Education and degrees
• 13/05/2005: PhD degree, thesis title: L'Aṣṭādhyāyī di Pāṇini: aspetti teorici e formali (supervisor: Prof. Paolo Di Giovine).
• 1–5/09/2003: Summer school in Historical Linguistics, Società Italiana di Glottologia (Udine).
• 3–7/09/2001: Summer school in Historical Linguistics, Società Italiana di Glottologia (Udine).
• 17/07/2001: Master degree cum laude in Historical Linguistics at Sapienza University of Rome, thesis title: Nuovo Testamento in gotico (supervisor: Prof Carla Del Zotto).

Employment
• 07/2015: Tenured Assistant Professor of Historical and General Linguistics (L-LIN/01) at the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University of Rome.
• 11/2011: Assistant Professor of Historical and General Linguistics (L-LIN/01) at the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University of Rome.
• 05/2010 – 10/2010: Lecturer of Russian, Faculty of Humanities, University of l'Aquila.
• 07/2009 – 06/2010: Teaching assistant, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University of Rome.
• 06/2005 – 06/2009: Post-Doc, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University of Rome.

Funded research projects
• 2015: Research project “Indo-European isoglosses: data collection and models of representation” (9000€).
• 2014: Conference funds for “Coffee Break Conference 5. The influence of space on culture in South Asia” (1500€).
• 2014: Research project “Contact-based approach to the Late Indo- European isoglosses: branch-crossing features and linguistic areas” (4500€).
• 2013: Visiting Professor funds for inviting Prof. Alexander Lubotsky, Leiden University (9000€).
• 2012: Research project “La morfologia derivazionale nelle lingue indoeuropee orientali: dal pensiero grammaticale antico all’indoeuropeistica moderna” (3000€).

Publications
– (with Elisa Freschi) ‘Understanding a Philosophical Text. The Problem of “Meaning” in Jayanta’s Nyāyamañjarī, Book 5’, in P. McAllister & H. Krasser (eds.), Jayanta on Buddhist Nominalism, Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften [in print].
– ‘Subjecthood in Pāṇini’s grammatical tradition’, in Anantaratnaprabhava. Scritti in onore di Giuliano Boccali, Dipartimento di Studi letterari, filologici e linguistici dell’Università degli Studi di Milano [in print].
– ‘Gotskij jazyk i goticizm — ideologija, filologija, tipografika’, in: E. B. Yakovenko (ed.), Lingua Gotica. Novye issledovanija, vol. 3. Moscow: BukiVedi: 10-33.
– ‘Meaningfulness, the unsaid and translatability. Instead of an introduction’, Open Linguistics 1 (2015): 634– 649.
– (guest ed.) ‘Translation Techniques in the Ancient and Oriental Cultures’, Topical Issue of Open Linguistics 1 (2015).
– ‘Form, function and interpretation: a case study in the textual criticism of Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī’, Bulletin d’Études Indiennes 32 (2014): 171–203.
– (ed.) ‘The Study of South Asia between Antiquity and Modernity — Parallels and Comparisons. Coffee Break Conference 2’, Rivista degli Studi Orientali 87 (2014), Suppl. 2: 9–263.
– ‘Direct and Indirect Evidence on Lability in Middle Indo-Aryan’, Linguistics 52.4 (2014): 1107–1138.
– ‘Branch-crossing Indo-European isoglosses: a call for interest’, Indoevropejskoe âzykoznanie i klassičeskaâ filologiâ 17 (2013): 406–417.
– ‘The kāraka-vibhakti device as a heuristic tool for the compositional history of Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī’, Rivista degli Studi Orientali 84 (2012): 273–288.
– ‘Language and linguistics as an analytic tool for the study of (oriental) cultures’, Rivista degli Studi Orientali 84 (2012): 235–240.
– ‘Compositional history of Pāṇiniʼs kāraka theory’, Indoevropejskoe âzykoznanie i klassičeskaâ filologiâ 14.2 (2010): 33–46.
– ‘Le iscrizioni novgorodiane su corteccia di betulla in ottica comparatistica’, Incontri Linguistici 32 (2009): 175–196.
– ‘Predicative possessive constructions in Japanese and Korean’, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, 81 (2008): 339–367.
– ‘La lingua dei goti: linguistica, tipografia, ideologia’, in: C. Barsanti, A. Paribeni, S. Pedone (eds.), Rex Theodericus. Il Medaglione d'oro di Morro d'Alba, Roma: Espera, 2008: 249–260.
– ‘Deissi, arbitrarietà e disambiguazione. Due approcci a confronto’, in: A. Keidan, L. Alfieri (eds.), Deissi, riferimento, metafora. Questioni classiche di linguistica e filosofia del linguaggio. Firenze: FUP, 2008: 19–66.
– ‘Pāṇini 1.4.23: emendation proposal’, Rivista di Studi Sudasiatici 2: 209–241.
– ‘Word boundaries in Pāṇini and Avesta: a linguistic view’, Indoevropejskoe âzykoznanie i klassičeskaâ filologiâ 11 (2007): 145–152.
– ‘Il gotico di Wulfila: tra diacronia e retorica’, AIΩN-Linguistica 23 (2001): 49–105.

