Carla Bombi
carla.bombi@uni-potsdam.deUniversity of Potsdam
Linguistics Department
Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25
House 14, room 3.22
I am a research associate in semantics at the University of Potsdam (PhD position, supervisor: Malte Zimmermann). My main research project is on demonstratives in Spanish and Italian — in particular, on how "defective" demonstratives in these languages can inform a more general theory of indexical expressions. I am also studying definiteness in the Asante Twi dialect of Akan, a language spoken in Ghana.
Another interest are concealed questions and headless relative clauses (in Romance and Akan). Previously, I was a memeber of the experimental project Exhaustiveness in embedded questions (ExQ).
Beyond my academic training, I have experience in language education (Spanish, German, and English), which was my primary profession between 2019 and 2024.
| 2024 – now 2017 – 2019 | Research associate (PhD position), University of Potsdam (Germany) |
| 2014 – 2017 | MSc Linguistics, University of Potsdam (Germany) |
| 2011 – 2014 | BA Linguistics, University of Cambridge (UK) |
Bombi, Carla & Jeanne Lecavelier. To appear. Embedding definites instead of questions: The case of Spanish and French. In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 29.
Bombi, Carla, Mira Grubic, Agata Renans & Reginald A. Duah. 2019. The semantics of the (so-called) clausal determiner nó in Akan (Kwa). In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 23, vol. 1, 181–199.
Bombi, Carla. 2018. Definiteness in Akan: Familiarity and uniqueness revisited. In Proceedings of SALT 28, 120–140.
Benz, Anton, Carla Bombi and Nicole Gotzner. 2018. Scalar diversity and negative strengthening. In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22, 191–203.
2025
Bombi, Carla and Adom Mac-Arthur. Quasi-names in Akan: New fieldwork on definite bare nouns. Poster at 34th CGG, May 7 – 9, 2025, UNED, Madrid (Spain)
Bombi, Carla and Giuseppe Varaschin. Definite headless RCs in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Talk at 34th CGG, May 7 – 9, 2025, UNED, Madrid (Spain)
Bombi, Carla and Jeanne Lecavelier. Embedded questions in Romance: Nominal, not clausal. Poster at GLOW 47, March 25 – 27, 2025, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt (Germany)
Bombi, Carla. Demonstrative inferences: A closer look at antiuniqueness. Invited talk at ZAS Semantics Circle, January 31, 2025, Berlin (ZAS)
2024
Bombi, Carla and Jeanne Lecavelier. When Spanish and French embed definites instead of questions. Talk at Going Romance 38, December 4 – 6, 2024, Braga (Portugal)
Bombi, Carla and Adom Mac-Arthur. Quasi-names in Akan. Talk at Workshop on Special Definites, Demonstratives and Pronouns, November 15 – 16, 2024, Bucharest (Romania)
Bombi, Carla and Jeanne Lecavelier. Definite constructions as questions. Talk at Sinfonija 17, September 26 – 28, 2024, Nova Gorica (Slovenia)
Bombi, Carla and Jeanne Lecavelier. Embedding definites instead of questions: The case of Spanish and French. Talk at Sinn und Bedeutung 29, September 17, 2024, Noto (Italy)
Bombi, Carla and Adom Mac-Arthur. Definite bare nouns in Akan: The quasi-name option. Talk at 6th Definiteness Network Meeting, September 2 – 3, 2024, Berlin (Germany)
2023
Bombi, Carla. Decomposing demonstratives: Pre- and postnominal that in Spanish. Talk at Workshop Issues in the syntax and semantics of definiteness, December 8 – 9, 2023, Bucharest (University of Bucharest)
Bombi, Carla. Before and after the noun: Semantics for Spanish possessives and demonstratives. Talk at Going Romance 37, November 30 – December 1, 2023, Nijmegen (Radboud Universiteit)
2021
Bombi, Carla. Semantics of el … este: Leaner demonstratives in Spanish. Talk 30th Colloquium on Generative Grammar (CGG), June 30 – July 2, 2021, Barcelona (UAB)
2020
Fricke, Lea, Carla Bombi, Dominique Blok and Malte Zimmermann. The pragmatic status of strong exhaustive readings of embedded questions. Talk at 42nd Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), March 4–6, 2020, Hamburg
2019
Fricke, Lea, Carla Bombi, Malte Zimmermann and Edgar Onea. New evidence for intermediate exhaustive readings of wh-questions. Talk at XPRAG.it 2019, September 19 – 20, 2019, Cagliari
2018
Bombi, Carla, Mira Grubic, Agata Renans and Reggie Duah. The semantics of the clausal determiner nó in Akan (Kwa). Talk at Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB) 23, September 5 – 8, 2018, Barcelona
Bombi, Carla, Mira Grubic, Agata Renans and Reggie Duah. Clausal determiners in Akan (Kwa). Talk at The Semantics of African, Asian, and Austronesian Languages (TripleA) 5, June 27 – 29, 2018, Konstanz
Bombi, Carla. Definiteness in Akan (Kwa): Familiarity and uniqueness revisited.Poster at Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 28, May 18 – 20, 2018, MIT
Fricke, Lea, Carla Bombi, Edgar Onea, and Malte Zimmermann. Exhaustivity of wh-interrogatives embedded under German wissen 'know'. Talk 19th Szklarska Poreba Workshop, February 23 – 26, 2018, Szklarska Poreba (Poland)
Bombi, Carla and Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss. Quantitative data in the field: A case study on Akan. Poster at Linguistic Evidence 2018, February 15 – 17, 2018, Tübingen
2017
Benz, Anton, Carla Bombi and Nicole Gotzner. Scalar diversity and negative strengthening. Talk Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB) 22, September 7 – 10, 2017, Potsdam
Bombi, C. 2017. Definiteness in Akan. Master's thesis, University of Potsdam.
| 2023 – 2024 | Associate member of the research network Definiteness across domains |
| 2019 – 2023 | Editor (with Radek Šimík) of the special collection Definiteness and referentiality at Glossa |
| 2019 | Co-organizer (with Radek Šimík) of the workshop Sorting out the concepts behind definiteness (41st Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society/DGfS, Bremen, 2019) |