Camilla Masullo

masullo

Camilla Masullo is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Milano-Bicocca within the project “CROSS-linguistic interference in the assignment of meaning during sentence comprehension in bilINGual speakers: investigating semantic and syntactic processing and the case of code-switching” (CROSSING), under the supervision of Beatrice Giustolisi.

She got her PhD in Cognitive Science and Language under the supervision of Prof. Evelina Leivada and Prof. Isabel Oltra-Massuet at Rovira i Virgili University. Her PhD project focused on the interaction between the cognitive adaptations and the sociolinguistic factors that characterize the bilingual experience. Specifically, she inquired into the processing of grammatical illusions in bilingual populations of standard and non-standard languages, gathering data from different Italian bidialectal communities. Concurrently, she studied the impact of linguistic register variation on morphosyntactic processing, examining the interaction between distinct linguistic domains. Before the PhD, she got an MA in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at the University of Pavia.

Upcoming Events

September 17, 2024
  • BIL Seminar: Margreet Vogelzang September 17, 2024 @ 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm Aula 3143 U6 Bicocca

    Introducing the concept of (bilingual) reference profiles: A cluster-analysis approach

    Empirical studies on bilingual children’s reference production have often focussed on comparisons with monolingual peers. In this talk, I will introduce the concept of “reference profiles”: Speakers may exhibit similar or different behaviours in reference production, independently of whether they belong to a specific group (e.g., monolinguals or bilinguals) or whether their production adheres to some norm.
    As an empirical example, I will present data from thirty-seven Greek-Italian bilingual children (Mage = 9;4, range 7;10-11;6) who performed narrative retelling tasks in both of their languages, as well as vocabulary tasks and various cognitive tasks. The data show that the children had a good mastery of reference (i.e. appropriately using null pronouns, full pronouns, or full nouns) in both of their languages. Using cluster analyses, two distinct reference profiles were identified. Further investigation showed that these profiles differed in both their sustained attention and in the use of overspecified REs in contexts where reference to the same referent was maintained. These results are interpreted in light of current cognitive theories of (bilingual) reference processing and emphasise the potential of (reference) profiles for the study of other domains beyond bilingual reference production.

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