Dr Valentina Brunetto

Profile

I earned my MA at the University of Siena in 2009, followed by a PhD at the University of Leeds in 2012 and a short post-doc at the Leeds Humanities Research Institute in 2013. I investigated Italian children's production and comprehension of reflexive and accusative clitics in different syntactic constructions. In 2013-14 I worked on a project on the acquisition of near-reflexivity (with Tom Roeper) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, funded by the Fondazione Marica De Vincenzi. I taught Language Acquisition at the University of Manchester before coming back to Leeds in 2017.

Responsibilities

• Programme Manager MA Linguistics; MA Linguistics & English Language Teaching

Research interests

My primary research interests are in experimental syntax, generative first language acquisition and language processing. I study the interaction between syntactic structures and interpretation through several lenses: child language acquisition, adult online processing, comparative syntax. My research focuses on the following themes:

• The syntax and semantics of strong, weak and clitic pronouns and their development in the preschool years.  
• The acquisition of anaphora and the interaction between locality of syntactic computations and strategies of anaphora resolution in both language development and online processing.
• The acquisition of perceptual reports and causative constructions in Romance languages (with a particular focus on Italian).
• The syntax of intensionality. Currently, I am investigating the interaction between children’s representation of attitude domains and their interpretation of perspectival elements such as anaphors, evaluative adjectives, and anti-attitudinal expressions.

Qualifications

• PhD in Linguistics, University of Leeds
• MA in Linguistics, University of Siena
• BA in Journalism, University of Palermo

Professional memberships

• Member of LAGB

Student education

I teach modules at undergraduate and MA level on introductory and advanced generative syntax, experimental syntax, language acquisition and processing, and supervise BA and MA dissertations in these areas. I am programme leader for the MA Linguistics and MA Linguistics & ELT.

If you are interested in postgraduate study, please email me (V.Brunetto@leeds.ac.uk).

Research groups and institutes

• Formal Linguistics
• Language acquisition
• Language processing
• Language pedagogy
• Language at Leeds
• Leeds Child Development Unit