Nino Grillo

Nino Grillo is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York, where he has been a faculty member since 2016. He holds dual PhDs in Linguistics (Utrecht University) and Cognitive Science (University of Siena). His academic journey includes research and teaching roles at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Universität Stuttgart, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Madrid), McGill University, and Utrecht University. He has held honorary positions at University College London and McGill University.

Education:

• PhD in Linguistics, Utrecht University, 2008
• PhD in Cognitive Science, University of Siena, 2008
• Laurea in Communication Sciences, University of Siena, 2003

Research Interests:
Nino Grillo's research centers on the interface between syntax and psycholinguistics, particularly the interaction between grammatical representations and sentence processing mechanisms. He investigates how syntactic structures such as passives, relative clauses, and pseudo-relatives are processed in real time, with a focus on event structure, prosody, and locality constraints. His work spans first and second language acquisition, language impairment (especially agrammatism), and cross-linguistic variation. He employs experimental methods including eye-tracking, self-paced reading, and prosodic analysis.

Recent Research Trends:
His recent publications (2022–2024) emphasize prosodic disambiguation in syntactic structures, processing of filler-gap dependencies in L2 learners, and the role of event structure in passive comprehension. There is a clear trend toward integrating prosody with syntax in parsing models and extending findings to multilingual contexts.

Scientific Awards:

• Italian Psychology Society Young Scholar Award (2006)

Advising and Grants:
Dr. Grillo is actively involved in PhD supervision and accepts PhD students interested in sentence processing and syntax. He has led and collaborated on multiple funded research projects, including a British Academy Visiting Fellowship (2023) and a project on cross-linguistic passive processing (2018–2020). He has also contributed to projects on cross-linguistic dependency acquisition (2013–2016).

Labs and Research Groups:
He is a member of the Syntax and Semantics research group at the University of York. His work is highly collaborative, involving researchers from UCL, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, CNRS Paris, Simon Fraser University, and Universidade Nova de Lisboa.