Sara Natalia Cardullo

I study comparative Romance linguistics with a focus on Italo-Romance varieties, and my primary interest lies in morpho-syntactic variation arising from endogenous and contact-induced language change. My PhD project consists in the documentation and analysis of key morpho-syntactic phenomena in the dialects of the Eolian islands (Sicily). I am particularly interested in understanding the extent of dialect microvariation between the islands and their typological and genealogical relationship to the major dialect groups of Southern Italy. This research is a continuation of my MA project at the University of Pisa where I studied Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (2019, cum laude). Before this, I received my BA degree at the University of California, Berkeley (2014, cum laude) where I studied Psychology and minored in Applied Language Studies. I first pursued my interests in Italian linguistics and dialectology as a Fulbright scholar conducting sociolinguistic research in Messina, Italy (2016-2017).