CV

Petra Sleeman is a senior linguist working in the department of Linguistics and the research institute ACLC of the University of Amsterdam. She also worked at the University of Utrecht and the University of Groningen. She was an invited assistant professor at the University Paris VII and the University Paris III and an invited professor at the University Lille III. She graduated in 1996 with a thesis on nominal ellipsis titled Licensing Empty Nouns in French, which was supervised by Aafke Hulk and Denis Delfitto. Petra Sleeman's main topic of research is the French DP: the position of adjectives, adjectival agreement, noun ellipsis, relative clauses and reduced relatives, the partitive construction, definiteness, deverbal nominalization and deverbal adjectivalization, and dislocation of DPs. Another research field is L1, 2L1, and L2 acquisition. She is the program director of the Linguistic Masters Program Language and Education.

Dissertation

Licensing Empty Nouns in French (1996)

Current PhD students

(supervision with Aafke Hulk and Suzanne Aalberse) Brechje van Osch: Interface and non-interface phenomena in heritage speakers and L2 learners of Spanish: differences and similarities. 

(supervision with Aafke Hulk) Rosalinde Stadt: The influence of English as L2 on the acquisition of French as L3.

(supervision with Aafke Hulk and Jeannette Schaeffer) Sanne Berends: Cross-linguistic influences on the acquisition of nominal ellipsis.

(supervision with Enoch Aboh) Thom Westveer: How society shapes language: feminization and language mismatches in French and German.

Recent publications

Thom Westveer, Petra Sleeman & Enoch Aboh. 2018. Discriminating dictionaries? Feminine forms of profession nouns in dictionaries of French and German. International Journal of Lexicography 31.3, 1-23.

Petra Sleeman & Tabea Ihsane. 2017. The L2 acquisition of the French quantitative pronoun en by L1 learners of Dutch. Vulnerable domains and cross-linguistic influence. In Elma Blom, Jeannette Schaeffer & Leonie Cornips (eds.), Cross-linguistic Influence of Bilingualism. In honor of Aafke Hulk, 303-330. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Anne Lobeck & Petra Sleeman (2017). 'Ellipsis in Noun Phrases'. In Martin Everaert & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.): Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, second edition. 

Petra Sleeman (2017). 'Participial relative clauses'. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics.

Rosalinde Stadt, Aafke Hulk, Petra Sleeman (2016). 'The Influence of L2 English and immersion education on L3 French in the Netherlands'. Linguistics in the Netherlands, 33.1, edited by Jenny Audring and Sander Lestrade, 152-165.

Sanne Berends, Aafke Hulk & Petra Sleeman (2016). 'The emergence of the pronouns Dutch er and French en in child L1 and the role of complexity'. Language Sciences, 60, 144-159.

Brechje van Osch & Petra Sleeman (2016). 'Spanish heritage speakers in the Netherlands: linguistic patterns in the judgment and production of mood'. International Journal of Bilingualism, online 21 July 2016.

Petra Sleeman & Tabea Ihsane. (2016). 'Gender mismatches in partitive construction with superlatives in French'. Glossa. Open Access.

Tabea Ihsane & Petra Sleeman (2016). 'Gender agreement with animate nouns in French'. In Christina Tortora, Marcel den Dikken, Ignacio Montoya & Teresa O'Neill (eds.). Selected proceedings of the 43rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Jan, Don, Petra Sleeman & Thom Westveer (2015). 'Three types of suffixes in French: discarding the learned / non-learned distinction'. Linguistics in the Netherlands 2015, edited by Björn Köhnlein and Jenny Audring, 33-47.

