About the fascination of linguistics, with prof. Alina Tigău, in a new episode of the “microSCOPE: UB researcher on air” series

Alina Tigău, professor and researcher at the Faculty of Foreign Languages ​​and Literatures of the University of Bucharest, offers us, in a new episode of the microSCOPE series, a foray into the universe of generative syntax, formal semantics and of the theory of discourse representation.

The sixth episode of microSCOPE can be accessed with just one click below.

Starting from the articulation of the main areas of interest of the prof. Alina Tigău around the correspondence between a certain syntactic structure and its interpretation, this episode of the microSCOPE series introduces us to the most important projects that the researcher has developed over the years.

As such, one of the main topics of the discussion was the volume Experimental Insights into the Syntax of Romanian Ditransitives, published in 2020 by the prestigious Mouton de Gruyter publishing house. The book, on which the author worked for around four years, traces the syntax and semantics of constructions with ditransitive verbs, i.e., those verbs that require two arguments in their structure, but also the way in which the additions to the structure of these configurations have certain semantic effects. A comparative approach par excellence, the volume starts with a comparison with the Spanish language and its structures and reaches the conclusion that the two languages ​​are similar both in terms of the flexibility they give to these structures and in terms of the semantic effects obtained.

More information on the book Experimental Insights into the Syntax of Romanian Ditransitives can be accessed on the page of the Mouton de Gruyter publishing house, here.

Currently, prof. Alina Tigău, PhD, is working on a project at the University of Cologne, which she joined during the period when she was a scholarship holder of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. As part of this project, which follows the phenomenon of prominence in Germanic and Romance languages, Alina Tigău works on the argumentative structure of direct and indirect complements and noted that the direct complements that are more marked, i.e., those that receive, for example, a “on”, but also a clitic pronoun, are much more prominent from a discursive point of view. In other words, a speaker will repeat such a complement much more often in the sentences he will later form (as in the example “I saw an architect – L-am văzut pe un arhitect” versus “I saw an architect – Am văzut un arhitect”).

At the same time, Alina Tigău proposes to create a monograph on datives in Romanian, aimed at generating a much more complete and complex vision of these structures, which would link the disparate analyzes on this subject into a coherent mechanism that would explain all the phenomena existing at particular level.

In terms of motivating young people to move towards these fields, Alina Tigău believes that it is important to set up an institutional framework by signing international partnerships that allow the professional development of students and show them that their research topics are relevant at an international scientific level. This is what Alina Tigău proposes regarding the PhD students she coordinates within the FLLS, whom she wants to involve in the projects she develops at the University of Cologne.

Alina Tigău, PhD, is a professor at the Faculty of Foreign Languages ​​and Literatures of the University of Bucharest. She is the author of numerous specialized works and laureate of several awards and distinctions in the field of linguistics. In the period 2014-2015, she benefited from a postdoctoral research grant at the University of Geneva, and in the period 2015-2018, she received from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation a grant for advanced researchers held at the University of Cologne, with which she continues to collaborate.

More details on prof. Alina Tigău’s activity are available here and here, and an interview on the occasion of winning the award for the most prestigious publication in the field of Humanities for the volume Experimental Insights into the Syntax of Romanian Ditransitives in the fourth edition of the University of Bucharest Senate Awards can be accessed here.

Part of the Science Communication Program developed by the University of Bucharest, the “microSCOPE: UB Researcher on Air” series aims to present in a dynamic and concise manner information on the concrete results of some notable research efforts within the University of Bucharest.

In terms of format and objectives, the microSCOPE series comes to complete the science communication program of the University of Bucharest, which also includes the UB Conferences – Science for Everyone and the UB Science Dose.

The objective of the series is to promote those research projects (patents, articles and books) which, through the major contribution made to the field of which they belong, have come to benefit from international recognition, thus encouraging the connection between UB and various universities and research institutions abroad.

The microSCOPE, whose guests are primarily researchers from the UB awarded for their research results, aims to contribute to informing the Romanian academic milieu, but also other categories of interested public, on the main research projects carried out within the UB, thus stimulating the development of future collaborative initiatives.