19. Sitaridou, I. (2009). On the emergence of personal infinitives in the history of Spanish. Diachronica 26, 1. 36–64. 
  20. Sitaridou, I. (2007). Infinitives with subjects in Greek and Southern Italian dialects: a Sprachbund effect. In D. Bentley & A. Ledgeway (eds.), Sui dialetti italoromanzi. Saggi in onore di Nigel B. Vincent, The Italianist, Special Supplement. London: Maney. 221–242. 

 

BOOKS

  1. Bouzouita, M., I. Sitaridou & E. Pato. (Eds.) (2018). Studies in Historical Ibero-Romance Morphosyntax. Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics series (IHLL). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

 

CHAPTERS IN EDITED VOLUMES (REFEREED)

  1. Sitaridou, I. (2022). ‘La subida de los clíticos en rioplatense: mecanismos universales, variación y opcionalidad’ en Universales vernáculos en la gramática del español, Ángela Di Tullio, Enrique Pato (eds.) (pp. 97–122). Madrid: Iberoamericana Vervuert. 
  2. Sitaridou, I. (2021). ‘(In)Vulnerable inflected infinitives as complements to volitionals and modals: Evidence from Galician and Romeyka’. In T. Eythórsson & J. G. Jónsson (Eds.), Syntactic Features and the Limits of Syntactic Change (pp. 161–177). Oxford: OUP.
  3. Donnabedian, A. & I. Sitaridou (2020). ‘Language contact in Anatolia’. In E. Adamou and Y. Matras (Eds.), Handbook of Language Contact (pp. 404–434). London: Routledge. 
  4. Michelioudakis, D. & I. Sitaridou (2020) ‘Towards a formal model of transfer under contact: Contrasting Asia Minor Greek to mainland Greek and Turkish in search of syntactic borrowings’ in M. Georgiafentis, G. Giannoulopoulou, M. Koliopoulou & A. Tsokoglou (Eds.), Theoretical Approaches to Contrastive Linguistics. Morphological and Syntactic Perspectives (pp. 246–261). London: Bloomsbury Studies in Theoretical Linguistics. 
  5. Abbott, J. & I. Sitaridou (2019). 'How contact with Greek exacerbated the rise of the definite article in Bulgarian'. In J. J. Pennington, V.A. Friedman, and L. A. Grenoble, (Eds.), And Thus You Are Everywhere Honored: Studies Dedicated To Brian D. Joseph (pp. 7–20). Bloomington: Slavica Publishers. 
  6. Sitaridou, I.  (2019). ‘Against V2 in Old Spanish’. In A. Breitbarth, M. Bouzouita, M. Farasyn, L. Danckaert (Eds.), The Determinants of Diachronic Stability (pp. 131–156). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 
  7. Guardiano, C., D. Michelioudakis, G. Cordoni, M.A. Irimia, N. Radkevich, I. Sitaridou (2018). ‘Parametric comparison and dialect variation. Insights from Southern Italy’. In L. Repetti & F. Ordóñez (Eds.), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14. Selected papers from the 46th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL) (pp. 103–133). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 
  8. Bouzouita, M., I. Sitaridou & E. Pato (2018). ‘Some Introductory Reflections’. In M. Bouzouita, I. Sitaridou & E. Pato (Eds.), Studies in Historical Ibero-Romance Morpho-Syntax [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics] (pp. 1–12) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 
  9. Sitaridou, I. (2017). ‘Chapter II.2: Object arguments’. In A. Dufter & E. Stark, Manual of Romance Morphosyntax and Syntax. Series: Manuals of Romance Linguistics (pp. 89–153). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 
  10. Sitaridou, I. (2015). ‘La anteposición de participio en español antiguo debida a la estructura de la información del discurso’. In M. López Izquierdo & M. Castillo Lluch (Eds.), El orden de palabras en español medieval (pp. 111–140). Madrid: Visor. 
  11. Eide, K. & Sitaridou, I. (2014). ‘Contrastivity and information structure in the Old Ibero-Romance languages’. In K. Bech & K. Gunn Eide (Eds.), Information Structure and Syntactic Change in Germanic and Romance languages (pp. 377–412). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 
  12. Sitaridou, I. (2013). ‘Greek-speaking enclaves in Pontus today: The documentation and revitalization of Romeyka’. In M. Jones & S. Ogilvie (Eds.), Keeping Languages Alive. Language Endangerment: Documentation, Pedagogy and Revitalization (pp. 98–112). Cambridge: CUP. 
  13. Michelioudakis, D. & Sitaridou, I. (2012). ‘Syntactic microvariation: Dative Constructions in Greek’. In R. Etxepare & B. Fernández (Eds.), Datives in variation: a micro-comparative perspective (pp. 212–255). Oxford: OUP. 
  14. Sitaridou, I. (2007). ‘Romance infinitives with subjects, subjunctive obviation and control theory’. In L. Eguren & O. Soriano (Eds.), Coreference, Modality and Focus. Studies on the Syntax-Semantics Interface (pp. 191–219). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 
  15. Sitaridou, I. (2006). ‘The (dis)association of Tense, phi-features EPP and nominative Case: case studies from Romance and Greek’. In J. Costa & M. C. Figueiredo Silva (Eds.), Studies on Agreement (pp. 243–260). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 
  16. Mathieu, E. & Sitaridou, I. (2005). ‘Split wh-Constructions in Classical and Modern Greek: A Diachronic Perspective’. In M. Batllori, M.-L. Hernanz, C. Picallo & F. Roca (Eds.), Grammaticalization and Parametric Change (pp. 236–250). Oxford: OUP. 

