Dr Luca Ciucci ~ Adjunct Research Fellow
Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences
- About
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- Research Disciplines
- Socio-Economic Objectives
Luca Ciucci studied Linguistics at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, in Italy. Moved by a passion for learning new languages, in September 2007 he began his research on the Zamucoan languages (Ayoreo, Chamacoco and Old Zamuco) with a special focus on morphology and the genetic relationships between these languages spoken in southern Bolivia and northern Paraguay. In 2009 he discovered the earliest grammar of Ecuadorian Quechua. His doctoral dissertation, defended in April 2013, concerned the study of the morphology in Zamucoan and his recent book Inflectional morphology in the Zamucoan languages (published by CEADUC) is considered the most detailed morphological description of a South American language family. He is now working on a descriptive grammar of Chamacoco (Ebitoso), an endangered and undescribed language spoken in Paraguay by approximately 1,800 speakers. He aims at preserving a part of our cultural heritage through language documentation. He is also working on the reconstruction of Proto-Zamuco and on an up-dated grammar of Old Zamuco, now extinct, based on the data collected by the Jesuit missioner Ignace Chomé in the 18th century. In May 2017 he began the documentation of Chiquitano (aka Bésɨro), with a particular focus on language contact between Chiquitano and the surrounding languages, and the evolution of Chiquitano through the comparison between different Chiquitano varieties spoken nowadays and the historical documents available on this language.
For more information: http://www.cairnsinstitute.jcu.edu.au/luca-ciucci/
- Honours
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- Awards
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- 2005 - Winner of a full-time scholarship at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa), Economic Sciences.
- 2015 to 2016 - Young Researcher Grant from Scuola Normale Superiore for the project "Critical edition and linguistic comment of Chomé’s Vocabulario de la lengua zamuca" (Principal Investigator).
- 2014 to 2015 - Young Researcher Grant from Scuola Normale Superiore for the project "Language contact in the Chaco linguistic area: morphological borrowing in and from the Zamucoan family" (Principal Investigator).
- 2014 - Prize for the best presentation by young scholars (category Post-docs) at "Chronos, 11th th International Conference on Actionality, Tense, Aspect, Modality/Evidentiality". Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa. June 16-18, 2014.
- 2013 to 2014 - Young Researcher Grant from Scuola Normale Superiore for the project "Lexicographical and Morphological Studies on Ancient Zamuco and its Dialects" (Principal Investigator).
- 2008 to 2012 - Winner of a Ph.D. position with full-time scholarship at Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa).
- 2005 to 2008 - Winner of a full-time scholarship at Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa), Litterary Studies (Classe di Lettere).
- Publications
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These are the most recent publications associated with this author. To see a detailed profile of all publications stored at JCU, visit ResearchOnline@JCU. Hover over Altmetrics badges to see social impact.
- Journal Articles
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- Ciucci L (2023) Language secrecy and concealment in Chamacoco (Zamucoan). The Mouth: critical studies on language, culture and society, 10. pp. 159-178
- Ciucci L (2021) Zamucoan ethnonymy in the 18th century and the etymology of Ayoreo. Journal de la Société des américanistes, 107 (2). pp. 77-114
- Ciucci L (2021) How to restructure a grammatical category: the innovative person system of Chamacoco (Zamucoan, northern Paraguay). Folia Linguistica Historica, 55 (s42-s1). pp. 111-154
- Ciucci L (2021) How historical data complement fieldwork: new diachronic perspectives on Zamucoan verb inflection. Studia Linguistica, 75 (2). pp. 289-327
- Ciucci L (2021) From fieldwork to reconstruction: historical issues in hotspots of linguistic diversity. Studia Linguistica, 75 (2). pp. 165-174
- Ciucci L (2021) The hispanization of Chamacoco syntax. Italian Journal of Linguistics/Rivista di Linguistica, 33 (1). pp. 111-134
- Ciucci L (2020) Matter borrowing, pattern borrowing and typological rarities in the Gran Chaco of South America. Morphology, 30. pp. 283-310
- Bertinetto P, Ciucci L and Farina M (2019) Two types of morphologically expressed non-verbal predication. Studies in Language, 43 (1). pp. 120-197
- Book Chapters
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- Ciucci L (2022) The healing words of the Ayoreo. In: The Art of Language. Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture, 32. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands, pp. 251-267
- Ciucci L (2022) ‘Eye’ in the Zamucoan languages. In: Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies: The �Eye�. Brill's Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture, 31. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands, pp. 259-284
- Ciucci L (2021) How grammar and culture interact in Zamucoan. In: The Integration of Language and Society: a cross-linguistic typology. Explorations in Linguistic Typology. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA, pp. 235-287
- Ciucci L (2020) Wordhood in Chamacoco. In: Phonological word and grammatical word: a cross-linguistic typology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K., pp. 78-120
- More
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ResearchOnline@JCU stores 38+ research outputs authored by Dr Luca Ciucci from 2008 onwards.
- Current Funding
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Current and recent Research Funding to JCU is shown by funding source and project.
Universities Australia and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) - Australia-Germany Joint Research Cooperation Scheme
Language emergence in multilingual contexts
- Indicative Funding
- $25,000 over 2 years
- Summary
- As European colonisation spread around the world, European languages infiltrated numerous areas, giving rise to new language varieties. Bringing indigenous people from various language groups together ? on plantations, in missions and boarding schools ? has resulted in creating new forms of dominant languages for inter-group communication, among them European-based Creoles (such as Tok Pisin, the English-based Creole, and the previously undescribed Unserdeutsch, a creolized variety of German, in PNG). New blended languages emerge, as communities come to live together. We focus on areas of high linguistic diversity covering New Guinea, Amazonia, and East Asia, in the context of multilingual situations.
- Investigators
- Alexandra Aikhenvald, Luca Ciucci, Katarzyna Wojtylak, Nathan White and Junwei Bai in collaboration with Peter Maitz, Siegwalt Lindenfelser, Lena-Marie Schmidkunz, Katharina Neumeier and Salome Lipfert (College of Arts, Society & Education and Universitat Augsburg)
- Keywords
- Creole language; Papuan languages; languages of East Asia; new languages; Hmong language; Unserdeutsch
- Supervision
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Advisory Accreditation: I can be on your Advisory Panel as a Primary or Secondary Advisor.
These Higher Degree Research projects are either current or by students who have completed their studies within the past 5 years at JCU. Linked titles show theses available within ResearchOnline@JCU.
- Current
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- Child Language Acquisition in Lewo, Vanuatu (Masters , Primary Advisor)
- Completed
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- A grammar of Doromu-Koki: a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea (2022, PhD , Secondary Advisor)
- Collaboration
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The map shows research collaborations by institution from the past 7 years.
Note: Map points are indicative of the countries or states that institutions are associated with.- 5+ collaborations
- 4 collaborations
- 3 collaborations
- 2 collaborations
- 1 collaboration
- Indicates the Tropics (Torrid Zone)
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