Michele Loporcaro

Michele Loporcaro (Rome 1963) studied linguistics in Pisa and Vienna. After obtaining the diploma of the corso ordinario, he graduated at the Scuola Normale Superiore and taught in Padua, Cosenza and, since 1995, in Zurich. He was guest professor at the Universities of Vienna, Graz, Pavia, Gent, at the Istituto di Scienze Umane (Naples), visiting scholar at the University of Wisconsin, visiting fellow at Magdalen College Oxford, fellow of Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America (Columbia University).

His research interests include phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, etymology, dialectology, historical linguistics and linguistic historiography. He has published widely in Romance linguistics including the volumes Grammatica storica del dialetto di Altamura (Pisa 1988), L’origine del raddoppiamento fonosintattico. Saggio di fonologia diacronica romanza (Basel-Tübingen 1997), Sintassi comparata dell’accordo participiale romanzo (Turin 1998), Profilo linguistico dei dialetti italiani (Rome-Bari 2009), Vowel length from Latin to Romance (Oxford 2015), Gender from Latin to Romance: history, geography, typology (Oxford 2018), La Puglia e il Salento (Bologna 2021). He directed the edition of Carlo Salvioni’s Scritti linguistici (5 vol., Bellinzona 2008) and is now editing the complete works of Clemente Merlo (Scritti linguistici, vols. I-II, in four tomes, Rome 2022-2023). Beyond linguistics, he published the essay Cattive notizie. La retorica senza lumi dei mass media italiani (Milan 2005).

He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Romance Linguistics at Oxford University Press (New York). In Zurich he directed the Seminar of Romance Languages and Literatures (2000-2004), ad interim that of General Linguistics (2006-2011), the Doctoral Program in Linguistics (2008-2011), the Phonetic Laboratory (2007-2011), the Phonographic Archives (2004-2011) and several third-party funded research projects, supported by the Swiss national science foundation and other institutions.

He is a member of the Academia Europaea and foreign correspondent member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a member of the direction of the journals “Italian Journal of Linguistics” and “Lingua e Stile”, as well as of the scientific committee of the “Annali” of the Scuola Normale, of  “Bollettino dell’Opera del Vocabolario Italiano”, “Diachronica”, “L’Italia dialettale”, “Romanica Olomucensia” and “Archivum” (Oviedo).

From the Accademia dei Lincei he received in 1989 the Borgia prize for philology and linguistics and in 2012 the Antonio Feltrinelli prize for Italian linguistics, awarded by the President of the Republic.