Petra Sleeman & Dana Niculescu (2015). 'Adjectivization of participles in Romance: a gradual process?'. In Jason Smith & Tabea Ihsane (eds.). Romance Linguistics 2012. Selected papers from the 42th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL). Cedar City. Utah 20-22 April 2012.  Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Enoch O. Aboh, Jeannette Schaeffer & Petra Sleeman (2015). Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' Amsterdam 2013. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Brechje van Osch, Aafke Hulk, Petra Sleeman & Pablo Irizarri van Suchtelen (2014). 'Gender agreement in interface contexts in the oral production of heritage speakers of Spanish in the Netherlands'. In Anita Auer & Björn Köhnlein (eds.) Linguistics in the Netherlands 2014. AVT 31. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 

Petra Sleeman (2014). 'From participle to adjective in Germanic and Romance'. In  Petra Sleeman, Freek Van de Velde & Harry Perridon (eds.). Adjectives in Germanic and Romance, 171-197. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Freek Van de Velde, Petra Sleeman & Harry Perridon (2014). 'The adjective in Germanic and Romance: Development, differences and similarities'. In Petra Sleeman, Freek Van de Velde & Harry Perridon (eds.). Adjectives in Germanic and Romance, 1-32. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Petra Sleeman, Freek Van de Velde & Harry Perridon (2014). Adjectives in Germanic and Romance. Linguistik Aktuell 212. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins

Petra Sleeman (2013). 'Deadjectival human nouns: conversion, nominal ellipsis, or mixed category?' Linguística: revista de estudos linguísticos da Universidade do Porto, 8, 159 - 180.

Petra Sleeman (2013). 'Italian clefts and the licensing of infinitival subject relatives'. In K. Hartmann & T. Veenstra (eds.), Cleft Structures, 319-342, Amsterdam & Philadelphia, John Benjamins.

Petra Sleeman & Aafke Hulk (2013). 'L1 acquisition of noun ellipsis in French and in Dutch: consequences for linguistic theory'. In: Baauw, S., Drijkoningen, F., Meroni, L., Pinto, M. (eds.), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2001. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Petra Sleeman (2012). 'The suffixal nature of the post-nominal article in Swedish and Romanian: evidence from L1 acquisition'. In Henk van der Liet & Muriel Norde (eds.), Language for its own sake. Esays on Language and Literature offered to Harry Perridon. Amsterdam Contributions to Scandinavian Studies 8, 189-207.

Petra Sleeman (2011). 'Verbal and adjectival participles: internal structure and position'. Lingua 121.10, 1569-1587.

Viviane Déprez, Petra Sleeman & Hakima Guella (2011) ‘Specificity effects in L2 determiner acquisition: UG or Pragmatic egocentrism? In Mihaela Pirvulescu, María Cristina Cuervo, Ana T. Pérez-Leroux, Jeffrey Steele, and Nelleke Strik (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2010). 27-36.

Petra Sleeman & Harry Perridon, eds. (2011). The Noun Phrase in Romance and Germanic. Structure, variation and change. [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, volume 171]. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Harry Perridon & Petra Sleeman (2011). 'The Noun Phrase in Germanic and Romance: common developments and differences'. In Sleeman & Perridon.

Petra Sleeman (2010). The nominalized infinitive in French: structure and change. In Linguística. Revista de Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade do Porto, 5, 2010, 145-173.

Petra Sleeman (2010). 'L2 acquisition of clitics: Old French as an interlanguage'. V. Torrens, L.Escobar, A. Gavarro, and J. Gutiérrez (eds.), Movement and Clitics: Adult and child grammar. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 389-416. 

Petra Sleeman & Ana Maria Brito (2010). "Nominalization, Event, Aspect, and Argument Structure: a Syntactic approach",  In Argument Structure from a Crosslinguistic Perspective, ed. by  Maia Duguine, Susana Huidobro & Nerea Madariaga. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 113-129.

Petra Sleeman & Ana Maria Brito.(2010). 'Aspect and argument structure of deverbal nominalizations: a split vP analysis'. In A. Alexiadou & M.Rathert (eds.), The Syntax of Nominalizations across Languages and Frameworks. (Interface Explorations series, vol. 23). Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 199-217.

Petra Sleeman (2010).'Superlative adjectives and the licensing of non-modal infinitival subject relatives'. In Patricia Cabredo-Hofherr & Ora Matushansky (eds.), Adjectives. Formal Analyses in Syntax and Semantics. Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 233-264.