 

WORKING PAPERS (REFEREED)

  1. Michelioudakis, D. & Sitaridou, I. (2013). ‘Multiple wh-fronting across Pontic Greek dialects’. In A. Ralli, B. Joseph, M. Janse, A. Karasimos (Eds.), On-line Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference of Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory (MGDLT5), Ghent, 20-22 September 2012. 
  2. Kaltsa, M. & Sitaridou, I. (2010). ‘Topicalisation in Pontic Greek’. In A. Ralli, B. Joseph, M. Janse, A. Karasimos (Eds.), On-line Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory (MGDLT4), Chios, 11-14 June 2009 (pp. 262-279). 
  3. Michelioudakis, D. & Sitaridou, I. (2010). ‘Syntactic microvariation in Pontic Greek: Dative constructions’. In A. Ralli, B. Joseph, M. Janse & A. Karasimos (Eds.), On-line Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory (MGDLT4), Chios, 11-14 June 2009 (pp. 131-146). 
  4. Haidou, K. & Sitaridou, I. (2002). ‘The Licensing of Subjects in Greek Gerunds’. SOAS Working Papers (pp. 189-197). 
  5. Mathieu, E. & Sitaridou, I. (2002). ‘Split wh-constructions in Classical and Modern Greek’. In A. Alexiadou, S. Fischer, M. Stavrou (Eds.), Linguistics in Potsdam 19 (pp. 143-182). 

 

PROCEEDINGS (REFEREED)

  1. Michelioudakis, D. & I. Sitaridou. (2013). ‘Multiple wh-fronting across Pontic Greek dialects’. On-line Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference of Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory (MGDLT5), Chios, 11-14/06/2009, (eds.) A. Ralli, B. Joseph, M. Janse & A. Karasimos.
  2. Kaltsa, M. & I. Sitaridou (2010). ‘Topicalisation in Pontic Greek’. On-line Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory (MGDLT4), Chios, 11-14/06/2009, (eds.) A. Ralli, B. Joseph, M. Janse & A. Karasimos. 262-279. 
  3. Michelioudakis, D. & I. Sitaridou (2010). ‘Syntactic microvariation in Pontic Greek: Dative constructions’. On-line Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory (MGDLT4), Chios, 11-14/06/2009, (eds.) A. Ralli, B. Joseph, M. Janse & A. Karasimos. 131-146. 
  4. Sitaridou, I. & Terkourafi, M. (2009). ‘On the Loss of the Masculine Genitive Plural in Cypriot Greek: language contact or internal evolution?’. In M. Dufresne, F. Dupuis & E. Vocaj (Eds.), Historical Linguistics 2007. Selected Papers from the 18th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Montréal, Québec, 6-11 August 2007 (pp. 161-173). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 
  5. Michelioudakis, D. & Sitaridou, I. (2009). ‘The ethic dative in Greek and Romance’. Studies in Greek Linguistics 29. Thessaloniki: Institute for Modern Greek Studies, Aristole University of Thessaloniki (pp. 355-370). Μελέτες για την Ελληνική γλώσσα. Πρακτικά της 29ης ετήσιας συνάντησης του τομέα Γλωσσολογίας, του   τμήματος   Φιλολογίας,   της   Φιλοσοφικής   Σχολής   του   Αριστοτελείου Πανεπιστημίου Θεσσαλονίκης (pp. 355-370).   
  6. Sifaki, E. & Sitaridou, I. (2007). ‘EPP Revisited: Evidence from Null Subject Languages’. In E. Agathopoulou, M. Dimitrakopoulou & D. Papadopoulou (Eds.), Selected Papers in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Volume 1, 17 International Symposium, English Department, Aristotle University (pp. 188-198). Thessaloniki: Monochromia. 
  7. Sitaridou, I. (2004). ‘A corpus-based study of null subjects in Old French and Occitan’. In C. D. Pusch, J. Kabatek, W.  Raible.  (Eds.), Romance Corpus Linguistics II.  Corpora and Diachronic Linguistics (pp. 359-374). Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.  
  8. Σιταρίδου, Ι. & Χάϊδου, Κ. (2001). ‘Η αρχή νομιμοποίησης των υποκειμένων στα ελληνικά γερούνδια’, Μελέτες για την Ελληνική γλώσσα. Πρακτικά της 22ης ετήσιας συνάντησης του τομέα Γλωσσολογίας, του τμήματος Φιλολογίας, της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής του Αριστοτελείου Πανεπιστημίου Θεσσαλονίκης (pp. 583-592). 
  9. Sitaridou, I. (2001). ‘Inflected and Personal infinitives in Romance languages from a diachronic perspective’. Proceedings of the 6th Doctorate Meeting in Linguistics at the University Paris 7 (pp. 143-149). 
  10. Sitaridou, I. (2001). ‘The History of Inflected and Personal infinitives in Romance languages’. Proceedings of the Tenth Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics, University of Manchester.
  11. Sitaridou, I. (2000). ‘Non-finiteness in Old Neapolitan and Modern Greek’. Μελέτες για την Ελληνική γλώσσα. Πρακτικά της 21ης ετήσιας συνάντησης του τομέα Γλωσσολογίας, του τμήματος Φιλολογίας, της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής του Αριστοτελείου Πανεπιστημίου Θεσσαλονίκης (pp. 700-712). 
  12. Sitaridou, I. (2000). ‘Lexical subjects in Portuguese and Spanish infinitival clauses’. Proceedings of the Ninth Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics, University of Manchester (pp. 123-195).