Lori Repetti

Professor and Chair
Ph.D. 1989, University of California, Los Angeles
Email: lori.repetti@stonybrook.edu

I study the phonology and history of the Romance languages, in particular Italian and Italian dialects, and my research falls primarily into these areas.

1. phonology and its interaction with other areas of grammar (phonetics, morphology, syntax): My current research examines the prosodic structures of northern Italian dialects and their interface with morphological and syntactic structures, and the realization of clitics in different morphological and syntactic contexts. Sample recent publications in this area include: Aronoff and Repetti (2022), Repetti (2020), Repetti (2016), Ordóñez and Repetti (2014), Kim and Repetti (2013), Cardinaletti and Repetti (2009), Cardinaletti and Repetti (2008), Cardinaletti and Repetti (2007), Ordóñez and Repetti (2006).

2. microvariation: I also investigate the ways in which closely related languages differ, the constraints on that variation, and the historical processes that lead to the types of differences observed. My work primarily focuses on endangered Romance languages (“dialects”). Here are some recent publications on this topic: Repetti (2016), Liu and Repetti (2020_NACCL), Liu and Repetti (2020_WECOL), Ordóñez and Repetti (2014), Romanello and Repetti (2014).

3. typology: Related to this is my interest in typology, or the range of variation attested in human languages and what that can tell us about universal grammar. A group of students and I are involved in a project looking at reduplicative structures (such as flip-flop or itsy-bitsy) cross-linguistically. We presented a preliminary report at the 2020 LSA conference in New Orleans, and you can find our poster here. The paper was published in Linguistic Typology in 2024.

4. loanword phonology: A long-standing research interest of mine has been the adaptation of foreign words to the phonology and morphology of the borrowing language. You can find some of that work here: Repetti (2012), Repetti (2009), Repetti (2006).

5. teaching linguistics: I've also been involved in a few projects dealing with the teaching of Linguistics: Cépeda et al (2023), De Salvo, Larson and Repetti (2019).

My research has been funded by both NEH and NSF, and I have conducted field research throughout Europe. I am a member of the Regional Advisory Committee of the Global Council on Anthropological Linguistics (GLOCAL), SOAS, University of London, and a member of the Comitato Scientifico of the Centro Internazionale sul Plurilinguismo, Udine, Italy.

You can find a recent version of my CV here.

Database: Clitics of Romance Languages (Lori Repetti and Francisco Ordóñez) CRL is a searchable database that allows users to examine data involving a class of pronouns (clitics) that are normally stressless, but which, in the languages under investigation, may exhibit or modify stress. The database includes text as well as audio files for minority Romance languages spoken in the South of France, the South and North of Italy, the Balearic Islands, and the islands of Corsica and Sardinia.