[1] Cristofaro studied for an MA in linguistics at the University of Pavia, graduating in 1993.
She is currently full professor of linguistics in the Faculty of Letters at the Sorbonne University.
[1] Cristofaro is well known for her work on linguistic subordination; her 2003 monograph on the topic has been cited over a thousand times.
[4] In the volume, Cristofaro departs from traditional approaches by adopting a non-structural definition of subordination, characterized in terms of a cognitive asymmetry between two states of affairs; she also establishes a number of implicational hierarchies for subordination types.
Her more recent work has focused on the extent to which linguistic universals and typological generalizations can be explained diachronically, in terms of common patterns of language change such as grammaticalization.