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Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics

 

Maria Olimpia Squillaci

Squillaci

College:

Trinity

Email:

mos26@cam.ac.uk

Supervisor:

Prof. Adam Ledgeway

About me:

I am a 3rd-year PhD student at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at University of Cambridge, and a Trinity College scholar. My mother tongue is Italian and my ‘father’ tongue is Greko, an extremely endangered Greek language spoken in the south of Calabria, Italy.

At Cambridge, I am currently investigating on unique linguistic phenomena which have emerged out of the deep and intense contact between Greko and the Romance dialect spoken in the Hellenophone area of Calabria.

I am also writing the first online dictionary of  Greko. The dictionary will be available online and on smartphones from May 2016 within the framework of the European-funded project Grekopedia by Gal Area Grecanica.

During my BA and MA, I have worked with several Greek minorities among which the Greeks in Mariupol’ (Ukraine) and the Greek political refugees in Russia and Uzbekistan.

My research interests: Endangered languages, minorities, language and immigration, language and identity, nationalism and language, revitalisation, language folklorisation, Eastern Europe, history of the Balkans, Russia, EU politics, Russian and Greek modern history, migration, refugeeism

My research:

When Greek meets Romance: A morphosyntactic investigation of language contact in Aspromonte.

My Phd research focuses on the phenomenon of language contact in the South of Italy, Calabria. In particular, it aims at investigating the Greek (Greko) and Romance (Bovese) varieties that today are spoken in the province of Reggio Calabria. In the last few decades, these varieties have been experiencing a sharp decrease in the number of speakers. Significantly, these two varieties have coexisted for centuries, giving raise to unique morpho-syntactic structures born out of contact between Greek and Romance grammars. As a consequence, my main aim is to catalogue and examine these peculiarities which have not received much attention in the national and international literature. In addition I shall compare the grammars of these two varieties on the syntactic level in order to investigate a series of hybrid grammatical phenomena attested in Greko and Bovese.

Teaching:

ITB1: Use of Italian

IT2: Structures and Varieties of Italian

CS1: The Romance languages (only Romanian language)

During the academic year 2015-2016, I also gave two lectures on Greek dialectology to fourth-year BA students at the Faculty of Philology - University of Patras (Greece), and one lecture on minority languages in Italy to fourth-year BA students at the Law Faculty - University of Salento (Italy).

Publications:

Georg Höhn, Giuseppina Silvestri and Maria Olimpia Squillaci, ‘Unagreement between Italian and Southern Italian varieties’, in Atti del XLI Incontro di Grammatica Generativa (Perugia: Università per Stranieri di Perugia, 2016), in press

Norma Schifano, Giuseppina Silvestri and Maria Olimpia Squillaci, ‘Auxiliary selection in Greko of Bova: A Greek-Romance comparison’, in Acts of the VI International Conference on Modern Greek Dialects & Linguistic Theory (Patras: University of Patras, 2016), in press

Georg Höhn, Giuseppina Silvestri and Maria Olimpia Squillaci, ‘Greek and Romance unagreement in Calabria’, in XII International Conference on Greek Linguistics (Berlin: Centrum Modernes Griechenland, 2016), in press

Maria Olimpia Squillaci, ‘The Millennium Development Goals One and Two in Bosnia and Herzegovina on the eve of 2015’, online article in Center of Russia, Eurasia and South-Eastern Europe (Athens: 2013)

Maria Olimpia Squillaci, ‘Muslims in the Balkans: a religion or a nation?’ online article in Center of Russia, Eurasia and South-Eastern Europe (Athens: 2013)

Maria Olimpia Squillaci, ‘Croatia and Slovenia: Similar past, Different future’, online article in Center of Russia, Eurasia and South-Eastern Europe (Athens: 2013)

Professional correction of the Romanian part of ‘Parla con noi! Dizionario basico multilingue illustrato’, ed. Monica Dell’Aglio and Bruna Iacovone, (Rome: Arduino Sacco Editore, 2010)

Conference papers:

‘Greek and Romance unagreement in Calabria’, paper presented with Georg Höhn and Giuseppina Silvestri at the XII International Conference on Greek Linguistics, Berlin, Germany, 16-19 September 2015

‘(Dis-)advantages from the revitalisation of “useless” dialects: The case of Greko and Rumeiko’, paper presented at the V Conference on Language Cambridge Endangerment, University of Cambridge, UK, 31 July 2015

‘When a language becomes old: Language Revitalisation in the Extreme South of Italy’, paper presented at the XV International Conference on Minority Languages, Faculty of Philological studies, Belgrade, Serbia, 28-30 May 2015

‘I magni glossa: Identity, culture and language in Greek Calabria’, invited speaker at the conference on Voices From Greece, University of Norwich, UK, 22 February 2015

‘Complementation in Greko and Bovese’, paper presented at the Romance Linguistic Seminar, University of Cambridge, UK, 17 February 2015

‘Greko and Bovese, a case of language contact in the Extreme South of Italy’, paper presented at the BA Society, Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK, 6 February 2015

‘Unagreement between Italian and southern Italian varieties’, paper presented with Georg Höhn and Giuseppina Silvestri at the III Conference on COmparative SYntax, University of Cambridge, UK, 24 January 2015

‘Auxiliary selection in Greko of Bova: A Greek-Romance comparison’, paper presented with Norma Schifano and Giuseppina Silvestri at the VI International Conference on Modern Greek Dialects & Linguistic Theory, University of Patras, Greece, 25-28 September 2014

Other activities:

I am cofounder and current vice-president of the Cambridge Migration Society

I am member of the Cambridge Community Circus where I practice Aerial Dance on silks and Acroyoga.