Open to different theoretical approaches, L’Italia dialettale publishes works on all aspects of the language (phonology, phonetics, morphology, syntax, without neglecting lexicography and etymological research), and is considered an ideal "bridge" between the more dialectological studies and those of Italian linguistics, without excluding, in recent times, theoretical reflections of a sociolinguistic nature.
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Stefano Cristelli (2023), "Antichi testi trentini", Edizione, commento linguistico e glossario, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura («Chartae Vulgares Antiquiores. Quaderni», 8), pp. XXX, 437.
Recensione a: Stefano Cristelli (2023), "Antichi testi trentini", Edizione, commento linguistico e glossario, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura («Chartae Vulgares Antiquiores. Quaderni», 8), pp. XXX, 437.
Valency alternations in northern Calabrian: between direct causation, applicative derivation,and lability
This study addresses the question of valency alternations in Northern Calabrian, independently of and beyond the expression of (either directional or non-directional) motion, with the twofold aim of: I) identifying the principles governing the transitivisation of intransitive verbs, independently of motion components, and providing a unitary model for the interpretation of the valency alternations of various classes of verbs; II) explaining the relationship between Northern Calabrian transitivising processes and other patterns of valency alterations typologically well-known, on functional and formal grounds, and, in particular, in relation to both the expression of causation and applicative derivation, as well as in relation to labile oppositions. The investigations reported here were conducted on the dialectal and regional varieties spoken in Cosenza, Paola, San Fili, Rende, Lorica, Aprigliano, Rogliano e Scigliano. The results of this study show that: I) a unitary model can account for the valency alternations of verbs belonging to different classes, in all the examined varieties; II) the principles underlying this model operate independently of the expression of motion, rely on the contrast between the semantic role of the object of the transitive construction and its degree of agentivity, and are actualised withing the encoding schema of either direct causative or applicative, depending on the semantic properties of the verb: specifically, on the presence vs. absence of the representation of a change of state/ location; III) the original data examined here provide a fundamental contribution to the comprehension of the typology of labile opposition and to the definition of their variety.
The analysis of certain dialect variants allows us to reconstruct an ancient linguistic influence from Provence (and a later one from Iberia) on Genoa.
The contribution examines a rare Venetian term, zuliana, which occurs in some Renaissance period texts with different meanings (‘cruel woman’; ‘physical or mental illness’), and attempts to give a unified historical-ethimological explanation by referring to the names of supernatural beings based on the Latin diana.
Imperfect phraseological calques, semi-calques, and hybrids from Italian in the Albanianlanguage
This paper follows up on the study of perfect phraseological calques in the Albanian language inspired by models from the Italian language by examining other categories of phraseological calques. The diverse linguistic tradition of the two languages under comparison sometimes requires the use of implementation strategies of adaptation in the receiving language, resulting in imperfect phraseological calques, semi-calques and hybrids. The category of imperfect phraseological calques, which is itself further differentiated, is numerically inferior but more articulate than the perfect phraseological calques and is very productive within the calque phenomenon; the rendition of the models with phraseological semi-calques are contemplated but sparsely adopted; the phraseological hybrids that have been detected constitute sparse cases. Repeated interference from Italian occurs in a bilingual environment and suggests the enucleation of a new type of calque, not in use in the source language; the categorial definition of the neologism is determined by the semantics of the loan involved in the replication (loan → phraseological calque with loan). The main sources of neologisms' findings are monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, but especially the media. Referring to the latest edition of the official dictionary in use (2006), many of the analyzed entries do not find acceptance in the standard; their stabilization in use will be manifest with the publication of the updated version of the dictionary under consideration.
