The Paduan network group

The network group at Università degli Studi di Padova is conducting the Nothern Italian dialect syntax project ASIS (‘Atlante Sintattico dell' Italia Settentrionale’). Its members are:

• Cecilia Poletto (leader)
• Paola Benincà
• Federica Cognola
• Federico Damonte
• Federico Ghegin
• Richard Kayne (New York University)
• Nicola Munaro (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia)
• Andrea Padovan
• Barbara Patruno
• Nicoletta Penello
• Diego Pescarini
• Chiara Polo
• Sabrina Rason
• Laura Sgarioto
• Raffaella Zanuttini (Georgetown University)


The Paduan network group is working on the Syntactic Atlas of Northern Italy (ASIS), which is already quite advanced in its realization. At the moment data from about 149 dialects with over 400 sentences for each dialect have been gathered and included in the data base. New questionnaires have already been prepared on single phenomena found in restricted areas (wh in situ, interrogative complementizers, postverbal negation) on a par with more general ones concerning exclamatives,imperative clauses and modals, and a number of articles have been published on these topics. A special section on Germanic dialects spoken in Northern Italy is in its first stages as well, with inquiries on the ordering of internal arguments and verb projection raising, on the left periphery and V2, and on sentence typing.
The scholars working on the project also belong to other universities as Venice (Nicola Munaro) Georgetown University (Raffaella Zanuttini), NWY (Richard Kayne)

A twin project for the dialects of Southern Italy (ASIM) is active, at the moment in the first phase of determining the general picture of the syntactic phenomena present in the area. Several interesting new phenomena have already been identified and are going to be investigated in detail.

Several theses have already been finished on DP syntax in Veneto (Nicoletta Penello), on Doubling phenomena in Sicilia (Laura Sgarioto), clitic cluster phenomena (Diego Pescarini) and on the syntax of modal "volere" (Barbara Patruno). Some of the PhD students are currently writing their thesis on topics related to the project using the data available: Sabrina Rason, is working on DP syntax in Rhaetoromance, and Andrea Padovan is starting an inquiry on verb projection raising in Germanic varieties spoken in Northern Veneto. They are also being trained in field methodology and collection of new data for the ASIS and the ASIM. Undergraduate students are also present in the project, Federica Cognola has just finished her thesis on the Fersentaler dialect.