Anna Pineda

Languages have always fascinated me. Nowadays, as an adult, I am lucky enough to earn a living with my knowledge of languages and linguistics. I speak Catalan, Basque, English, French, Dutch, Spanish and Occitan. I am especially interested in the syntactic variation of Romance languages.

After finishing my undergraduate studies in Filologia Catalana (Catalan Language and Literature) at the University of Barcelona (Award for the Outstanding Graduate of the Year  and First prize (group Humanities) in the National Awards to the Excellence in the Academic Performance, granted by the Ministry of Education), I combined teaching at the Ramon Llull University with research-oriented Master’s studies in Catalan Language and Literature at the University of Barcelona and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Finally, I did my PhD in Cognitive Science and Languistics (Extraordinary PhD Award, “Premi Extraordinari de Doctorat”)  at the Autonomous University of Barcelona with a thesis (A Cum Laude) dedicated to syntactic variation in Romance languages in general and in Catalan in particular, as well as in Basque. My thesis obtained the Cum Laude Award (6.000 €) to the best dissertation best dissertation in Human Sciences written in Catalan and defended in any of the universities of the Xarxa Vives, granted by the is granted by the Institut Món Juïc, the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Xarxa Vives. More specifically, in my PhD dissertation I was interested in direct and indirect objects and tried to discover why some speakers say Li han pegat (‘They hit him/her’, using indirect object pronoun) and some say L’han pegat (‘They hit him/her’, using direct object pronoun), or why sometimes they say Vaig donar-li un regal a la Maria (‘I gave a present to Maria’) with the pronoun li and sometimes, without. If it is of your interest, you can have a look at my thesis, or otherwise, read this article that is shorter and also less theoretical. During all the predoctoral period, I combined research with teaching (several courses related to Catalan language) at the Faculty of Traducció i Interpretació, Faculty of Filolosofia i Lletres and Faculty of Ciències de la Comunicació at the Autonomous University of Catalonia.

At the moment I am working as a postdoctoral researcher in linguistics at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Catalonia (2018-present), with a postdoctoral fellowship Juan de la Cierva-incorporación, provided by the Spanish Government, which enables me to pursue my career as a researcher and my teaching activity.  Just before that, I worked at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique in Bayonne (where I was a member of a research team in Basque studies, interested in the comparison with Romance languages), with a postdoctoral fellowship Beatriu de Pinós provided by the Generalitat of Catalonia (2016-2017). I also spent two months as a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, England (2017).

If you want to have a look at my cv (journal and book publications, participation in conferences, organization of scientific events, pre and postdoctoral research stays, teaching experience, research projects, etc.) you can do it here.