In the ongoing projects focused on gastronomic lexicon, the vocabulary of wine is still very limited, and there is no reference repertoire, even partial, yet. This paper examines the wine denominations mentioned in Neapolitan literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and confirms their progression through the use of them in nineteenth-century dialect vocabularies from the same area and in sources of diverse nature, even outside the region. This study reviews the state of research, highlights historical and linguistic concerns that are still not resolved, and proposes innovative ideas regarding etymology. The constant comparison between old documentation and the nineteenth century lexicographical tradition allows one to trace the semantic history of words, considering their persistence, survival, diffusion, their loss of vitality, their obsolescence, and their diffusion in other dialects and in the Italian language. This paper is connected to a 2022 precedent work that focuses on food names in Neapolitan dialect lexicography.
An etymological proposal for “mascarpone” and “mascarpa”
The article summarizes and discusses the seven proposals made so far regarding the etymon of the Lombard word “mascarpa” and its derivative “mascarpone”. Since none of these proposals is satisfactory, a further hypothesis is advanced, that the word “mascarpa” may trace back to the pre-Latin base *mas-kar-ap-.
A hundred yars of studies on Sardinian in L’Italia Dialettale: insights, updates and an in-depth analysis of the verbal morphology of some central Sardinian varietie
This article firstly provides a brief excursus into the papers on the Sardinian language published in the journal L'Italia Dialettale (ID) in one hundred years of activity; in the second, more substantial part, taking inspiration from the fundamental essay by Max Leopold Wagner on the verbal and nominal morphology of Sardinian published in ID 14-15 (1938-1939), the organisation of the paradigms of some high-frequency verbs characterised by stem polymorphism or stem suppletivism is re-examined in the light of some new data from central Sardinia (Barbagia di Ollolai and Nuoro, Alto-Oristano). In some cases the ‘regularisation’ strategies follow the L-morphomic pattern (see Aronoff 1994 and Maiden 2011, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021) but we find different solutions depending on the language variety under consideration.
Clemente Merlo and the dialects of Apulia
The dialects of Apulia hold a prominent place in Clemente Merlo’s scholarly production. Even before he founded L’Italia Dialettale, he dedicated a number of articles to them, which broke the ground for modern scientific studies on the dialect varieties of the region. This had previously received little attention, so that Merlo’s works mark a clear discontinuity. The article evaluates them by first placing them within the broader framework of C. Merlo’s oeuvre and then, after such a historiographical framing, goes on to illustrate with selected examples the impact these studies had on further research in Italian and Romance linguistics.
The cult of objectivity is the distintive mark of Clemente Merlo’s work both from the formal point of view through the systematic application of phonetic laws and from the semantic one thanks to his numeous onomasiologic studies devoted to the lexicon. Among these we have chosen two samples, where the solution sketched by him is fully developed untill the final result. The first one is the case of rugio/rugia ‘mote’, that is traced back to the root *rusk- ‘protruding and prickly vegetable’ according to the sequence *ruskyo > ruscio > rugio with the motivation of a fleck entering into the eye from outside. The second case is represented by the pair appitto vs. spitto, spread through the provinces of Perugia, Arezzo and Siena and refers to the entire piece of money opposed to the change; the exact parallelism with the pair appiccio vs. spiccio, having an indentical meaning, confirms the interpretation of appitto vs. spitto as zero-forms of the past participles of appiccare vs. spiccare.
‘Vajiti e facitimi u piaciri’: morphosyntactic and pragmatic reflections on an imperativein Extreme Southern Italian dialects
This study examines the form vajiti, attested in Extreme Southern Italian dialects as the second-person plural imperative of the verb “to go”, resulting from the univerbation of the second-person singular va and the second-person plural jiti. The analysis shows that vajiti originates from a pseudo-coordination structure, in which va undergoes progressive grammaticalization to the point of losing its lexical meaning. While in some cases the unit retains a fully verbal use, in others the grammaticalization process allows vajiti to develop new functions, including that of a directive marker – characteristic of pseudo-coordinated constructions – and that of a pragmaticalized interjection. This study provides a typological and comparative framework, highlighting analogous phenomena in other Romance and non-Romance languages and outlining a functional continuum ranging from a full verb to a directive marker and ultimately to an interjection.
