Iara Mantenuto

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Iara Mantenuto holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles and she is a proud first-generation student.

Dr. Mantenuto loves teaching and training new teachers. She has been awarded the Certificate of University Teaching from Syracuse University, the Mellon Teaching Fellowship in Teaching Excellence: Inclusive Classroom from UCLA, and the Distinguished Teaching Award by the Linguistics Department at UCLA.

Her research focuses on morphosyntactic theory, crosslinguistic variation, and pedagogical techniques used to improve our teaching of linguistics, second language teaching and teaching of indigenous languages. She works on a variety of topics including demonstratives, determiners, quantifiers, "other" (disanaphor morphemes), relative clauses, comparatives and classifiers. She carries out documentary linguistic work which is theoretically informed and that contributes to theoretical linguistics. Her research focuses on Upper Southern Italian languages and Mixtec languages.

In her free time, she loves cooking Italian food, she enjoys playing with her son, and she is involved in activist work in L.A.

Selected Recent Publications:

• Mantenuto, Iara & Ivano Caponigro (2020). Light-headed relative clauses in Teramano. In Studies in Language.
• Wong, Deborah & Iara Mantenuto (2017). Quantifiers in Kenyah Uma’ Baha. In E. Keenan and D. Paperno (Eds), Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. 939-961.

Selected Recent Presentations:

• January 2021 “Diversifying the Field: Activities to Make Linguistics More Relevant” Linguistics Society of America (LSA 2021). Online.
• January 2021 “Comparatives in Yucuquimi de Ocampo Mixtec” [with Octavio León Vázquez] The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA 2021). Online.
• September 2020 “On the Semantic Effects of Noun-Adjective Order in Italian” [with Maayan Abenina-Adar] Sensus: Constructing Meaning in Romance. UMass, Boston, MA.
• March 2020 “Comparatives in San Sebastián del Monte Mixtec: a Mixed Construction” West Coast Conference in Formal Linguistics 2020 (WCCFL38). Vancouver, BC, Canada.
• September 2019 “Retos y desafíos en la enseñanza de la lectoescritura del mixteco de Yucuquimi de Ocampo” [with Octavio León Vázquez] II Jornadas Sobre Lenguas Mixtecanas. UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico.
• March 2019 “Teaching Methodologies for Mixtec Tones” [with Octavio León Vázquez] Language Documentation and Conservation. Honolulu, Hawaii.

Undergraduate courses taught at CSUDH:

• ENG 315: English Syntax
• ENG 210: The Study of Language
• ENG 310: The Study of Language

Graduate courses taught:

• ENG 486/596: Studies in Language and Literature TESL
• ENG 492/592: Seminar in Linguistics: "Intersectionality and Language" (This is a pro-seminar focusing on intersectionality and linguistics)
• ENG 587: Current Issues in TESL "Strategies for Teaching Mixed Classes" (This is a pro-seminar focusing on Heritage Languages and Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching Heritage Language Learners)