Sara Petrollino
University Lecturer
- Name
- Dr. S. Petrollino
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 3069
- s.petrollino@hum.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0001-7037-5762
Sara Petrollino is a University Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. She is an anthropological linguist specialised in languages and cultures of East Africa. She studies the relationship between language, culture and cognition, so how do the languages we speak and the cultures we live in affect our cognition, and our worldviews? She has been working for more than 10 years with the Hamar pastoralists, and other ethnic groups of South West Ethiopia.
More information about Sara Petrollino
News
PhD candidates
Fields of interest
- Anthropological linguistics
- African linguistics
Research
I am a linguist specialised in anthropological linguistics and African languages. I am fascinated by questions related to linguistic relativity and the role played by language and culture in shaping worldviews and affecting cognition. My research takes place at the intersection of linguistics and anthropology, and as such it is based on traditional ethnographic methods and long-term fieldwork among communities in East Africa. In the last decade I have carried out most of my research among the Hamar pastoralists of South-West Ethiopia, and I have been studying their language and their linguistic and cultural practices.
Grants and awards
Memberships and other
I am on the exectutive boards of the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Afrikastudies/Dutch Association for Africa Studies (NVAS), The Omo Valley Research project, on the editorial board of Language Sciences (Elsevier), and I am co-editor of the Journal of African Languages and Linguistics (De Gruyter).
PhD supervision
Besides supervising PhD candidates at LUCL, I am also in the PhD committee for the PhD candidate Frank Onuh at the University of Lethbridge (2024-2026), Canada. Thesis title: Epistemic Alienation and the (Un)making of Truth: An interrogation of Language, Power and Patronage in Africa.
University Lecturer
- Faculty of Humanities
- Leiden Univ Centre for Linguistics
- LUCL T&C van Afrika
- Petrollino S. (2024), Herding games and socialisation into pastoral linguacultural practices, Journal of African Cultural Studies : 1-25.
- Sanders E., Petrollino S., Scheifer G. F., Heuvel H. van den. & Handy C. (2024), FAIRification of LeiLanD. Calzolari N., Kan M., Hoste V., Lenci A., Sakti S. & Xue N. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024). Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024) 20 May 2024 - 25 May 2024. Torino: ELRA and ICCL. 7101–7106.
- Petrollino S. & Sam-Sin F., Color me cattle: embracing the Hamar worldview. Things That Talk. Leiden: Things That Talk foundation. [blog entry].
- Petrollino S. (2023), Chapter 40: Hamar. In: Meyer R., Wakjira B. & Leyew Z. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Ethiopian languages. Oxford Handbooks Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Petrollino S. (2023), ‘Father of the spotted cow’: Hamar titles and their connection to cattle appearance. In: Ndlovu S. (Ed.), Personal names and naming from an anthropological-linguistic perspective: De Gruyter Mouton.
- Petrollino S. (2023), Hamar narratives. [dataset].
- Petrollino S. (2021), The Hamar cattle model: the semantics of appearance in a pastoral linguaculture, Language Sciences 89: 101448.
- Petrollino S. (2020), Cattle appearance: stimuli and tasks: OSF. [dataset].
- Wal G.J. van der, Smits H.J., Petrollino S., Nyst V.A.S. & Kossmann M.G. (Eds.) (2020), Essays on African languages and linguistics : in honour of Maarten Mous. ASC occasional publication no. 41. Leiden: African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL).
- Petrollino S. (2019), Existential predication in Hamar, Nordic Journal of African Studies 28(4): 1-27.
- Petrollino S. (2018), Between Tone and Stress in Hamar. In: Clem E., Jenks P. & Sande H. (Eds.), Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Contemporary African Linguistics. Berlin: Language Science Press.
- Petrollino S. (2018), Recent publications in African linguistics, Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 39(1): 121-124.
- Petrollino S. (10 November 2016), A grammar of Hamar : a South Omotic language of Ethiopia (Dissertatie. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Humanities, Leiden University) Cushitic and Omotic Studies no. 6. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Supervisor(s): Mous M.P.G.M. & Philippson G.
- Petrollino S. (2016), Between tone and stress in Hamar. 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics University of California, Berkeley, March 23-26, 2016. .
- Manfredi S. & Petrollino S. (2013), Juba Arabic. In: Michaelis S., Maurer P., Haspelmath M. & Huber M. (Eds.), The Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Manfredi S. & Petrollino S. (2012), Juba Arabic language structure dataset. In: Michaelis S., Maurer P., Haspelmath M. & Huber M. (Eds.), Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- Cupi L., Petrollino S., Savá G. & Tosco M. (2012), Preliminary notes on the Hamar verb. In: Marie-Claude S.S. & Vanhove M. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Cushitic and Omotic Languages. Köln:: Rüdiger Köppe. 181-195.
- Petrollino S. & Mous M.P.G.M. (2010), Recollecting Words and Expressions in Aasá, a Dead Language in Tanzania, Anthropological Linguistics 52(2): 206-216.