Acknowledgements

My foremost thanks go to my mentors, Luigi Rizzi and Adriana Belletti. My journey to the Left Periphery started in Siena when I was a master’s student. I say grazie to them for these wonderful years in Geneva working under the European Research Council Advanced Grant 340297 (“SynCart”), which supported my doctoral studies at the University of Geneva and this research. Grazie to Giuliano Bocci for his valuable and constructive suggestions and teachings.

A special 非常感谢goes to professor Fuzhen Si (司富珍) and President Li Liu (刘利). I am extremely honoured to be part of the new-born Department of Linguistics at the Beijing Language and Culture University (北京语言大学).

I would also like to say הדות to Ur Shlonsky for his help and the beautiful conversations about linguistic and non-linguistic subjects. I am thankful for the members of the jury of my PhD dissertation who honoured me to discussed this work: grazie Cecilia Poletto, danke Elisabeth Stark and Eric Haeberli.

I gratefully acknowledge all the people of the Départment de Lingustique in Geneva with whom I discussed my (probably still ongoing) work: Lena Baunaz, Caterina Bonan Karoliina Lohiniva, Karen Martini, Paola Merlo, Genoveva Puskás, Bahareh Samimi, Richard Zimmermann inter alia. A special köszönöm goes to Eva Capitao. Thank you to my proof-reader Benjamin Lowell Sluckin and his useful comments. I am devoted to Guglielmo Cinque and Liliane Haegeman, whose work turned out to be inspirational to me. Grazie to Stanislao Zompí and Paolo Lorusso for bearing both _+Colleague and _+Friend features.

Danke to my Zürich group of informants and friends: David Gerards, Franziska Stuntebeck, Daniela Casartelli. A dankie, tack, tak, takk, to all my informants during these years: Theresa Biberauer, Verner Egerland, Marit Westergaard, Gísli Rúnar Harðarson. I would also like to thank meine Göttinger Sieben, though they are not seven: Michael Job, who introduced me to Generative Grammar when I was an Erasmus student in Göttingen, Klaas Römer and Jan Martin Porcher for their help whenever I had questions about German. Engraziel to Renzo Caduff and his support with the data in Swiss Romansh.

Thanks to Kofi, Gianni, Jan, John, Mary and all the fictional characters from linguistic examples. Finally, my heartfelt thanks to my family and my wife.