Enoch Aboh, Elisabeth van der Linden, Josep Quer & Petra Sleeman (eds.) (2009). Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2007. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Elisabeth van der Linden & Petra Sleeman (2007). 'Clitic dislocation: evidence for a low topic position', in Linguistics in the Netherlands 2007, edited by Bettelou Los & Marjo van Koppen, 173-187. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Petra Sleeman (2006). ' La stucture de la construction partitive suivie d'une relative', in La Relation, edited by Georges Kleiber, Catherine Schnedecker & Anne Theissen, 320-335. Leuven: Peeters.

Petra Sleeman (2005). 'The com(p)-position of DP-internal infinitival clauses', in Contributions to the thirtieth Incontro di Grammatica Generativa, edited by Laura Brugè, Giuliana Giusti, Nicola Munaro, Walter Schweikert, Giuseppina Turano, 333-349. Venice: Cafoscarina. http://lear.unive.it/bitstream/10278/250/1/Atti-2-17s-Sleeman.pdf

Petra Sleeman (2004). 'The acquisition of definiteness distinctions by L2 learners of French', in Linguistics in the Netherlands, edited by Leonie Cornips & Jenny Doetjes, 158-168. Amsterdam& Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Petra Sleeman (2004). 'Guided learners of French and the acquisition of topic marking constructions', in International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 42.2,edited by Petra Bos, Bart Hollebrandse & Petra Sleeman, 129-151.

Francis Corblin, Jean-Marie Marandin & Petra Sleeman (2004). 'Nounless determiners', in Handbook of French Semantics,edited by Francis Corblin & Henriëtte deSwart, 23-40. Standford: CSLI Publications.

Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie, Jenny Doetjes & Petra Sleeman (2004). 'Dislocation', in Handbook of French Semantics edited by Francis Corblin & Henriëtte de Swart, 501-528. Standford: CSLI Publications.

Petra Sleeman (2003). 'Subnominal empty categories as subordinate topics'. in From NP to DP edited by Martine Coene & Yves D'Hulst, 119-137. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Petra Sleeman (2003). Quelques-uns, celui, chacun : pronoms ou déterminants ?" Langages, 37 (152), 105-123.

Ellen-Petra Kester & Petra Sleeman (2002). 'N-ellipsis in Spanish.' Linguistics in the Netherlands 2002, 107-116.

Petra Sleeman (2002). 'Adjectival agreement within DP without feature movement.' In "Current Issues in Romance Languages" edited by TeresaSatterfield, Christina Tortora & Diana Cresti, 301-316.

Petra Sleeman & Ellen-Petra Kester (2002). 'Partitive constructions and antisymmetry.' In "Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory" edited by C. Beyssade, R. Bok-Bennema, F. Drijkoningen & P. Monachesi, 271-286.

For more publications see:

Courses

For information (in Dutch) on the courses that Petra Sleeman gives this year at the University of Amsterdam, see:  

Downloads

PARTITIVITY in EUROPE (PARTE)

Research teams

The International Network on Partitivity in European Languages (PARTE) was initiated in 2017 and involves 15 researchers from 9 European universities:

Petra Sleeman (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands) (PI)

Enoch Aboh (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)

Leonie Cornips (Meertens Institute, the Netherlands)

Elisabeth Stark, Elvira  Glaser, Tabea Ihsane, Paul Widmer, David Paul Gerards (University of Zurich, Switzerland)

Giuliana Giusti and Anna Cardinaletti (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy)

Silvia Luraghi (University of Pavia, Italy)

Anne Tamm (Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary)

Cecilia Poletto (Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Germany)

Ilja A. Seržant (University of Leipzig, Germany)

Tuomas Huumo (University of Turku, Finland)

Funding

The network is funded by an NWO Internationalisation in the Humanities grant, awarded to Petra Sleeman.

General aims

This collaboration aims to contribute to our understanding of the emergence, spread and vulnerability of partitive elements (partitive determiners, partitive pronouns and partitive case) in European languages and dialects.

In addition to organizing meetings with the network members, we intend to organize three larger international workshops, publish a selection of the presented papers, construe a website serving as a digital platform informing teachers and policy makers, set up a database of linguistic maps, and organize short-term research exchanges.

Meetings

The first workshop will be held on November 13-14, 2017 in Venice, organized by Giuliana Giusti.