Gerardo De Caro

PhD Student

After specialising in piano at the Conservatory of Music (Foggia, Italy), Gerardo studied Philosophy at the University of Turin. He graduated in 2003 with a thesis on the theoretical turn from feature analysis to prototype-based models in cognitive anthropology. He then completed the ELAP MA course in Language Documentation and Description, which offered him the opportunity to improve his approach to morphosyntactic typology and focus his language interests on the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family.

Gerardo’s PhD, which further develops his MA thesis, is intended to provide a fieldwork-based account of argument marking patterns in Talyshi. A member of the North-Western Iranian group, Talyshi is spoken in strikingly diverse varieties along the Caspian coastline between Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan as well as by diasporic communities in major urban centres of the former Soviet Union. Emphasis will be placed on the factors affecting Talyshi split-ergativity in terms of synchronic arrangement, historical development and areal position.