Inflectional morphology of the verbal system in the dialect of Francavilla in Sinni
This paper explores the inflectional morphology of the verbal system in the dialect of Francavilla in Sinni. Given the collocation of this dialect in the Lausberg area (Lausberg 1939), we will analyze the preservation of some typical archaisms, such as the outcomes of the Latin endings -S and -T. Nevertheless, the aforementioned archaisms are somehow intertwined with elements which show external influence. As a matter of fact, in Francavilla there are no traces of the Latin third person ending -T, whereas the outcomes of -S co-occur, as far as the -i conjugation is concerned, with the metaphonetic diphtongization – which is not canonically ‘metaphonetic’ (on this topic, see also Del Puente 2014). Besides this, we will deal with some instances of morphological exaptation of former phonetic changes, such as the velar insertions (Fanciullo 1998) of /-k-/ and /-g-/ and the unusual ending in /-lə/ in some paradigm cells of the imperfect. At a more general level, it is worth noticing that the loss of the Latin perfectum produces a correspondence that aligns synthetic verbal forms with imperfective aspect, on the one hand, and analytical verbal forms with perfective aspect, on the other hand. The data which stand out from the dialect of Francavilla may represent an interesting case study of the way phonetic change may affect an entire paradigm. Such important changes could go unseen if we focused only on the archaic aspects of this dialectal area.
Prosody and Syntactic Doubling in Sequences with (Double) Enclisis in Italian Dialect
The article «Prosodie et Raddoppiamento Sintattico dans les séquences à (double) enclise dans les dialectes italiens» delves into the intricate relationship between accent placement, syllabic weight, and the phenomenon of Syntactic Doubling in Italo-Romance dialects. In these dialects, a unique prosodic constraint known as the three-morae constraint governs the placement of stress, ensuring that the stress does not precede the third mora from the word's end. The author explores how in the context of verbal commands with clitics, the stress can shift and trigger consonantal doubling in the second clitic. This constraint crucially influences the phonological process known as Raddoppiamento Sintattico (RS), where the initial consonant of the second clitic undergoes gemination. This gemination is phonologically triggered by the displaced accent, which is sensitive to the syllabic weight, marking a significant aspect of Italo-Romance phonetics and phonology. The article analyzes this interaction through both diachronic and synchronic lenses, providing a robust framework for understanding the quantitative strategies of accentuation in these dialects, shaped by historical linguistic patterns derived from Latin.
New etymological proposal, which links It. bàita ‘made of braided wood, temporary building’, which is normally considered to be pre-Latin term or slang term of Hebrew origin, and It. béttola ‘tavern of the lowest order’ (normally considered to be *bevéttola, < bere ‘to drink’) but also (e.g., in Genoa: béttoa) ‘sort of boat’ – what suggests béttola < bàita + -́ola. The new proposal takes bàita and béttola back to German *bastjan ‘to braid (at first with bast, then with wood etc.)’, from which e.g. It. bastimento ‘ship, vessel’ and French bâtiment ‘building’.
Alione's language and the contemporary Piedmontese dialects: historical and geographical variation
The article aims to descrivere, at several levels of analysis, the sixteenth-century Asti dialect that emerges from Giovan Giorgio Alione's Opera Jocunda (Asti, 1521) and to compare it to current Piedmontese dialects, mainly from a historical change perspective. This is followed by an analysis of the other dialects that are imitated within the Opera Jocunda, namely the Monferrat dialect and the western Piedmontese dialect of a female servant, which is not better identified. On the basis of the data collected and thanks to comparative linguistic analysis, it has been observed that many aspects of the geographical variation of that time still persist today: many features that are typical of the Lower Monferrato dialects today also characterized them in the 16th century. On the contrary, a more significant change seems to have occurred in western Piedmont: on the basis of the available historical evidence, it has been hypothesized that the variety imitated by Alione is the dialect of Turin, which changed very significantly in the following centuries.