Conference organization
• 31/03/2017: Morpho-syntactic isoglosses in Indo-European: diachrony, typology and linguistic areas, workshop at ISTAL23, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), together with Nikolaos Lavidas (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and Leonid Kulikov (Ghent University).
• 22–24/05/2014: CBC5. Space, culture, language and politics in South Asia: common patterns and local distinctions, Sapienza University of Rome.
• 15/06/2012: Translation Techniques in the Asiatic Cultures. Panel at CBC3, University of Cagliari (Italy).
• 8–10/09/2011: CBC2. The Study of South Asia between Antiquity and Modernity. Parallels and Comparisons, Sapienza University of Rome.
• 10–12/06/2010: CBC1. Lo studio dell'Asia fra antico e moderno, Sapienza University of Rome.

Presentations
• 31/03/2017: ‘New NP dependency marking in the «second generation» IE languages’, in: Morpho-syntactic isoglosses in Indo-European: Diachrony, typology and linguistic areas, workshop of ISTAL23, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece).
• 27/03/2017: ‘Categorie linguistiche di Pāṇini e linguistica del Novecento’, in: Incontri Linguistici "Tullio De Mauro", Fondazione Leusso (Rome).
• 8/09/2016: ‘Three more subjecthood features in Pāṇini’s tradition’, in: Forty years after Keenan 1976. Subject properties and subject tests, EVALISA – University of Ghent (Belgium).
• 25/06/2014: ‘«Fixed» vs. «shifting» words: linguistic and philosophical viewpoints’, in: Language, Culture and Mind VI Inside/Out: Practice and Representation, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin (Poland).
• 25/06/2013: ‘Branch-crossing Indo-European isoglosses: a call for interest’, in: Čtenija pamjati I. M. Tronskogo, Institute of Linguistic Studies, St. Petersburg (Russia).
• 15/06/2012: ‘A Semiotic Approach to the Study of Translation’, in: CBC3. The Study of Asia – between Antiquity and Modernity, University of Cagliari (Italy).
• 8/01/2012: (with Elisa Freschi) ‘What is the goal one has in view while editing a philosophical work?’, in: 15th World Sanskrit Conference, Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan, New Delhi (India).
• 22/06/2010: ‘Compositional history of Pāṇiniʼs kāraka theory’, in: Čtenija pamjati I. M. Tronskogo, Institute of Linguistic Studies, St. Petersburg (Russia).
• 11/06/2010: ‘How modern linguistics can help us to reconstruct the compositional history of Pāṇiniʼs grammar’, in: CBC1. Lo studio dell’Asia fra antico e moderno. Giornate di studio, Sapienza University of Rome.
• 29/05/2010: ‘Possessive predicates from Archaic Latin to the Romance languages: an issue of topicality and word order?’, in: Workshop: Variation and Change in Argument Realization, University of Naples (Italy).
• 4/04/2009: ‘Pāṇinīya tradition as a source for the study of the MI labile verbs”, in: ISTAL19. International Symposium on Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece).
• 29/08/2008: ‘Stratifications in Pāṇiniʼs kāraka theory: a functionalist approach’, in: ICHoLS11. International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences, Universität Potsdam (Germany).
• 12/05/2008: ‘Possessive constructions in Japanese and Korean: a cognitive approach’, in: Comparative Studies in Korean and Japanese, Sapienza University of Rome.
• 19/06/2007: ‘Word boundaries in Pāṇini and Avesta: a linguistic view’, in: Čtenija pamjati I. M. Tronskogo, Institute of Linguistic Studies, St. Petersburg (Russia).
• 20/06/2006: ‘«Kal’kirovannyj arxaizm» gotskogo jazyka’, in: Čtenija pamjati I. M. Tronskogo, Institute of Linguistic Studies, St. Petersburg (Russia).

Anonymous reviewing
• Journal «Philosophy of East and West»
• Journal of the «Associazione Italiana di Studi Giapponesi».
• Publishing project «Libera la ricerca».
• Journal «Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics».

Memberships
• 2017: Societas Linguistica Europaea
• 2012: Società Italiana di Glottologia

Education and academic degrees
• 2001: PhD, Leiden University, topic of the thesis: “The Vedic -ya-presents”, supervisor: Prof. A. Lubotsky.
• 1989: Candidate degree, Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, topic of the thesis: “The Causative in Sanskrit”; supervisor: Prof. T.Ja. Elizarenkova.
• 1986: M.A. degree, Moscow State University, Faculty of Arts, Dept. of structural and applied linguistics (OSiPL), topic of the M.A. thesis: “Given/new and definite/indefinite opposition in Russian”; supervisor: Prof. A.E. Kibrik.

