Maria Rita Manzini is Professor of Linguistics at the

University of Florence The University of Florence ( Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Firenze'', UniFI) is an Italian public research university located in Florence, Italy. It comprises 12 schools and has around 50,000 students enrolled. History The first univer ...

. She is known for her work on syntax, syntactic variation,

principles and parameters Principles and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general ''principles'' (i.e. abstract rules or grammars) and specific ''parameters'' (i.e. markers, ...

, the

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language f ...

, and the languages of the

Balkans The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...

Biography

Manzini studied at the

University of Pisa The University of Pisa ( it, Università di Pisa, UniPi), officially founded in 1343, is one of the oldest universities in Europe. History The Origins The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place ...

and the

Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa The Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (commonly known in Italy as "la Normale") is a public university in Pisa and Florence, Tuscany, Italy, currently attended by about 600 undergraduate and postgraduate (PhD) students. It was founded in 1810 wi ...

, writing her thesis (1979) on control and the generative syntax of Italian. In 1983 she completed a PhD at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, advised by

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

, with a dissertation titled, ''Restructuring and Reanalysis''. After a brief period as postdoctoral fellow at the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...

, she took up a position as Lecturer at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = � ...

, first in the department of Italian (1984–90) then in the department of linguistics and phonetics. In 1992 she was appointed to an associate professorship at the University of Florence, and in 2000 she was promoted to full professor there. Manzini has held visiting positions at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

SOAS SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury are ...

, the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

, the

University of Girona The University of Girona ( ca, Universitat de Girona, UdG (); ;) is located in the city of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. Its real origin dates back to its creation in 1446, but it was reestablished as a new university in 1991. As of 2021, it consists ...

, the

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia The University of Modena and Reggio Emilia ( it, Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia), located in Modena and Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, is one of the oldest universities in Italy, founded in 1175, with a population of 20, ...

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

Université Côte d'Azur
and the

University of Brasília The University of Brasília ( pt, Universidade de Brasília, UnB) is a federal public university in Brasília, the capital of Brazil. It was founded in 1960 and has since consistently been named among the top five Brazilian universities and the ...

Honors

In 2018 she was elected as a member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

. A

Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the ...

in her honor, entitled ''Linguistic Variation: Structure and Interpretation'', was published by Mouton in 2020.

Research

Manzini’s research falls under the umbrella of

generative syntax Generative grammar, or generativism , is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguisti ...

. Her early work focused particularly on the theory of non-finite complementation and control. In the 1980s she published a number of works on parameter setting, and in 1992 an influential monograph on

locality Locality may refer to: * Locality (association), an association of community regeneration organizations in England * Locality (linguistics) * Locality (settlement) * Suburbs and localities (Australia), in which a locality is a geographic subdivi ...

. With her Florence colleague Leonardo Maria Savoia she is also responsible for ''I dialetti italiani e romanci'' (Italian and Romance dialects, 2005), a multi-volume descriptive grammar of Italian dialects couched in the generative framework. The empirical basis for her theoretical work has mostly been Romance languages, but

Albanian Albanian may refer to: *Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular: ** Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans **Albanian language **Albanian culture **Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the countr ...

has also played a major role.

Selected publications

* Manzini, M. Rita. 1983. Restructuring and reanalysis. PhD dissertation, MIT. * Manzini, M. Rita. 1983. On control and control theory. ''Linguistic Inquiry'' 3 (1), 421-446. * Manzini, M. Rita, and Kenneth Wexler. 1987. Parameters, binding theory, and learnability. ''Linguistic Inquiry'' 7 (1), 413-444. * Wexler, Kenneth, and M. Rita Manzini. 1987. Parameters and learnability in binding theory. In Thomas Roeper and Edwin Williams (eds.), ''Parameter setting'', 41-76. Dordrecht: Springer. * Manzini, M. Rita. 1992. ''Locality: a theory and some of its empirical consequences''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. * Manzini, M. Rita, and Anna Roussou. 2000. A minimalist theory of A-movement and control. ''Lingua'' 110 (6), 409-447. * Manzini, M. Rita, and Leonardo M. Savoia. 2005. ''I dialetti italiani e romanci''. 3 vols. Florence: Edizioni dell'Orso. * Manzini, M. Rita, and Leonardo M. Savoia. 2011. ''Grammatical categories: variation in Romance languages''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Manzini, Maria Rita Living people Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa alumni University of Pisa alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Women linguists Academic staff of the University of Florence Syntacticians Linguists of Italian Romance philologists Year of birth missing (living people) Members of Academia Europaea