Cristiano Chesi
Cristiano Chesi (1975, Pisa) is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University School for Advanced Studies (IUSS Pavia) and Director of NeTS (IUSS Laboratory for Neurolinguistics, Computational Linguistics and theoretical Syntax) since September 2016. Ph.D. in Cognitive Sciences at University of Siena (2005) and researcher in the same university at CISCL (Interdepartmental Center for Cognitive Studies of Language) as Computational Linguist. His research areas are Computational Linguistics (grammatical formalisms, complexity theory, Parsing and Machine Translation), Language Acquisition and Linguistic Disabilities (deafness, aphasia and SLI). He collaborated with the Microsoft Language Development Center (Lisbon); Marie Curie Fellowship in 2004 at City University of London, Erasmus professor at University of Geneva, Visiting Scholar at MediaLab and Dep. of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT (Cambridge, MA), Visiting student at IRST (Institute for Scientific and Technological Research of Trento), Erasmus student at University of Rennes II (France). Among various projects, he developed an on-line "Italian" > "Italian Sign Language" Machine Translation service and an aligned, fully annotated, corpus with a visual editing tool for semi-automatic tagging of new linguistic data (Centro Ricerche RAI, public broadcast television, Siena University Treebank ), a demo parser for Italian (Phase-based Minimalist Parser) based on a (minimalist, in the sense of Chomsky 1995) grammatical framework dubbed "Phase-based Minimalist Grammar" (PMG, Chesi 2007). A related project is dubbed Top-Down Left-Right Grammars, recently evolved into Expectaion-based Minimalist Grammars (e-MG, Chesi 2022, 23) framework. He is currently coordinator of the T-GRA2L project: Testing GRAdeness and GRAmmaticality in Linguistics).
Selected publications
Books
  • Chesi C. , G. Ghersi , V. Musella , D. Musola (2022) COnVERSA: Test di Comprensione delle Opposizioni morfo-sintattiche VERbali attraverso la ScritturA. Hogrefe
  • Chesi C. (2013) Special issue on directionality of phrase structure building. Studies in Linguistics. Vol. 6 - ISSN: 2281-3128
  • Chesi C. (2012) Competence and Computation Toward a Processing Friendly Minimalist Grammar. UNIPRESS, Padova. ISBN: 9788880983071
  • Bianchi V. , C. Chesi (2012) ENJOY LINGUISTICS! Papers offered to Luigi Rizzi on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Siena: CISCL Press (pp. 351) ISBN: 9788890794308
  • Lazzari M. , A. Bianchi , M. Cadei , C. Chesi , S. Maffei (2010) Informatica umanistica. McGraw-Hill, Padova, IT, ISBN: 978-88-383-6557-8
  • Chesi C. , C. Geraci (2009) Segni al Computer: manuale di documentazione della Lingua Italiana dei Segni e alcune applicazioni computazionali. Edizioni Cantagalli, Siena, IT, ISBN: 978-88-827-2523-5
  • Chesi C. (2006) Il linguaggio verbale non-standard dei bambini sordi. Edizioni Universitarie Romane, Roma ISBN: 8860220262
  • Belletti A. , E. Bennati , C. Chesi , E. Di Domenico , I. Ferrari (2006) Language Acquisition and Development: Proceedings of GALA2005. Cambridge Scholar Press, Newcastle, UK ISBN: 1847180280
Papers
  • Beltrame F., C. Chesi (2021) Why-questions and focus in Italian. The Linguistic Review
  • Greco M., P. Lorusso, C. Chesi, A. Moro (2020) Asymmetries in nominal copular sentences: psycholinguistic evidence in favor of the raising analysis.. «Lingua»; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102926.
  • Ghersi G., D. Musola, C. Chesi (2019) L’acquisizione dei pronomi clitici nei sordi: evidenze a favore dell’utilità dell’esposizione a coppie minime. STUDI E SAGGI LINGUISTICI
  • Catricalà E., V. Boschi, S. Cuoco, F. Galiano, M. Picillo, E. Gobbi, A. Miozzo, C. Chesi, V. Esposito, G. Santangelo, M. Pellecchia, V. Borsa, P. Barone, P. Garrard, S. Iannaccone, S. Cappa (2019) The language profile of progressive supranuclear palsy. Cortex
  • Lorusso P., M. Greco, C. Chesi, A. Moro (2019) Asymmetries in Extraction From Nominal Copular Sentences: a Challenging Case Study for NLP Tools. Proceedings of the Sixth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2019). In CEUR WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS - ISSN:1613-0073.
