Dr Norma Schifano

Churchill College
  • Assistant Professor of Italian and Comparative Romance Linguistics
Dr Norma Schifano

Contact

Location

  • Storey's Way , Cambridge, CB3 0DS

About

Norma Schifano’s research focuses on documenting and theorizing morphosyntactic change and variation in Romance, with a particular focus on language contact, both diachronically and synchronically. Recently she has also become interested in ethical challenges and opportunities raised by collaborations between academics and third-sector organizations representing linguistic minorities.

Her first monograph (Verb Movement in Romance, Oxford University Press, 2018) challenges how word order variations in verb placement across Romance have been traditionally analysed and develops a principled morphosyntactic account which successfully predicts the great wealth of microvariation attested within this language family. Taking this work as a point of departure, she has extended her investigations to examine correlations between verb movement and seemingly unrelated morphosyntactic phenomena across a wide range of early and modern Romance (non-)standard varieties, resulting in numerous co-authored publications with Adam Ledgeway (Università degli Studi di Bergamo). 

Since working as an RA on the Leverhulme-funded project Fading Voices in Southern Italy (2015-2019, Cambridge) her research has explored a wealth of contact-induced morphosyntactic phenomena in the highly endangered Italo-Greek varieties of southern Italy. This decade-long investigation, resulting in numerous publications with Adam Ledgeway (Università degli Studi di Bergamo) and Giuseppina Silvestri (UCLA), has culminated in a new co-authored monograph (Greek-Romance Language Contact in Southern Italy: documentation and theory, forthcoming, Oxford University Press). 

Beyond Italy, her endeavours to document and analyse language contact in linguistic minorities have extended to the largely overlooked Latin American community in the UK, leading a pilot project funded by a BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (2022-2025).

In 2017 Norma co-founded the Linguistics@InMFL Project with Michelle Sheehan (Newcastle University). This is now a multi-institutional collaborative project which aims to investigate and provide evidence for the viability of including linguistics as an element of MFL teaching in the UK curriculum. Along with the team, she has published extensively in pedagogical linguistics.

Norma completed a BA in Modern Languages and Language Sciences at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (2009), where she remained for a MA in Language Sciences (2011). In 2015 she completed a PhD in Italian at Clare College, Cambridge. Before taking up her current post, she worked at the Universities of Oxford, Manchester and Birmingham.  

Teaching interests: 

Italian and Romance comparative morphosyntax (diachronic and synchronic), language contact,  language documentation of linguistic minorities and migrant communities, participatory research and research ethics, pedagogical linguistics.

Research

Recent research projects: 

BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant SRG21\211281 ‘Heritage speakers of Spanish: the case of Latin American Londoners’ (PI)

Published works: 

(Co-authored) monographs

  • (forthcoming). Greek-Romance Language Contact in southern Italy: Documentation and Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press [with Ledgeway and Silvestri]. 
  • (2018). Verb Movement in Romance: A Comparative Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

(Co-edited) books & special issues

  • (under contract). Syntactic Variation and Change: Case Studies from the Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press [with Ledgeway].
  • (2025-). Principal co-editor of new textbook series Gateways to Language and Linguistics, Routledge [with Corr, Havinga, Kasstan, Stollhans, Sheehan].
  • (2023a). ‘Romance grammars: context and contact’. Special issue of Isogloss 9(2) [with Corr].
  • (2014). Latin: a linguistic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press [with Oniga].