Professional career: academic positions and visiting appointments
• 2011–: Assistant Professor and Research Fellow at Ghent University, Linguistics Department
• 2010: Visiting lecturer at Uppsala University, Department of Linguistics and Philology
• 2009–2012: Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Linguistics (Russian Academy of Sciences), Dept. of Linguistic Typology, Moscow
• 2008–2011: Associated member and lecturer at Leiden University, Institute of Linguistics
• 2004–2008: Post-doctoral researcher at Leiden University, Dept. of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics / Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Project “Valency-changing categories in Indo-Aryan: a diachronic typological approach”
• 2005–2007: Post-doctoral researcher (Humboldt-fellow) at Göttingen University, Project “A grammar of the Rgveda”
• 2002–2004: Post-doctoral researcher at the University of Nijmegen at the PIONIER-Project “Case cross-linguistically”
• 2001: Post-doctoral project “Editing the Indo-Aryan etymological database” at Leiden University, Dept. of Comparative Linguistics
• 1993–1997: Teaching/Research Assistant (AIO) at Leiden University (Dept. of Indo-European Comparative Linguistics).
• 1991–1993: Lecturer (Sanskrit and Indian Literature) at the Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow).

Publications (selection)
Authored books
– The Vedic -ya-presents: Passives and intransitivity in Old Indo-Aryan. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012. (Leiden Studies in Indo-European; 19)

Articles on WOS Class A Journals
– (with Saartje Verbeke & Klaas Willems), ‘Oblique case-marking in Indo-Aryan experiencer constructions: historical roots and synchronic variation’, Lingua 163 (2015): 23–39.
– ‘The decline of labile syntax in Old Indo-Aryan: A diachronic typological perspective’, Linguistics 52.4 (2014): 1139–1165.
– (guest editor with Nikolaos Lavidas), ‘Typology of labile verbs: Focus on diachrony’, Special issue of Linguistics 52.4 (2014): 871–877.
– ‘Traces of castes and other social strata in the Maldives: A case study of social stratification in a diachronic perspective (Ethnographic, historic, and linguistic evidence)’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 139.2 (2014): 199–213.
– ‘Language vs. grammatical tradition in Ancient India: How real was Pāṇinian Sanskrit? Evidence from the history of late Sanskrit passives and pseudo-passives’, Folia Linguistica Historica 34 (2013): 59–91.
– ‘An Atharvanic hymn to Night: Text-critical and linguistic remarks on the interpretation of Śaunakīya 19.50 = Paippalāda 14.9’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 76.2 (2013): 259–269.
– ‘Constraints on the causative derivation in early Vedic: Evidence for a diachronic typology of transitivity’, Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 49.1 (2013): 79–101.
– (with Nikolaos Lavidas), ‘Reconstructing passive and voice in Proto-Indo-European’, Journal of Historical Linguistics 3.1: 98–121.
– (guest editor with Nikolaos Lavidas), ‘Proto-Indo-European syntax and its development’, Special issue of the Journal of Historical Linguistics 3.1 (2013).
– ‘Vedic preverbs as markers of valency-changing derivations: Transitivity and objecthood in Indo-European (Evidence from Old Indo-Aryan)’, Studies in Language 36.4 (2012): 721–746.
– ‘Vedic piśá- and Atharvaveda-Śaunakīya 19.49.4 = Atharvaveda-Paippalāda 14.8.4: A note on the Indo-Iranian bestiary’, Journal of Indo-European Studies 37.1–2 (2009): 141–154.
– (with Werner Abraham), ‘Obituary: In memoriam Vladimir Petrovich Nedjalkov (1928 – 2009)’, Studies in Language 33.4 (2009): 781–782.
– ‘The reflexive pronouns in Vedic: A diachronic and typological perspective’, Lingua 117.8 (2007): 1412–1433.

Articles on International refereed Journals
– ‘Quelques notes sur les formes dites ‘itératives’ indo-européennes: le type patayati et les presents redoublés en védique’, InVerbis: Lingue Letterature Culture 5.1 (2015): 83–100.
– ‘Grammaticalization of reciprocal pronouns in Indo-Aryan: Evidence from Sanskrit and Indo-European for a diachronic typology of reciprocal constructions’, Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics 1.2 (2014): 117–156.
– ‘Text-critical and linguistic remarks on the interpretation of an Atharvanic hymn to Night: Śaunakīya 19.47 = Paippalāda 6.20’, Indologica Taurinensia 38 (2012 [2014]): 123–133.
– ‘The Proto-Indo-European case system and its reflexes in a diachronic typological perspective: Evidence for the linguistic prehistory of Eurasia’, Rivista degli studi orientali 84 (2011 [2012]): 289–309.
– ‘Drifting between passive and anticausative. True and alleged accent shifts in the history of Vedic -ya-presents’; ‘Reply to replies’, Journal of Language Relationship / Voprosy jazykovogo rodstva 2011.6: 185–198; 210–215.
– ‘The Sanskrit -yet-optative: A formation not yet recorded in Sanskrit grammars’, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens 50 (2006): 27–68.
– ‘Skt. vṛdh2 ‘hurt, damage, cut’’, Indologica Taurinensia 32 (2006): 203–210.
– ‘The labile syntactic type in a diachronic perspective: The case of Vedic’, SKY. Journal of Linguistics (Journal of the Linguistic Association of Finland) 16 (2003): 93–112.

