Dr. Chiara Melloni

I am interested in morpho-syntax and lexical-semantics and I conduct research on several phenomena in these domains from a theoretical and psycholinguistic perspective. My research has targeted deverbal nominalization, parasynthesis, root compounding and full reduplication, combining theoretical and comparative approaches (besides Romance, Germanic and Slavic, I worked on Mandarin Chinese, Bantu and Kwa languages). I have also explored the lexicon/syntax interface, modeling polysemy in Generative Lexicon theory and analyzing cognate object constructions across languages. Currently, I have been studying the role of morphological competence and further linguistic skills across typical and atypical (dyslexic), monolingual and bilingual child populations.