Generational model of return emigration: returned generation, migrated generation, generation zero
This paper offers an interpretative model of return migrations, based both on the socialization of migrants and on the shape of their linguistic repertoire. The case study is offered by returns to Irpinia from the English cities of Bedford and Peterborough. The results of the survey highlight the difference between members of the returning generation and those who were born in England and moved to Irpinia as adults. On a linguistic level, in particular, the former are dominant in dialect, the latter in English. On a cultural level, the former return to the place where they were born, the latter move to a country that is in many ways unknown.
The lexicography of Grico in Terra d'Otranto. A century-long history
The work traces the more than 100-year history of the lexicography of Grico, from its origins in the early twentieth century (Pasquale Lefons and Mauro Cassoni) through the gigantic figure of Gerhard Rohlfs, author of a series of lexicographical masterpieces, to the post-Rohlfsian achievements (especially Karanastasis) and the more recent ones, now in the twenty-first century.
A XV Century’s Vernacular-Latin Glossary (Terencian) from Lombardy. Edition and Linguistic Analysis
This paper offers the edition and linguistic analysis of a vernacular-Latin glossary of words, expressions, and sentences coming from Terence’s work. The vernacular language of the glossary pertains to the Lombard area, and particularly to the eastern part.
Lingue naturali, lingue inventate. Atti della Giornata di Studi (Trento, 29 novembre 2019), a cura di Serenella Baggio, Pietro Taravacci. Alessandria, Edizioni dell’Orso 2020. Niccolò Tommaseo, Canti Corsi, a cura di Annalisa Nesi, Milano, Fondazione Pietro Bembo - Ugo Guanda Editore, 2020.
Intonation of wh-questions in the dialect of Monopoli (Bari)
The prosodic study of Italian and its varieties has received extensive research, but the intonation of Italian dialects remains one of the least investigated areas. The study aims to analyse the intonation of wh-questions in Italian and the dialect of Monopoli, a town located on the Adriatic side of Apulia. Currently, there are no available prosodic studies for this dialect. To achieve this, an experimental procedure was used. The corpus included 315 wh-questions and a control sample of 360 declaratives and polar questions. The target sentences were produced by six informants from Monopoli during a controlled task. The sentences were annotated using ToBI and analysed phonetically and phonologically. Upon comparison, it is revealed that wh-questions produced in the local dialect show particular rhythmic-accentual patterns, determined by a different order of constituents or the frequent presence of final truncated words, which influence their intonation contours. In this dialect, the wh- questions have a higher percentage of rising final contours (H%) compared to the questions produced in local Italian. However, the nuclear pitch accent does not differ, as it is rising (L+H*) in both varieties. In contrast, the intonation of wh-questions differs from both declaratives, typically falling (H+L*L%) and polar questions, in this case by a different boundary tone.
Two etymological proposals (It. stantuffo; trabucco)
New etymological proposals for Italian words stantuffo ‘piston’ and trabucco ‘war machine’ (> ‘peaceful tool to measurefields’).
About the formation of the Divina Commedia language
Dante’s language is defined here as the “romanic” neo-Latin of peninsular Italy permeated by the northitalian “italo-romance” neo-Latin. It originates following the colonization in the 12th century of the Badia Fiorentina by Milan's Cistercian monks, which introduced characters of the “romance” idiom (i.e., western neo-Latin) into clerical Latin and then into the vernacular of Florence, subsequently enriched (e.g. with the romance diphthong iè, uò) by the economic influence of the wealthy Po Valley.
Which Latin gave rise to the Romance Languages?
Some reflections on the relations among Latin, Vulgärlatein and Romance Languages, starting with: a) some phenomenons of consonantal attuning (inside the word or at the border between word and word), which are suggested by uncontrolled Latin writings (e.g., Pompeian inscriptions) and seem to anticipate Romance conditions; b) some cases of “submerged” Latin lexicon, which are suggested by some Romance continuers.