  • Chesi C., P. Canal (2019) Person Features and Lexical Restrictions in Italian Clefts. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02105
  • Topciu K., C. Chesi (2019) Reflexives, Impersonals and Their Kin: a Classification Problem.. Proceedings of the Sixth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2019). In CEUR WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS - ISSN:1613-0073
  • Brattico P., C. Chesi (2019) A top-down, parser-friendly approach to pied-piping and operator movement. Lingua. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2019.102760
  • Chesi C., A. Moro (2018) Il divario (apparente) tra gerarchia e tempo. Sistemi intelligenti, XXX, n. 1, aprile 2018: 11-32 doi: 10.1422/89315
  • Chesi C., P. Brattico (2018) Larger than expected: constraints on pied-piping across languages . Rivista di Grammatica Generativa, RGG 2018.04. 1-38
  • Boschi V., E. Catricalà, M. Consonni, C. Chesi, A. Moro, S. Cappa (2017) Connected speech in neurodegenerative language disorders: a review. Front. Psychol. 8:269.doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00269
  • Chesi C., P. Canal (2017) Feature Retrieval Cost and on-line/off-line complexity in clefts. Proceedings of AMLAP, Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing. Lancaster, September 7-9 2017
  • Chesi C. (2017) A perfect (machine) language. Abstract proceedings of AISC 2017
  • Chesi C. (2017) Phase-based Minimalist Parsing and complexity in non-local dependencies. Proceedings of CLiC-it 2017. CEUR WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS, ROMA:CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISBN: 9788899982768, ISSN: 1613-0073, Rome, 11-13 December 2017, doi: urn:nbn:de:0074-2006-4
  • Ferreira J., C. Chesi, D. Baldewijns, D. Braga, M. Dias, M. Correia (2016) The first Mirandese text-to-speech system. in Vera Ferreira and Peter Bouda (eds.) Language Documentation and Conservation in Europe. Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication. 9: 150–158.
  • Chesi C., A. Moro (2016) Mind the gap between hierarchy and time. AISC : Associazione Italiana di Scienze Cognitive, “Mind the Gap: Brain, Cognition and Society - 13th Annual Conference of the Italian Association for Cognitive Sciences”, Collane@unito.it, accessed 12 dicembre 2016, http://www.collane.unito.it/oa/items
  • Chesi C. (2015) On directionality of phrase structure building. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 44(1): 1-50 -
  • Chesi C., A. Moro (2015) The subtle dependency between Competence and Performance. in Á. J. Gallego and D. Ott (eds.) "50 Years Later: Reflections on Chomsky’s Aspects". MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 77:33-46
  • Chesi C., E. Catricalà, A. Miozzo, A. Marcone, S. Cappa (2015) il contributo dell’analisi linguistica per la classificazione automatica degli eloqui prodotti da pazienti con afasia progressiva primaria. Studi italiani di linguistica teorica e applicata (SILTA), Numero monografico: Tra linguistica medica e linguistica clinica. Il ruolo del linguista, F. Orletti, F. M. Dovetto & A. Cardinaletti (eds.), XLIV(3):521-531
  • Chesi C. (2015) Real-time processing of complex sentences (presentation of the Feature Retrieval Cost - FRC). slides talk at Scula Normale Superiore
  • Chesi C. (2015) Il processamento in tempo reale delle frasi complesse. Proceedings of “Compter Parler Soigner” (pp.21-38), E.M Ponti e M. Budassi (eds.). Pavia: Pavia University Press
  • Chesi C., A. Moro (2014) Computational complexity in the brain. In: Newmeyer FJ, Preston LB, eds. Measuring grammatical complexity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 264–280.
  • Bianchi V., C. Chesi (2014) Subject islands, reconstruction, and the flow of the computation. Linguistic Inquiry 45(4):525–569 - DOI: 10.1162/ling_a_00166
  • Chesi C. (2014) La computazione linguistica. in Lazzari (2014) Informatica Umanistica (II edizione). McGraw Hill
  • Bianchi V., C. Chesi (2014) On a PP/DP asymmetry in extraction. in Structures, Strategies and Beyond, Edition: Linguistik Atuell Series, Publisher: John Benjamins, Editors: Elisa Di Domenico, Cornelia Hamann, Simona Matteini
  • Chesi C., E. Catricalà, A. Miozzo, A. Marcone, S. Cappa (2014) Improving machine learning approaches to (sub)classification of Primary Progressive Aphasia using fine-grained linguistic features. Proceedings of XLVIII Congresso Internazionale SLI 2014, Udine; 09/2014
  • Belletti A., C. Chesi (2014) A syntactic approach toward the interpretation of some distributional frequencies: comparing relative clauses in Italian corpora and in elicited production. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa (2014) 36: 1-28
  • Albertini S., M. Ricco, C. Chesi, M. Tettamanti, A. Moro (2014) Working memory and syntactic constituency in Language and Music. Abstract in Atti dell'XI convegno AISC 2014: NEA SCIENCE, ISSN: 2282-6009
  • Chesi C. (2014) What memory retrieval tells us about intervention effects. R. Zamparelli (ed.) 40th Incontro di Grammatica Generativa (Generative Grammar Meeting. Book of abstracts. pp. 50-51
  • Ricco M., C. Chesi, A. Moro (2014) Internal Merge in Music: a Proposal for a Generative Syntax of Tonal Music. R. Zamparelli (ed.) 40th Incontro di Grammatica Generativa (Generative Grammar Meeting. Book of abstracts. pp. 50-51
  • Chesi C., A. Moro (2013) Hierarchy and recursion in the brain. GLOW Newsletter n.70 pp.54-55 ISSN: 0924-8749
  • Chesi C. (2013) Do the 'right' move. Studies in Linguistics. Vol. 6, Special issue on 'directionality of phrase structure building'. ISSN: 2281-3128.