Invited Book chapters
– ‘Indo-Iranian’, in: Mate Kapović (ed.), The Indo-European Languages (Routledge Language Family Series). London: Routledge, 2017: 205–213.
– ‘Indo-Aryan’, in: Mate Kapović (ed.), The Indo-European Languages (Routledge Language Family Series). London: Routledge, 2017: 214–262.
– ‘Causative formation’, in: Georgios K. Giannakis et al. (eds), Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek language and linguistics, Leiden: Brill, 2014: 275–277.
– ‘Middles and reflexives’, in: Silvia Luraghi and Claudia Parodi (eds), The Bloomsbury companion to syntax, London - New York: Continuum, 2013: 261–280.
– ‘Voice typology’, in: Jae Jung Song (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011: 368–398.
– ‘Evolution of case systems’, in: Andrej Malchukov & Andrew Spencer (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Case. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009: 439–457.
– (with Barðdal, Jóhanna) ‘Case in decline’, in: Andrej Malchukov & Andrew Spencer (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Case. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009: 470–478.
– ‘Causatives’, in: Martin Haspelmath et al. (eds), Language typology and language universals. An international handbook (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft / Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science (HSK); 20/2). Vol. 2. Berlin etc.: Walter de Gruyter, 2001: 886–898.

Funded research projects
• “Transitivity in Indo-Aryan” (Marie Skłodowska-Curie project, 2017)
• “The Evolution of Case, Alignment and Argument Structure in Indo-European” (EVALISA), member of the project supervised by Prof. Jóhanna Barðdal, Ghent University and funded by the ERC (2014)
• An encyclopedic description of Indo-Aryan languages (joint project based on Institute of Linguistics, Moscow; Institute of Linguistic Research, St. Petersburg, Russia; University of Hamburg) (2009–2012)
• “Case Cross-linguistically”, University of Nijmegen (2002–2004)

Membership in Editorial Boards
2017: Editor-in-chief of the Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, de Gruyter, Berlin
2014–2017: Review Editor of the Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, de Gruyter, Berlin
2010: Associate Editor of the Journal of Historical Linguistics, John Benjamins, Amsterdam
2017: member of the Scientific Board of the series Typological Studies in Indo-European Languages
2015: member of the Editorial Board of the Archivio Glottologico Italiano
2010: member of the Editorial Board of Lingua Posnaniensis
2007: member of the Editorial Board of Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, Vilnius (Lithuania)
1995–1997: member of the Editorial Board of the IIAS Newsletter, Leiden, International Institute of Asian Studies

Anonymous reviewing
• Journals: Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, Cognitive Linguistics, Diachronica, Folia Linguistica, Historiographia Linguistica, Indogermanische Forschungen, Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, Journal of Historical Linguistics, Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, Journal of West African Languages, Lingua, Lingua Posnaniensis, Linguistic Typology, Linguistics, Linguistics Vanguard, Mandenkan, Slovo a Slovesnost, Studies in Language, Studi e Saggi Linguistici, Suvremena Lingvistika, Transactions of Philological Society, Turkic Languages, Voprosy jazykoznanija
• Refereed volumes: Brill (2012, 2013, 2015), Oxford University Press (2012), Mouton (2016), John Benjamins (2016)
• Grant proposals: Indogermanische Gesellschaft Thesis Award, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), National Science Centre of Poland (Narodowe Centrum Nauki), National research university “Higher school of economics” (Moscow, Russia), Italian Agency for the Evaluation of Research and Universities (ANVUR), Joseph Greenberg Award of the Association for Linguistic Typology

Organization of conferences and workshops
• 2017 Workshop “Morphosyntactic isoglosses in the development of Proto-Indo-European” (with Artemij Keidan and Nikolaos Lavidas), at the 23rd International Symposium on Theoretical & Applied Linguistics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 31 March 2017
• 2016 Workshop “Non-canonical subjects: Their rise and development (Evidence from Indo-European and beyond)” (with Jóhanna Barðdal, Thórhallur Eythórsson, Cynthia Amy Johnson, Esther Le Mair, and Sigríður Sæunn Sigurðardóttir) at the 46th Poznań Linguistic Meeting (PLM2016), Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, 15-17 September 2016
• 2016 Workshop “Forty years after Keenan: Subject and its definition” (with Jóhanna Barðdal, Cynthia Amy Johnson, Peter Alexander Kerkhof, Esther Le Mair, and Sigríður Sæunn Sigurðardóttir), Ghent University, 7-9 September 2016; see http://www.evalisa.ugent.be/subjecthood-workshop/call/
• 2016 Workshop “Verbal derivation and verb extensions in Bantu” (with Sebastian Dom and Koen Bostoen) at the 6th International Conference on Bantu Languages, University of Helsinki, 20-23 June 2016
• 2016 Workshop “Bantu Verbal Derivation and Syntax” (with Maarten Mous), Leiden University, 12 May 2016
• 2016 Workshop “Indo-Iranian and its Indo-European origins” in honor of Alexander Lubotsky, Leiden University, 8-9 April 2016 (publication: Ann Arbor, Beech Stave Press, forthcoming/2017)
• 2015 16th World Sanskrit Conference, Section of Linguistics, PANEL on the Vedic and Sanskrit Verbal System, Bangkok, Thailand, 28 June – 2 July 2015
• 2011 Workshop “Proto-Indo-European Syntax and its development” (with Nikolaos Lavidas), at the 20th International Symposium on Theoretical & Applied Linguistics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 1-3 April 2011
• 2010 Workshop “Subject and transitivity in Indo-European and beyond: A diachronic typological perspective” (with Ilja Seržant) at the 43rd annual Meeting of Societas Linguistica Europaea, Vilnius, 2–3 September 2010
• 2009 Workshop “Typology of labile verbs: Focus on diachrony” (with Nikolaos Lavidas) at the 19th International Symposium on Theoretical & Applied Linguistics), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
• 2006 Workshop “Diachronic typology of voice and valency-changing categories” (with Seppo Kittilä), University of Turku (Åbo Akademi University, Finland)
• 2003 Workshop “Case, Valency and Transitivity” (with Andrej Malchukov & Peter de Swart), University of Nijmegen