Peer-reviewed journal articles

  • (submitted). ‘When Catalan goes high, Italo-Greek goes low: the effects of contact on parameter setting’. Journal of Catalan Linguistics [with Ledgeway].
  • (forthcoming). ‘Spirito greco, materia romanza: il caso della negazione irreale nelle varietà italogreche e romanze dell’Italia meridionale’. Ricerche Linguistiche [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  • (forthcoming). ‘Plurilingualism in southern Italy: A case study in dynamic language contact’. Iperstoria. A Journal of American and English Studies [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  • (forthcoming). ‘Modelling language contact in Magna Graecia: parameter hierarchies, the catapult effect and layering’. Transactions of the Philological Society. [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  • (in press). ‘When three become two: the development of Greek and Romance complementizer systems in the dialects of the extreme south of Italy’. Isogloss [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  • (2025). ‘“I haven’t seen any results yet”: On ethical collaborative research in linguistics and the need for a standard protocol’. Linguistics 63(2): 461-485 [with Allen, Nellan, Restrepo Garcés, Kasstan].
  • (2024). ‘Patterns of infinitival and finite complementation in Griko and Salentino’. In Michele Loporcaro and Federica Breimaier (eds), The Dialects of Apulia and Salento: Two Different Ways of Being Southern (Italo)-Romance, special issue of L’Italia dialettale LXXXV: 97–117 [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  • (2023). ‘Negation and verb-movement in Romance: new perspectives on Jespersen’s Cycle’. Probus International Journal of Latin and Romance Linguistics 35(1): 151–211 [with Ledgeway]. 
  • (2021). ‘The Negative Imperative in Southern Calabria. Spirito Greco, Materia Romanza Again?’. Journal of Language Contact 14: 184–219 [with Ledgeway and Silvestri]. 
  • (2021). ‘Rethinking the UK Languages Curriculum: Arguments for the Inclusion of  Linguistics’. Modern Languages Open, 2021(1): 1–24 [with Corr, Havinga, Kasstan, Sheehan].
  • (2020). ‘Changing alignments in the Greek of southern Italy’. Journal of Greek Linguistics 20: 5–60 [with Ledgeway and Silvestri]. 
  • (2020). ‘I possessivi in italo-greco e italo-romanzo: paralleli strutturali in un’area di contatto’. Archivio Glottologico Italiano CV(I): 85–114 [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  • (2019). ‘Differential Object Marking and the properties of D in the dialects of the extreme south of Italy’. Glossa 4(1): 1–25 [with Ledgeway and Silvestri]. 
  • (2018). ‘Il contatto tra il greco e le varietà romanze nella Calabria meridionale’. Lingue antiche e moderne 7: 95–133 [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  •  (2018). ‘The expression of progressive aspect in Grico: mapping morphosyntactic isoglosses in an endangered Italo-Greek variety’. Transactions of the Philological Society 116(2): 179–217 [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  • (2017). ‘Nuove indagini linguistiche sulla varietà greca del Salento’. L’Italia dialettale LXXVIII: 279–312 [with Silvestri].
  • (2015). ‘Il posizionamento del verbo nei dialetti romanzi d’Italia’. The Italianist 35(1): 121–138.

Peer-reviewed book chapters

  • (forthcoming). ‘Verb-movement and its correlates: insights from Cartography’. In Sam Wolfe (ed), Oxford Handbook of Syntactic Cartography. Oxford: Oxford University Press [with Ledgeway].
  • (forthcoming). ‘When Greek meets Romance: Processes of Hellenization and Romanicization in southern Italy’. In Bridget Drinka and Claus Ehrhardt (eds), Excavating Language: Linguistic Connections across Latin, Greek, and Modern European Languages. Berlin: de Gruyter [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  • (2023). ‘Jespersen: ¿un ciclo que no vuelve a empezar?’ In Dolores Corbella, Josefa Dorta, and Rafael Padrón (eds), Perspectives en linguistique et philologie romanes. Paris: Éditions de Linguistique et de Philologie, Bibliotèque de Linguistique Romane, 361–379 [with Ledgeway].
  • (2023). ‘Il ruolo del contatto nell’aspetto perfettivo in griko: forme sintetiche ed analitiche in competizione’. In Walter Breu and Malinka Pila (eds), L’aspettualità nel contatto linguistico: lingue slave e oltre: Resistenza, ristrutturazione ed innovazione dell’aspetto verbale e della sua periferia sotto l’influsso di varietà alloglotte. Atti del 3º Convegno Internazionale Costanza/Hegne, 16-20 giugno 2019. Firenze: Firenze University Press, 303–329 [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  • (2022). ‘Parametric variation’. In Adam Ledgeway and Martin Maiden (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 637–670 [with Ledgeway]. 
  • (2020). ‘From macro to nano: A parametric hierarchy approach to the diatopic and diachronic variation of Italian ben’. In András Báráby, Theresa Biberauer, Jamie Douglas, and Sten Vikner (eds), Syntactic architecture and its consequences. Vol. 1. Syntax inside the grammar. Berlin: Language Science Press, 233–250 [with Cognola].
  • (2020). ‘Microvariation in dative-marking in the Romance and Greek varieties of southern Italy’. In Anna Pineda and Jaime Mateu (eds), Dative Structures in Romance and Beyond. Berlin: Language Science Press, 317–349 [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  • (2020). ‘I costrutti causativi nelle varietà romanze e greche della Calabria meridionale’. In Patrizia Del Puente, Francesca Guazzelli, Lucia Molinu, and Simone Pisano (eds), Tra etimologia romanza e dialettologia. Studi in onore di Franco Fanciullo. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 203–218 [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  • (2019). ‘Variazione nella codifica degli argomenti verbali nelle varietà romanze e greche della Calabria meridionale: ‘dativo greco’ e marca differenziale dell'oggetto diretto.’ In Patrizia Del Puente (ed.), Atti del V Convegno Internazionale di Dialettologia - Progetto A.L.Ba. Rionero in Vulture: Calice Editore, 93–113 [with Ledgeway and Silvestri].
  • (2018). ‘On ben in Trentino regional Italian.’ In Janine Berns, Haike Jacobs, and Dominique Nouveau (eds), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 13. Selected papers from Going Romance 29, Nijmegen. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 55–74 [with Cognola].
  • (2018). ‘On the distribution and interpretation of the discourse particle ben across some regional varieties of Italian’. In Gabriela Pană Dindelegan, Adina Dragomirescu, Irina Nicula, and Alexandru Nicolae (eds), Comparative and Diachronic Perspectives on Romance Syntax. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 435–455 [with Cognola].
  • (2018). ‘Italian faire-infinitives: the special case of volere’. In Mirko Grimaldi, Rosangela Lai, Ludovico Franco, and Benedetta Baldi (eds), Structuring variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 161–175 [with Sheehan].
  • (2016). ‘Le lingue romanze: verso una cartografia del movimento del verbo’. In Eva Buchi, Jean-Paul Cheveau, and Jean-Marie Pierrel (eds), Actes du XXVIIe Congrès international de linguistique et de philologie romanes (Nancy, 15–20 juillet 2013), Volume 1 (selected proceedings). Strasbourg: ÉliPhi, 581–92.
  • (2016). ‘Some preliminary observations on auxiliary selection and participle agreement in Greko and Bovese’. In Angela Ralli, Nikos Koutsoukos, and Stavros Bompolas (eds), Proceedings of the 6th Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory Meeting, University of Patras, 25-28 September 2014. Patras: University of Patras, 166–177 [with Squillaci and Silvestri]. 
  • (2015). ‘The paradigmatic instantiation of TAM: a novel approach to Romance verb-    movement’. In Enoch Aboh, Jeannette Schaeffer, and Petra Sleeman (eds), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2013. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ Amsterdam 2013. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 83–102.
  • (2014). ‘(Un)marked patterns of verb-movement: the case of Romanian’. In Rodica Zafiu, Adina Dragomirescu, and Alexandru Nicolae (eds), Diacronie și sincronie în studiul limbii române. Bucharest: Editura Universității din București, 191–201.

