
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6993-976X
My research career focuses on Catalan and Spanish grammar, specifically their syntax and connections with semantics, pragmatics and prosody. In this area, my first main line of research has been dislocations, an understudied construction and yet of great theoretical interest. Apart from my 2000 thesis, my research on this construction has been published elsewhere, spreading from the syntactic representation of dislocates (2009) to prosodic (2013d) and information aspects (2013a; 2015a; 2018b), as well as the microparametric differences between Catalan and Spanish (2007, 2011a,c; 2015b). My most recent work in this area has being concerned with the expression of information structure in non-standard sentences, such as Romance binominal constructions (2008, 2010b), interrogatives (2018c), infinitival relatives (2019b), and existential sentences (2013c; 2016b; 2018a).
You can download a full bibtex file here.
Trotzke, A., and Villalba, X. (2020). Exclamatives as responses at the syntax-pragmatics interface. Journal of Pragmatics 168: 139-171.

Brunetti, L., Mayol, L., and Villalba, X. (2020). Bridging Strength, Monotonicity, and Word Order Choices in Catalan. Discourse Processes 57(8): 703-724.

Feldhausen, I. and Villalba, X. (2020). Modality and Information Structure: Focus, Dislocation, Interrogative and Exclamatory Sentences. In J. A. Argenter and J.LĂĽdtke (eds.) Manual of Catalan Linguistics. Berlin, De Gruyter. 247-270.

Villalba, X. (2020). Scoping in degree exclamative sentences. In Sandro Sessarego and Melvin González Rivera (eds.) Interface-Driven Phenomena in Spanish: Essays in Honor of Javier Gutierrez Rexach. London and New York: Routledge.

Villalba, X. (2019). El orden de palabras en contraste. Madrid: Arco/Libros.

Villalba, X. (2019). Infinitive wh-relatives in Romance: Consequences for the truncation vs. intervention debate. Syntax. A journal of theoretical, experimental, and interdisciplinary research 22(2-3). 303-335. doi:10.1111/synt.12183.
Villalba, X. (2018). Els pronoms forts en les oracions existencials del català . Caplletra. Revista Internacional de Filologia 65. 69–94. doi:10.7203/caplletra.65.12612.
Planas-Morales, S. & X. Villalba. (2018). La particiĂłn foco–trasfondo en las oraciones interrogativas del catalán y del español: Estudio de corpus. Normas: revista de estudios lingĂĽĂsticos hispánicos 8(1), 43–60.
Mayol, L. & X. Villalba. (2018). Bridging and dislocation in Catalan. In Lori Repetti & Francisco Ordóñez (eds.), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14. Selected papers from the 46th Linguistics Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Stony Brook, NY, (pp. 201–213). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/rllt.14.11may

Villalba, X. (2017). Exclamatives, imperatives, optatives. In A. Dufter & E. Stark (Eds.), Manual of Romance Morphosyntax and Syntax (pp. 603-646). Berlin and New York: Mouton De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110377088-017

Villalba, X. (2017). Non-asserted material in Spanish degree exclamatives: An experimental study on extreme degree. In I. Bosque (Ed.), Advances in the analysis of Spanish exclamatives (pp. 139–158). Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press.

Villalba, X. (2016). Interfaces and domains of quantification by Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach (review). Language, 92(1), 219–222. doi:10.1353/lan.2016.0017
Villalba, X., & Planas-Morales, S. (2016). InteracciĂł sintĂ ctica i entonativa a les interrogatives catalanes amb dislocaciĂł a la dreta. In A. M. Fernández (Ed.), 53 reflexiones sobre aspectos de la fonĂ©tica y otros temas de lingĂĽĂstica (pp. 311–319). Barcelona: Laboratori de Fonètica de la Universitat de Barcelona.
Villalba, X. (2016). L’evolució de les oracions exclamatives-qu de grau en català . Caplletra. Revista Internacional de Filologia, 60, 211–226. doi:10.7203/caplletra.60.8454
Villalba, X. (2016). Definiteness effect, pronouns and Information Structure in Catalan existentials. In S. Fischer, T. Kupisch, & E. Rinke (Eds.), Definiteness effects: Bilingual, typological and diachronic variation (pp. 172–209). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publisher.