Membership in Scientific Societies
• 1994: Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT)
• 2005: Société Internationale de Linguistique Fonctionnelle (SILF)
• 2010: Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE)
• 2014: Società Italiana di Glottologia (SIG)
• 2016: Linguistic Society of Belgium
• 2016: Académie Belge pour l’Étude des Langues Anciennes et Orientales (ABELAO)

Awards and grants
• 2016: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship for the project “Transitivity in Indo-Aryan”
• 2004: Grant of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for the post-doctoral project “Valence-changing categories in Indo-Aryan: a diachronic typological approach” (Veni 2004), carried out at Leiden University
• 2004: Grant of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung for the project “A grammar of the Rgveda”, carried out at University of Göttingen
• 1999–2004: Grants of Leids Universiteits Fonds (LUF) for attending international conferences
• 2001: NWO-Grant for compiling the electronic etymological database “Indo-Aryan inherited lexicon”

Other skills and interests
Areas of scientific interests
• Syntactic and morphological linguistic typology (especially typology of verbal categories)
• Indo-European linguistics
• Historical linguistics and diachronic typology
• Vedic and classical Sanskrit
• Vedic philology and Vedic studies
• History of Indo-Aryan languages
• Languages of South and Central Asia (Dravidian, Altaic, Caucasian)
• Maldives (language, history, culture)

Language competence
Russian (native), English (near native), German (near native), French (fluent), Dutch (fluent), Vedic and classical Sanskrit (fluent), Polish (good command), Swedish (good command), Italian (good command), Turkish (basic grammatical knowledge), Finnish (basic grammatical knowledge)

Ancient and classical Indo-European languages
Sanskrit, Pāli, Old Church Slavonic, Old Russian, Latin, Greek, Avestan, Old Persian, Tocharian

The visiting professorship invitation for Prof. Leonid Kulikov must be viewed as belonging to a long standing research program on the Convergent Indo-European Morphological Isoglosses, currently being carried out by the proponent. Prof. Kulikov is one of the best contemporary specialists in the Indo-European morphology in general, and in the field of convergent morphological developments, in particular, investigating the system of verbal voices and transitivity oppositions and the system of nominal cases in the history of the Indo-European languages.

The last decades are marked with an increasing interest towards the study of isoglosses shared by some branches of the Indo-European language family (see Keidan 2013). As is well-known, next to well-established branches such as Germanic, Greek or Indo-Iranian, there are larger subdivisions within Indo-European, grouping together several branches, in accordance with a number of features, traditionally called isoglosses, shared by more than one group, or by several languages not belonging to the same group (branch-crossing isoglosses). Such isoglosses always were the subject of vivid debates in Indo-European scholarship, giving rise to numerous hypotheses on early splits within Proto-Indo-European or, on the contrary, later contacts among historically attested languages. A systematic research of this issue still remains a desideratum, however.

Next to a few notorious isoglosses, such as the kentum/satəm division, or the RUKI division (retraction of the sibilant s), which have been known for a century or so, there are a few less studied morphosyntactic features, often of a much vaguer nature, that equally group together a number of branches and/or languages. These include, for example:
– the presence of the verbal augment (past tense prefix *(H)e-) in Indo-Iranian, Armenian, Greek and Phrygian (Strunk 1992 [1994]);
– several isoglosses in the evolution of the PIE case system (such as the development of the agglutinating cases in Indo-Iranian and Tocharian; see e.g. Masica 1991: 230ff.; Schmidt 1992: 43; Kulikov 2011 [2012]: 295ff.);
– the emergence of the infinitive form of the verb (see e.g. Zehnder 2016);
– several types of evolution of constructions with non-canonical subjects (Barðdal & Smitherman 2009) or the two types of evolution of transitivity oppositions (syncretic vs. antisyncretic type, roughly corresponding to the West/East division within Indo-European branches; see Kulikov 2009);
– the emergence of a separate lexical class of adjectives (see Alfieri 2011).