For an evolutionary lexical morphology of Sicilian
This paper presents the first results of a research on the analysis of the word formation of Sicilian from a historical-diachronic perspective. To this end, the study started from the observation of the word formation processes of Sicilian from the consultation of the Vocabolario storico-etimologico del siciliano (VSES) by Alberto Varvaro (2014). The investigation made it possible to distinguish within the historically highly stratified Sicilian lexicon (selecting them among the structurally complex words): heritage lexemes, derived directly from Latin and in Latin already formed, exogenous lexemes, morphologically analyzable already in the source language, and Sicilian neoformations. To the present speaker, complex heritage lexemes and complex exogenous lexemes may appear, in some cases, transparent - where the internal structure is recognizable - and therefore examinable by 'Rules of Formation’, in other cases, semi-transparent or opaque, and therefore examinable by 'Rules of Analysis'; neoformations, on the other hand, are always perfectly transparent, and therefore examinable by 'Rules of Formation'. Taking into account the typology of the corpus under analysis (the entries of a dictionary) that allows the calculation of the frequency of abstract forms (lexemes), the type frequency (or numerosity) of affixes and formative patterns is focused on in the contribution. Finally, through morphological analysis some etymological data are discussed and reinterpreted with more satisfactory etymologies.
Etymological explanation for four words from north-eastern Italo-Romance (Istrian: 1. nafo ‘sort of ladle’; 2. poto ‘small pot’; 3. pòdena ‘bowl’; 4. catoro ‘small hut for keeping tools’).
The sociolinguistic paradox of the Bovese Romance: new lexical data
The paper examines some lexical Grecisms in Southern Calabria, not attested within Bovesìa - the area where Greek still survives - but only outside it. The oddity of such a geographical distribution, along with historical documentation relating to these areas, provides further evidence for reconstructing mono-community bilingualism in the extra-Bovesìa centers, and bi-community bilingualism in intra-Bovesìa villages.
extreme Southern Italo-Romance varieties
At Origin of Giuseppe Boerio’s Dizionario del dialetto veneziano (1821, 1829)
The article analyzes the “Discorso preliminare” that opens Giuseppe Boerio’s Dizionario del dialetto veneziano. It shows the debts to some writings of Daniele Manin, the Boerio’s intention to assert the primacy of his Dizionario and the influence of Cesarotti’s theories. It subsequently examines the “Indice degli autori e de’ libri consultati per l’opera presente”. Through the analysis of the brief table of citations, it investigates the linguistic criteria of Boerio’s Dizionario and it highlights the close correlation with the Vocabolario Veneziano e Padovano by the abbot Gasparo Patriarchi and with Francesco Alberti di Villanova’s Dizionario universale. It also reflects the support provided by Manin to Boerio and it marks out the development of the “Appendice” and the “Indice italiano-veneto”. It finally heeds the existence of an autographed copy of the Dizionario, dated 1821 and now preserved in Bassano del Grappa, showing the structure, Boerio’s numerous interventions, and its relationship with the 1829 edition of the Dizionario are described.
This paper provides a review of the evidence of the word ordo and the expression sapere ordo, attested in documentation in Vulgar Italian from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, mainly related to a delimited area between Tuscany and Umbria, and today surviving only in some dialects of the same border area, as witnessed by several dialectal vocabularies. The suggested analysis discusses their origin, their relations with other Romance languages and tries to explain some apparently more singular variants.
Prosthesis in sC clusters: diatopic variation in Medieval Sardinian documents
Prosthesis before s- + consonant (sC) clusters has been attested in Sardinia since the 5th century Latin inscriptions. The modern language, however, displays a sharp split between Campidanese and Logudorese varieties. The Central-Northern area is characterized by unconditioned prosthesis, whereas in the Southern area, prosthesis is context-dependent. The origins of the phenomenon, however, are unclear: since Wagner (1941), it has been hypothesized an original unconditioned prosthesis in Medieval Sardinian, that would have then been eliminated in Campidanese under the influence of Tuscan varieties. In order to shed light on this debated issue, we examined the context for the application of the prosthesis in Medieval Sardinian documents. The results seem to hint at an unconditioned prosthesis in the Logudorese area; in Campidanese, the phenomenon seems to have been context-dependent, with a significantly higher incidence of prosthesis in strong positions.