Syntax, in particular word order phenomena, diathesis, predication and copular sentences, coordination, infinitival constructions Romance languages, in particular Italian, Northern Italian and Rhaeto-Romance dialects, Portuguese, and French Latin (classical and vulgar), in particular word order and extraction phenomena, pronominal system Historical linguistics (latino-romance): grammaticalization of auxiliaries, evolution of sentence structure, birth of clitic pronouns Theory of grammar, in particular the theory of parts of speech Relationships between linguistics and philology