Policy and educational articles

  • (forthcoming). ‘Language teaching needs language science: A manifesto for linguistics and language teaching in the United Kingdom’. In Stephan Nitu and Arlene Holmes-Henderson (eds), Humanities Forward: Opportunity, Innovation, Policy in the 21st Century. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press [with Corr, Havinga, Kasstan, Stollhans, Sheehan].
  • (2024). ‘Addressing the UK’s ‘languages crisis’: moving beyond skills-based language teaching through the inclusion of linguistics in secondary education’. In Charles Forsdick and Wendy Ayres-Bennett (eds), Languages in UK Education. Special collection in Languages, Society and Policy [with Corr, Havinga, Kasstan, Stollhans, Sheehan].
  • (2023). ‘Linguistics in MFL’: cómo la lingüística puede mejorar la enseñanza de idiomas’. Tecla (Revista de la Consejería de Educación en el Reino Unido e Irlanda) 1: 5–12 [with Corr, Lopes, Minguito].
  • (2021). ‘The DfE/Ofqual consultation on revised GCSE qualifications in Modern Foreign Languages – a view from linguistics’. Languages, Society and Policy [with Corr, Havinga, Kasstan, Stollhans, Sheehan].

Other contributions

  • (2023). ‘Romance grammars in context and contact: introduction to the Special issue’. Isogloss 9(2): 1–6 [with Corr].
  • (2021). ‘The Romance Inter-Views: Syntax’. Isogloss 7(2): 1–11 [with Armstrong, Arregi, De Clercq, Donati, Fábregas, Rizzi, and Saab].
  • (2013). Review of Oniga, Renato, Rossella Iovino, and Giuliana Giusti (eds) (2011). Formal Linguistics and the Teaching of Latin: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives in Comparative Grammar. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing. Published on Revue roumaine de linguistique 2013 58(4): 458–464.  

Teaching and supervision

Course contact for: 

ITA3/IT1: Introduction to Italian Language: Texts and Contexts (linguistics component)

IT2: Structures and Varieties of Italian / IT10: The Language of Italy

CS1: The Romance Languages (Michaelmas only)

Language Contact (MPhil in Linguistics and Language Sciences)