Dr Luca Ciucci ~ Adjunct Research Fellow

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and the evolution of Chiquitano through the comparison between different Chiquitano varieties spoken nowadays and the historical documents available on this language.