Tiziana EMMI
Tiziana Emmi is PhD in Modern Philology and researcher (RTDb) in Glottology and Linguistics at the University of Catania. She obteined the National Scientific Qualification for Associate Professor in the SSD 10/G1 “Glottology and Linguistics". She teaches “General linguistics with laboratory” in the degree programs in Literature and European euroamerican and oriental languages and culture and “Glottology and Linguistics” in the degree programs in Health Professions of Rehabilitation Sciences. She is the departmental delegate as a member of the Scientific Committee of the School of Italian Language and Culture (ITALSTRA).
For several years, she was a research fellow with projects related to i.) the formation of the Sicilian lexicon in synchrony (title of the research program: Un bene culturale dimenticato: l’opera linguistico-letteraria di Nino Martoglio e la formazione del lessico siciliano. Per una linguistica del territorio, from December 2008, for three years); ii.) Italian grammar writing (research program title: Le grammatiche dell’italiano per stranieri: teorie, norme, metodologie e sviluppi. La grammaticografia dell’italiano L2 nell’ultimo decennio alla luce dei cambiamenti in corso nella società italiana in direzione multietnica e plurilingue,, from July 2017, for two years) and the etymological analysis of the Sicilian lexicon of Latin origin (research program title: Il lessico del siciliano di matrice latina. Schedatura e analisi per la realizzazione di un Prontuario Etimologico Siciliano (PES), from September 2022 for two years).
She is currently continuing her work on this latter line of research with a Starting Grant Project (Pia.ce.ri., Line of Intervention 3) entitled: Latin heritage and learned Latin in the lexicon of Sicily. Synchronic and diachronic etymological research for the compilation of the Prontuario Etimologico Siciliano (PES).
Her research interests include theoretical and descriptive studies of language, historical linguistics, and studies related to language teaching.
Her most recent publications include the monograph Lessico siciliano in movimento. Uno studio sulla formazione delle parole in diacronia (Palermo 2023) and the contributions: Fissità, which appeared in Manuale di fraseologia italiana (Edizioni dell'Orso 2025), and Elementi galloitalici in area etnea settentrionale (Palermo 2025).
Last edit: 02/05/2023
My research interests focus on theoretical and descriptive studies of language and on historical linguistics. My work is organised around three main areas of research:
i. inflectional and lexical morphology of Italian and the Italian dialects, with particular reference to word formation in both modern and historical Sicilian (from synchronic and diachronic perspectives), the history of linguistic thought and studies on Wortbildung, and the treatment of word formation in grammatical descriptions;
ii. ii. phraseology, both from a theoretical perspective and with regard to the treatment of complex lexical units in grammars and dictionaries;
iii. iii. historical linguistics and etymological research, with particular reference to the inherited and learned Latin component of the Sicilian lexicon.
Alongside these research areas, I am also interested in contact linguistics, with particular reference to interference phenomena between Sicilian and Italian/Tuscan, and between Sicilian and Gallo-Italic varieties. In the past, I have also worked on topics related to the relationship between literature and dialect (with particular attention to marked lexical and syntactic usages in literary texts), as well as on language acquisition, interlanguage, and language learning.