Francesc Xavier Villalba Nicolas

Francesc Xavier Villalba Nicolas is a Professor at the Department of Catalan Studies, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where he leads research at the Center for Theoretical Linguistics. His academic career spans over two decades since earning his PhD in Catalan Philology from UAB in 2000, with significant contributions to theoretical linguistics.

His research focuses on three interconnected areas: Romance syntax and its interfaces with semantics and pragmatics, exclamative sentences across Romance languages, and the functional architecture of sentence structure. Villalba has published extensively in these fields, including a book on word order contrast and numerous reference chapters in authoritative linguistic handbooks.

Villalba's scholarly impact is evidenced by 116+ research outputs, including recent publications in 2024 that explore the syntax-pragmatics interface of exclamative markers and the diachronic evolution of discourse markers in Spanish. His work demonstrates consistent engagement with both theoretical frameworks and experimental methodologies, particularly in examining how exclamations function within discourse and contribute to the common ground.

• 21 publications in ISI Social Sciences Citation Index (96 citations, h-index 5)
• 14 publications in Scopus (85 citations, h-index 4)
• 1167 citations in Google Scholar (h-index 18)

As an academic supervisor, Villalba has directed multiple PhD theses on topics including resumptive relative clauses, exclamatives in Catalan, and complementizer deletion in Spanish. He currently leads the EXPLETIVENESS AND EXPRESSIVE MEANING project (2024-2027) as Principal Investigator, continuing his investigation into the expressive dimensions of language structure. His research program bridges theoretical linguistics with empirical approaches, making significant contributions to our understanding of how syntax interfaces with meaning and discourse.