There are three possible types of isoglosses, as far as their origin and nature are concerned.
1. Common innovations within a genetic group of languages; such innovations correspond to the divergent isoglosses, allowing the creation of phylogenetic trees.
2. Mutual contacts between daughter-languages of separate branches; these convergent isoglosses can originate either from direct borrowings between sister languages, or borrowings from a common substrate language into two or more recipient (substrate) languages (see Kulikov 2011).
3. Random coincidences and common drifts. Some convergent developments of such type can arise due to the general principles of natural morphology and phonology. In terms of markedness degree, it can be observed that unmarked outcomes are more widespread than the opposite (see Nichols 1999, but already Meillet 1922, discussed in Lazzeroni 1987).

During his stay in Rome, Prof. Kulikov is planning to hold a series of colloquia, seminars and public lectures, in order to discuss several crucial issues of his current research and of the proposed collaboration. The contribution of Prof. Kulikov as a visiting scholar will further consist in providing a theoretical and methodological basis for the identification, description and analysis of the convergent morphological isoglosses that connect Indo-European languages which are not bound by an direct genetic relationship (i.e. not descending from the same ancestor of the closest available level of reconstruction, such as Proto-Germanic for the attested Germanic languages or Latin for the Romance languages). In many instances, such isoglosses do not fit within the established branches of the Indo-European language family. As is well-known, the "Tree model", predominant in the field of IE linguistics since A. Schleicher (1862)is unable to explain branch-crossing isoglosses, as pointed out already by J. Schmidt (1872), who proposed an alternative "Wave model". However, while the Tree model served as a basis and general framework for a number of large systematic surveys of the IE family (from Delbrück & Brugmann's Grundriß onwards), the Wave model lacks a compendium of similar scale.

While detecting phonological isoglosses can essentially be based on regular and, mainly, well-established phonetic correspondences, the uncovery and study of the morphological isoglosses poses more problems. Indeed, when a linguistic sign becomes the subject of analysis, one of the central issues is establishing the character of semantic change. In particular, it is necessary to establish the relevant patterns of grammaticalisation. The same source construction can be grammaticalised in accordance with different scenarios in different languages. However, the common source of the resulting forms and constructions in the daughter languages can be accounted as a piece of evidence for a shared morphological innovation, i.e. an isogloss.

The suggested approach to the study of isoglosses has been recently discussed at an international conference organised jointly by the proponent and the invited scholar at the University of Thessaloniki (Greece), see https://sites.google.com/a/uniroma1.it/ie-isoglosses/home.


References
– Alfieri, L. 2011. ‘A Radical Construction Grammar Approach to Vedic Adjective’, Rivista degli Studi Orientali 84: 241–256
– Barðdal, J. & T. Smitherman. 2009. ‘Typological changes in the evolution of Indo-European syntax?’, Diachronica 26.2: 253–263.
– Brugmann, K. & Delbrück, B. 1886–1900. Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. Strassburg: Trübner.
– Keidan, A. 2013. ‘Branch-crossing Indo-European isoglosses: a call for interest’, Indoevropejskoe âzykoznanie i klassičeskaâ filologiâ 17: 406–417.
– Kulikov, L. 2009. ‘Valency-changing categories in Indo-Aryan and Indo-European: A diachronic typological portrait of Vedic Sanskrit’. In: A. Saxena & Å. Viberg (eds), Multilingualism. Proceedings of the 23rd Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Uppsala University, 1–3 October 2008 (Studia Linguistica Upsaliensia; 8), 75–92. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet.
– Kulikov, L. 2011 [2012]. ‘The Proto-Indo-European case system and its reflexes in a diachronic typological perspective: Evidence for the linguistic prehistory of Eurasia’. Rivista degli studi orientali 84: 289–309.
– Lazzeroni, R. 1987. ‘Meillet indoeuropeista’. In: A. Quattordio Moreschini (ed), L'opera scientifica di Antoine Meillet. Pisa: Giardini.
– Masica, C. P. 1991. The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
– Meillet, A. 1922. Les dialectes indo-européenns. Paris: É. Champion.
– Nichols, J. 1999. Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
– Schleicher, A. 1862. Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. Weimar: H. Böhlau.
– Schmidt, J. 1872. Die Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse der indogermanischen Sprachen. Weimar: H. Böhlau.
– Schmidt, K.H. 1992. ‘Contributions from new data to the reconstruction of the proto-language’. In: E.C. Polomé & W. Winter (eds), Reconstructing Languages and Cultures, 35–62. Berlin – New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
– Strunk, K. 1992 [1994]. ‘Der Ursprung des verbalen Augments – Ein Problem Franz Bopps aus heutiger Sicht’. In: R. Sternemann (ed.), Bopp-Symposium 1992 der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 270-284. Heidelberg: Winter.
– Zehnder, T. 2016. Review of: G. Keydana. Infinitive im R̥gveda: Formen, Funktion, Diachronie. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics 3.1: 133–139.

Goals
A thorough study of the system of isoglosses within Indo-European opens the way towards better understanding and, eventually, more adequate reconstruction of the main features of the Proto-Indo-European morphosyntax. The classical Indo-European studies often paid more attention the field of phonology, while the issues of morphological analysis were somewhat neglected. A deeper analysis and more convincing reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European morphosyntax increasingly attract the attention of Indo-Europeanists over the last decades. We can mention, among many others, such important studies as Lehmann 1974, Kortlandt 1983, Bauer 2000, Jasanoff 2003, Barðdal & Smitherman 2009 and Luraghi 2012.These works have greatly contributed to our knowledge and better understanding of the Proto-Indo-European morphosyntax, the fundamentals of which have been laid down sketched in such seminal works as Delbrück 1893–97 and Hirt 1934–37.

