Home

Université Côte d'Azur

Bases, Corpus, Langage (BCL)

MSHS Sud-Est Pôle Universitaire Saint Jean d’Angely Bâtiment SJA 3 24 avenue des Diables Bleus

06357 Nice Cedex 4                                                                                           

lenaDOTbaunazATgmailDOTcom

PhD in Linguistics

I have a PhD in linguistics from the Université de Genève. I am currently a Maître de Conference at Université Côte d'Azur. My research is set within the realm of syntactic theory and comparative syntax. I am specialized in formal syntax and the way it relates to morphology, semantics, pragmatics and the lexicon. 

My recent research can be summed up in two axes: purely theoretical and empirical. 

Since 2013, my research has been rooted in the theoretical framework of Nanosyntax (NS) which is designed to identify the primitive properties of the grammar of natural languages and has developed mainly through the study of the internal properties of morphemes. NS is thus a syntactic theory of morphology, which seeks to identify which  syntactico-semantic features are part of the human cognitive system and employed by the language faculty and how they are universally organized in a hierarchical way. Within this framework, my research aims at emphasizing the central role of syntax in sentence and word formation. 

Concerning the internal syntactic structure of words and morphemes, I have published (both as individual author and co-author) on cross-categorial syncretism with the complementizer, the internal syntactic structure of declarative complementizers (such as English that and French que), of interrogative words, of ontological category nominals (functional nouns like -thing, -place, -body  in some-thing, some-place, some-body) and of modal negators of the kind found in Modern Greek, Albanian, Latin, Vietnamese, Mandarin Chinese and Hungarian, a.o. Recently, I have started working on the (nano)syntax of expletive negation, with E. Lander. 

I also work in trying to understand how the nanosyntactic model of grammar can be applied at the sentence level. With this question in mind, I have explored and published on mood selection focusing on how the mechanism of mood selection encoded in the grammar, and how it accounts for linguistic variation, and on factive islands. I am also a co-editor of Exploring Nanosyntax (Baunaz et al., 2018, OUP, in which I am a co-author of the theoretical introduction to the framework, and a co-author of A Cross-Linguistic Approach to the Syntax of Subjunctive Mood (Baunaz & Puskás 2022, Springer).  

My experience in experimental linguistics goes back to my first post-doctorate, at the Formal Linguistics Laboratory of Paris 7 (2009). The goal was to test experimentally a hypothesis made in my PhD thesis that prosody helps disambiguating scope relationships with wh-words in-situ. Encompassing the syntax, semantics, and prosody of French wh-words in-situ, I designed with Cédric Patin (ULille) a reading experiment in contexts (Baunaz & Patin 2011, 2012), which enabled us to show that the prosody of wh-words supports this analysis proposed in my dissertation by constraining their interpretation: namely that prosody may mark different discourse status in French. 

I am also involved in corpus-based research on the syntax of modern French. It is well-known that French has both an ex-situ and an in-situ strategy for forming questions. I recently co-authored an article with Dr. C. Bonan, presenting a quantitative, corpus-based analysis of the pragmatic factors that condition wh-in-situ in French. This study focuses on the recent diachrony of in-situ structures through the close examination of two oral corpora from different periods (micro-diachrony). Our work brings a new typological and theoretical understanding of the contexts in which this structure is licensed, and of its evolution over time, using quantitative methods. We are currently extending this study to wh-cleft sentences.  

Currently I am pursuing two experimental syntax studies. The first one, with G. Bocci (USienna) and U.Shlonsky (UniGe), aims at determining, via an acceptability judgments experiment, how negation influences the grammaticality judgments of French speakers in long ex-situ questions, long in-situ questions and indirect questions, where the wh-word in-situ is impossible.  We obtained empirical generalizations which will enable us to evaluate competing formal analyses of wh-words in-situ, a work I will pursue in the future. The second one, with J. Blochowiak (ULouvain) and C. Grisot (UZH), aims at determining, via an elicitation task, if markedness of the matrix predicate in French triggers subjunctive mood. This experiment aims at testing an hypothesis made in my last monograph (with G. Puskás) and papers (Baunaz 2017, Baunaz & Lander accepted, a.o) whereby the emotive feature is the trigger for subjunctive mood.

I am collaborating with Eric Lander, University of Uppsala. We are developing a lexical-syntactic model for selection in grammar. My role is to explore recent ideas in Nanosyntax (Starke 2009, 2011; Caha 2009), and investigate the syntactic computations that enter into selection for interrogative clausal complements, developing, among other things, previous work achieved with Eric Lander (Baunaz & Lander 2019, accepted) and Genoveva Puskas (Baunaz & Puskas 2022), where we explores the way selectional features are represented in lexical entries of verbs and complementizers cross-linguistically.

I am also involved in a project which investigates the case marking of subordinate clauses in the languages of Europe, whose goal is to contribute to a broader understanding of this type of construction both when it comes to its description and its explanation (Lead Agency Project, with Genoveva Puskas (UniGe) and Pavel Caha (Masaryk University) as lead investigators).