Raffaella Zanuttini is an Italian linguist whose research focuses primarily on syntax and linguistic variation. She is a Professor of Linguistics at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She is the author and coauthor of six books and has published numerous articles on micro-syntactic variation, clause types, and sentential negation. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1991 under Anthony Kroch and Richard S. Kayne, and her dissertation is entitled Syntactic Properties of Sentential Negation. A Comparative Study of Romance Languages. Since completing her Ph.D, she has held academic appointments at Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and Yale University.
Research
The majority of Zanuttini's research falls into three categories: micro-syntactic variation, clause types, and sentential negation. Micro-syntactic variation refers to minute differences between different varieties of a language spoken in a given geographic region. Zanuttini's studies within this area focus on romance languages and minority varieties of English in North America, specifically Appalachian English. Her work with clause types involves giving more precise definition to, and differentiation between different types of clausal constructions such as declarative, exclamative, and imperative clauses. Zanuttini founded the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project in 2011. Members of the project, housed at Yale University, conduct research on minority varieties of English spoken in North America and micro-syntactic differences between them. Presently, Zanuttini remains a leader of the project, alongside Laurence Horn and Jim Wood. She has received three major grants from the National Science Foundation to conduct collaborative research on minority varieties of English.
Teaching
Zanuttini is currently a Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Linguistics at Yale University. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate level courses in Syntax. Prior to beginning her tenure at Yale in 2008, Zanuttini was both an Assistant Professor and an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University.
Zanuttini, R. and P. Portner. 2000. “The characterization of exclamative clauses in Paduan”, Language 76:123–132.
Pak, M., P. Portner and R. Zanuttini. 2008. “Agreement in Promissive, Imperative, and Exhortative Clauses.” Korean Linguistics, 14:157–175.
Zanuttini, R. 2008. “Encoding the Addressee in the syntax: Evidence from English imperative subjects”, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 26:185–218.
Zanuttini, R, M. Pak and P. Portner. 2012. “A Syntactic Analysis of Interpretive Restrictions on Imperative, Promissive, and Exhortative Subjects.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 30:1231–1274.
Poletto, C. and R. Zanuttini. 2013. "Emphasis as reduplication: Evidence from si che/no che sentences", Lingua 128: 124–141.
Wood, J., L. Horn, R. Zanuttini and L. Lindemann. 2015 “The Southern Dative Presentative meets Mechanical Turk”, American Speech 90:291–320.
Zanuttini, R., J. Wood, J. Zentz and L. Horn. 2018. "The Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: Morphosyntactic variation in North American English." Linguistics Vanguard, 4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2016-0070
Wood, J. and R. Zanuttini. 2018. Datives, data and dialect syntax in American English. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 3:87. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.527