Moreover, while in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries Indo-European studies predominantly focused on historical, comparative and reconstructional aspects of the Indo-European languages, thus remaining within the descriptive and genetically-focused framework, from the end of the 20th century onwards Indo-European scholarship increasingly concentrates on the typological and explicative evaluation of the reconstructed proto-language and its historical
development(s) towards the reflexes attested in the daughter languages. In this perspective, the study of the convergent isoglosses represents one of the most promising tools for the analysis of the structure of Proto-Indo-European, its dialectal split and its further evolution towards actually attested Indo-European languages.

Among the goals of the collaboration between the proponent and the invited scholar should be addressing a number of open issues within the field of the Indo-European studies, with a special focus on the domain of morphology and syntax. These issues should include, among others:

• Typologically-oriented approach to the analysis of the archaic Indo-European morphosyntax and morphosyntactic reconstruction;
• Analysis of the Indo-European morphosyntax within the framework of the grammaticalization theory;
• The origins and mechanisms of the emergence of isoglosses;
• Indo-European isoglosses and early splits within Indo-European;
• Isoglosses in nominal, and especially adjectival, declension systems;
• Common developments in the derivative nominal morphology;
• Isoglosses in verbal morphology;
• Expansion and decline of non-canonical subject/object marking and other changes in syntactic patterns in Indo-European.

Our analysis will build up on the results in the field achieved by different researchers and will present evidence from the history of different groups within the Indo-European language family according to a unified typological basis.

Expected results
So far the project developed by the proponent was limited to the study of convergent processes in phonology. This new phase of the research program extends our approach to morphology and syntax. The invited scholar is particularly involved into the study of common developments in the syntax and morphology of the historically attested IE languages, so that his contribution will be of an inestimable value with this respect.

Among the expected results of this collaboration we should expect some new proposals concerning the individuation of the hitherto unnoticed morphological isoglosses within the Indo-European family of languages. The new data will be submitted for publication on some refereed journals or book series. A few possible (and preliminary) guidelines can be formulated as follows.

Morphological isoglosses
• Creation of a new adjectival declension through the agglutination of pronominal elements to the old nouns, in: Prakrits, Western Iranian languages, Khotanese, Slavic languages, and Germanic languages.
• Increasing productivity of the derivational velar suffix (going back to PIE *-ko) used for deriving adjectives, attested in a large number of "second generation" IE languages, from Middle Iranian to Slavic, Latin, Greek, Germanic (see Ciancaglini 2015).
• The rise of an infinitive formation from the dative/accusative case-form of an older verbal noun.

Syntactic isoglosses
• Evolution towards fixed word order (from the almost completely free word order supposed for Proto-IE).
• The generalization of the transitive construction, with a strong canonical subjecthood (see Bauer 2000, Kulikov 2012, Comrie 2006).
• Evolution from the existential possessive construction (such as Latin mihi est liber 'I have a book') towards the lexicalized transitive possessive predicate (such as English to have) that correlates with the change from free to fixed word order and the rise of configurationality (see Keidan 2008; cf. Baldi & Cuzzolin 2010).

References
– Baldi Ph. & Cuzzolin, P. 2010. New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax: Constituent syntax. 3. Quantification, Numerals, possession, anaphora. Berlin, New York: Mouton De Gruyter, 2010.
– Barðdal, J. & T. Smitherman. 2009. Typological changes in the evolution of Indo-European syntax? Diachronica 26.2: 253–263.
– Bauer, B. L. M. 2000. Archaic syntax in Indo-European. The spread of transitivity in Latin and French. Berlin: Mouton.
– Ciancaglini, C. 2015. 'Allomorphic variability in the Middle Persian continuants of the Old Iranian suffix *-ka-', in U. Bläsing, V. Arakelova, M. Weinreich (eds.), Studies on Iran and The Caucasus. In Honour of Garnik Asatrian: 291–308. Leiden: Brill.
– Comrie, B. 2006. 'Transitivity pairs, markedness, and diachronic stability', Linguistics 44.2: 303–318.
– Delbrück, B. 1893–97. Vergleichende Syntax der indogermanischen Sprachen. Strassburg: Trübner.
– Hirt, H. 1934–37. Indogermanische Grammatik. Vols. VI-VII: Syntax. Heidelberg: Winter.
– Jasanoff, Jay H. 2003. Hittite and the Indo-European verb. Oxford University Press.
– Keidan, A. 2008. 'Predicative possessive constructions in Japanese and Korean', Rivista degli studi orientali 81: 339–367.
– Kortlandt, F. H. H. 1983. ‘Proto-Indo-European verbal syntax’, JIES 11: 307–324.
– Kulikov, L. 2012. 'Voice and valency derivations in old Indo-Aryan in a diachronic typological perspective: the degrammaticalization of the middle and other trends in the vedic verbal system', in L. Melazzo (ed.), Usare il presente per spiegare il passato. Teorie linguistiche contemporanee e lingue storiche. Atti del XXXIII Convegno della Società Italiana di Glottologia. Roma: Il calamo.
– Kulikov, L. 2011 [2012]. ‘The Proto-Indo-European case system and its reflexes in a diachronic typological perspective: Evidence for the linguistic prehistory of Eurasia’, Rivista degli studi orientali 84: 289–309.
– Kulikov, L. 2009. ‘Valency-changing categories in Indo-Aryan and Indo-European: A diachronic typological portrait of Vedic Sanskrit’, in A. Saxena & Å. Viberg (eds), Multilingualism. Proceedings of the 23rd Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Uppsala University, 1–3 October 2008 (Studia Linguistica Upsaliensia; 8), 75–92. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet.
– Lehmann, W. P. 1974. Proto-Indo-European Syntax. Austin: University of Texas Press.
– Luraghi, S. 2011. ‘The origin of the Proto-Indo-European gender system: Typological considerations’ Folia linguistica 45.2: 435–464.