  • Chesi C. (2013) Introduction to directionality. Studies in Linguistics. Vol. 6, Special issue on 'directionality of phrase structure building'. ISSN: 2281-3128.
  • Chesi C. (2012) Rightward movement from a top-down perspective. in Rightward Movement in a Comparative Perspective, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Ed. G. Webelhuth, M. Sailer, H. Walker pp.243-280 ISBN: 9789027255839
  • Chesi C. (2012) Competenza e performance: una distinzione cognitivamente obsoleta. Sistemi Intelligenti A. XXIV, n. 2:243-260 ISSN: 1120-9550
  • Chesi C., A. Moro (2012) Computational blindness in the brain. ENJOY LINGUISTICS! Papers offered to Luigi Rizzi on the occasion of his 60th birthday, Ed. V. Bianchi e C. Chesi (pp. 62-65) ISBN: 9788890794308
  • Bianchi V., C. Chesi (2012) Subject islands and the Subject Criterion. in ENJOY LINGUISTICS! Papers offered to Luigi Rizzi on the occasion of his 60th birthday, Ed. V. Bianchi e C. Chesi (pp. 25-53) ISBN: 9788890794308
  • Bianchi V., C. Chesi (2012) Extraction from subjects (under reconstruction). IGG38, 23-24 Febbraio 2012 Verona (pp. 8-9)
  • Chesi C. (2012) On directionality of phrase structure building. CUNY 12 Twenty-Fifth Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Marzo 2012, New York (pp. 156-157)
  • Belletti A., C. Chesi (2011) Relative clauses from the input: syntactic considerations on a corpus-based analysis of Italian. STiL - Studies in Linguistics. 4:5-24 ISSN: 2281-3128
  • Belletti A., C. Chesi (2011) Kinds of relative clauses in Italian corpora. IGG 37, Rome, IT, 24-26/02/2011 (pp. 9-10)
  • Bianchi V., C. Chesi (2010) Reversing the perspective on Quantifier Raising. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa. 35:5-35
  • Chesi C. (2010) Lo studio della lingua e la linguistica computazionale. in Lazzari, Bianchi, Cadei, Chesi, Maffei (2010) Informatica Umanistica. McGraw Hill
  • Chesi C. (2009) Getting (un)expected asymmetries in parsing head-final languages. CLIN XIX - Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands Groningen, NL, 22-24/1/2009 (pp. 128-130)
  • Chesi C., G. Lebani, M. Pallottino (2008) A Bilingual Treebank (ITA-LIS) suitable for Machine Translation: what Cartography and Minimalism teach us. STiL - Studies in Linguistics. 2:82-101 ISSN: 2281-3128
  • Bianchi V., C. Chesi (2008) Phases, Strong Islands and Computational Nesting. Studies in Linguistics. 2:166-186 ISSN: 2281-3128
  • Chesi C. (2007) Top-down processing of non-local dependencies in language and vision. Convegno Nazionale dell'Associazione Italiana di Scienze Cognitive (pp. 18-22)
  • Chesi C. (2007) Five reasons for building phrase structures top-down from left to right. Nanzan Linguistics. 3:45-80
  • Chesi C. (2007) An introduction to Phase-based Minimalist Grammars: why move is Top-Down from Left-to-Right. STiL - Studies in Linguistics. 1:49-90 ISSN: 2281-3128
  • Chesi C. (2006) Alcune osservazioni sulle produzioni verbali non-standard dei bambini sordi: il sintagma verbale. L’educazione dei sordi, Vol. IX-CVII, 3:139-155
  • Chesi C. (2006) Alcune osservazioni sulle produzioni verbali non-standard dei bambini sordi: il sintagma nominale. L’educazione dei sordi, Vol.IX-CVII, 2:93-110
  • Chesi C. (2006) La formalizzazione di un evento. Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Siena, n. 27 (pp.253-274) ISSN: 0392-9345 ISBN: 979-88-7923-368-2
  • Bianchi V., C. Chesi (2005) Phases, strong islands, and computational nesting. GLOW Newsletter n.54, Spring 2005 (pp.24-25) ISSN: 0924-8749
  • Bianchi V., C. Chesi (2005) Phases, left-branch islands, and computational nesting. Upenn Working Papers in Linguistics 12.1 : Proceedings of the 29th Penn Linguistic Colloquium (pp. 15 - 28)
  • Chesi C. (2004) Phases and Complexity in Phrase Structure Building. Selected Papers of the 15th Meeting of Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands (pp. 59-75)