Espinal, M. T., & Villalba, X. (2015). Ambiguity resolution and information structure. The Linguistic Review, 31(4), 61–85. doi:10.1515/tlr-2014-0015
Villalba, X., & Planas-Morales, S. (2015). Microinformática. Modelos de variaciĂłn informativa microparamĂ©trica. In A. Gordejuela Senosiáin, D. Izquierdo AlegrĂa, F. JimĂ©nez Berrio, A. De Lucas Vicente, & M. Casado Velarde (Eds.), Lenguas, lenguaje y lingĂĽĂstica. Contribuciones desde la LingĂĽĂstica General (pp. 507–516). Pamplona: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra.
Planas-Morales, S., & Villalba, X. (2013). The Right Periphery of Interrogatives in Catalan and Spanish: Syntax-Prosody Interactions. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 12, 193–217.
Villalba, X. (2013). Eventive existentials in Catalan and the topic-focus articulation. Italian Journal of Linguistics, 25(1), 147–173.
Villalba, X., & Mayol, L. (2013). Right-dislocation in Catalan: Tails, Polarity and Activation. International Review of Pragmatics, 5(1), 87–117. doi:10.1163/18773109-13050104
Villalba, X. (2013). Eventualities under deadjectival nominalizations. Borealis. An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics, 2(2), 241–259.
Villalba, X. (2011). A quantitative comparative study of right-dislocation in Catalan and Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(7), 1946–1961. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2011.01.002
Villalba, X. (2011). The HISPACAT comparative database of syntactic constructions and its applications to syntactic variation research. Oslo Studies in Language, 3(2), 129–145.
Villalba, X. (2011). Las nominalizaciones deadjetivales con lo y las cualidades. In V. Escandell Vidal, M. Leonetti, & C. Sánchez López (Eds.), 60 Problemas De Gramática (pp. 90–98). Madrid: Akal.

Villalba, X. (2010). El orden de las palabras en español. Ed. Castalia.

Villalba, X., & Bartra-Kaufmann, A. (2010). Predicate focus fronting in the Spanish determiner phrase. Lingua, 120(4), 819–849. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2008.07.010
Villalba, X. (2009). La perifèria oracional en el català antic: una exploració cartogrà fica. In J. Martines & M. Pérez-Saldanya (Eds.), Per a una gramà tica del català antic (pp. 175–190). València: Institut Interuniversitari de Filologia Valenciana.

Villalba, X. (2009). Definite Adjective Nominalizations in Spanish. Proceedings of the IV Nereus International Workshop “Definiteness and DP Structure in Romance Languages,” 137–151.
Villalba, X. (2009). The Syntax and Semantics of Dislocations in Catalan. A Study on Asymmetric Syntax at the Peripheries of Sentence. Köln, Alemanya: Lambert Academic Publishing AG Co. KG.

