YGDP research presented at Dartmouth and Virginia Tech

Professor Raffaella Zanuttini and Assistant Professor Jim Wood gave talks at Dartmouth College and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, respectively, introducing the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project (YGDP)’s investigation of micro-variation in dialects of English spoken across North America. While variation in English phonology along regional and other extra-linguistic dimensions in the United States has been extensively studied, the YGDP’s research focuses on variation in morphology and syntax. Data are collected from individuals across the country through online surveys that record the degree to which respondents accept or reject a set of grammatical patterns as part of their dialects, along with the location of each speaker and other relevant demographic information. More information about the YGDP’s activities can be found on the project description webpage.

Additionally, Raffaella taught a seminar at Dartmouth on dialects of Italian, and gave a talk at Harvard University entitled “The structure of presentatives.” Jim taught a seminar at Virginia Tech on the syntax of Icelandic.