L'invito del Prof. Kulikov come visiting scholar si inserisce in una serie di iniziative intraprese dal proponente al fine di conferire una dimensione internazionale al suo progetto di ricerca sulle isoglosse indoeuropee che porta avanti già da anni, avendo ottenuto svariati finanziamenti a tale scopo.

Già nel 2013 il proponente ha esposto l'idea della ricerca incentrata sulle isoglosse indoeuropee in occasione di un simposio internazionale di linguistica storica tenutosi a San Pietroburgo, dove ha presentato una relazione dal titolo "Branch-crossing Indo-European isoglosses: a call for interest". Tale intervento ha effettivamente suscitato l'interesse degli studiosi presenti, tanto che uno di loro (P. Kocharov, San Pietroburgo) è entrato a far parte del progetto a partire dal 2015.

In seguito, il progetto è stato finanziato in una serie di occasioni con varie forme di finanziamento.

Nell'anno finanziario 2013 il proponente ha ottenuto un finanziamento dell'Ateneo per "Congressi e convegni", n. C26C134CZ4 (stanziati 1500€), organizzando un workshop dal titolo "Toward branch-crossing isoglosses in Indo-European", all'interno del convegno "Coffee Break Conference 5. The influence of space on culture in South Asia". Il workshop è stato cofinanziato anche dall'Accademia delle Scienze di Vienna (con un contributo di 1000€). In questa occasione si è tenuta una proficua discussione circa le finalità del progetto e le relative problematiche teoriche e metodologiche. L'evento ha suscitato un grande interesse da parte degli studiosi e accademici italiani e internazionali (si veda il sito http://asiatica.wikispaces.com/Towards+branch-crossing+isoglosses+in+Indo-European).

Nell'anno finanziario 2014 il proponente ha ottenuto un finanziamento di Ateneo per il progetto di ricerca n. C26A14F4ZM, intitolato "Contact-based approach to the Late Indo-European isoglosses: branch-crossing features and linguistic areas" (stanziati 4500€). La somma è stata utilizzata principalmente per la costruzione e lo sviluppo — con l'aiuto di un contrattista CO.CO.CO — di un database elettronico contenente i risultati della prima fase della ricerca, ossia una descrizione formale dei sistemi fonologici delle lingue indoeuropee antiche, che permette la rilevazione semi-automatizzata delle isoglosse fonologiche. Tale database è attualmente in fase di pubblicazione online (si veda il sito https://isoglosses.info/data).

Nell'anno finanziario 2015 il proponente ha ottenuto un finanziamento di Ateneo per il progetto di ricerca n. C26A15BJAP, intitolato "Indo-European isoglosses: data collection and models of representation" (stanziati 9000€). Questi fondi sono stati, in parte, utilizzati per l'organizzazione del workshop "Morpho-syntactic isoglosses in Indo-European: diachrony, typology and linguistic areas" dedicato, ancora una volta, al tema delle isoglosse e svoltosi il 31/03/2017 presso l'Università di Salonicco in occasione della ISTAL23 (si veda il sito https://sites.google.com/a/uniroma1.it/ie-isoglosses/home). Il workshop ha richiamato un vasto pubblico di relatori e uditori di livello internazionale, mentre gli atti saranno pubblicati come Special Issue di una rivista con referee e di classe A di WOS.

Inoltre il proponente si è già avvalso, per le finalità del progetto, di un visiting scholar nella persona di Alexander Lubotsky dell'Università di Leiden nell'anno 2014. Tale esperienza ha profondamente influenzato le linee di sviluppo del progetto stesso.

Da parte sua il Prof. Leonid Kulikov è uno studioso con solidi legami nella comunità scientifica internazionale. Egli ha lavorato in molte università europee, tra cui Leiden (Paesi Bassi), Uppsala (Svezia) e Ghent (Belgio). In qualità di invited scholar ha inoltre impartito corsi seminariali presso altre istituzioni universitarie e scuole di specializzazione (Göttingen, Mosca, Nijmegen). Recentemente è risultato vincitore della borsa Marie Curie.