Villalba, X. (2008). Exclamatives: A thematic guide with many questions and few answers. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 7, 9–40.
Villalba, X. (2008). The Focus-Background Articulation in Spanish Qualitative Binominal NPs. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 7(2), 131–149.
Planas-Morales, S., & Villalba, X. (2007). Las similitudes en el contorno entonativo de las palabras del chino mandarĂn y de los grupos fĂłnicos del español. In E. Balmaseda (Ed.), Las destrezas orales en la enseñanza del español L2-LE. XVII Congreso Internacional de la AsociaciĂłn para la Enseñanza del Español como Lengua Extranjera. Logroño, 27-30 de septiembre de 2006 (Vol. II, pp. 901–914). La Rioja: Universidad de la Rioja. https://cvc.cervantes.es/ensenanza/biblioteca_ele/asele/pdf/17/17_0901.pdf
Villalba, X. (2007). True and spurious articles in Germanic and Romance. Cuadernos de LingĂĽĂstica, 14(i), 121–134.
Villalba, X. (2007). La dislocaciĂł a la dreta en catalĂ i castellĂ : microvariaciĂł en la interfĂcie sintaxi/pragmĂ tica. Caplletra, 42(Primavera 2007), 53–68.
Planas-Morales, S., & Villalba, X. (2007). Protocolo de análisis fonĂ©tico-acĂşstico para la prevenciĂłn y evaluaciĂłn de la disfonĂa en docentes. In M. González, E. Fernández, & B. González (Eds.), III Congreso internacional de fonĂ©tica experimental (pp. 501–512). Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia.
Bartra-Kaufmann, A., & Villalba, X. (2006). Spanish non-Agreeing Quantificational Nominals. In L. Brugè (Ed.), Studies in Spanish Syntax (pp. 15–46). Venezia: Libreria Editrice Ca Foscarina.
Villalba, X. (2004). Les combinacions lexiques i el sentit figurat. In T. CabrĂ© (Ed.), LingĂĽĂstica Teòrica: anĂ lisi i perspectives,I (pp. 67–74).
Villalba, X. (2004). Exclamatives and negation. Report de recerca, Grup de Gramatica Teorica (Vol. 33). Bellaterra.
Bartra-Kaufmann, A., & Villalba, X. (2004). Agreement and predicate inversion in Spanish DP. In J. Doetjes & P. González (Eds.), Romance language and linguistic theory 2004 (pp. 23–41). John Benjamins.
Villalba, X. (2004). DescripciĂł i norma: amb i el canvi de preposiciĂł. Llengua & Literatura, 15, 257-276.
Villalba, X. (2004). Reseña de Longa, Victor M. Homo loquens. The Biology and Evolution of Language. Verba, 31, 489–493.
Villalba, X. (2003). An exceptional exclamative sentence-type in Romance. Lingua, 113, 713–745. doi:10.1016/S0024-3841(02)00117-1.
Villalba, X. (2002). La subordinació. In J. Solà , M. R. Lloret, J. Mascaró, & M. Pérez-Saldanya (Eds.), Gramà tica del català contemporani (Vol. 3, pp. 2247–2319). Barcelona: Empúries.
Villalba, X. (2002). Dos tipus d’oracions exclamatives en català . Els Marges: revista de llengua i literatura, 69(69), 83–93.
Villalba, X. (2002). Boundaries of Morphology and Syntax by Lunella Mereu Ed. Language, 78(4), 791–792.
Villalba, X. (2002). Review of: the categories of grammar: French LUI and LE. Language, 78(4), 792–793.
Villalba, X. (2002). Review of: the higher functional field evidence from Northern Italian dialects. Language, 78, 370.
Villalba, X. (2001). The Right Edge of Exclamative Sentences in Catalan. CatWPL, 9, 119–135.
Villalba, X. (2000). La terminologia lingĂĽĂstica en catalĂ . Revista de Catalunya, 147, 104–118.
Villalba, X. (2000). The syntax of sentence periphery. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Villalba, X. (1999). Symmetry and Antisymmetry in Syntax. Syntaxis: An International Journal of Syntactic Research, 2, 1–25.
Villalba, X. (1999). Nihil Est in LF Quod Prius Non Fuerit in SS. Catalan Working Papers in Linguistics, 7, 239–252.
Villalba, X. (1998). Right Dislocation is not right dislocation. In O. Fullana & F. Roca (Eds.), Studies on the Syntax of Central Romance Languages (pp. 227–241). Girona: Universitat de Girona.
Villalba, X. (1997). Diccionari de Neologismes. Revista de Catalunya, 123, 146–148.
Villalba, X. (1997). Sintaxi fonamental. Les categories gramaticals per Maria Josep Cuenca. Revista de Catalunya, 115, 162–165.
Villalba, X. (1996). Sobre la dislocació a la dreta. Llengua & Literatura, 7, 209–234.
Villalba, X. (1995). Los invariantes acústicos y el punto de articulación de las oclusivas en español: una revisión de Lahiri, Gewirth y Blumstein (1984). Estudios de Fonética Experimental VII, 7, 75–83.
MartĂnez-Celdrán, E., & Villalba, X. (1995). Las ecuaciones de locus y el punto de articulaciĂłn en español. Estudios de fonĂ©tica experimental, 7, 85–109.
Villalba, X. (1995). A Minimalist Approach to Cliticization. In A. Bisetti (Ed.), ConSole III Proceedings (pp. 293–305). Venice: Università degli Studi di Venezia.
MartĂnez-Celdrán, E., & Villalba, X. (1995). Locus Equations as a Metrics for Place of Articulation in Automatic Speech Recognition. In K. Elenius & P. Branderund (Eds.), Proceedings of the {XIIIth} International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (Vol. 1, pp. 30–33). Stockholm: Stockholms Universiteit and KTH.
Villalba, X. (1994). Minimal case constructions. The distribution of pronominal clitics in Romance causative constructions. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Villalba, X. (1994). Clitic Climbing in Causative Constructions. In R. Eckhardt & V. Van Geehoven (Eds.), ConSole 2 Proceedings (Vol. 3.2, pp. 298–307). Den Haag: Holland Academic Graphic.
Villalba, X. (1993). Les construccions causatives en catalĂ . Universitat de Barcelona.
Villalba, X. (1993). Incorporation, Case and Economy: A Principled Approach to Causative Constructions. In P. Ackema & M. Schorlemmer (Eds.), ConSole 1 Proceedings (pp. 335–349). The Hague: Holland Academic Graphic.
Villalba, X. (1992). Case, Incorporation, and Economy: An Approach to Causative Constructions. Catalan Working Papers in Linguistics, 2, 345–389.