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Piera Molinelli (Ed.) Language and Identity in Multilingual Mediterranean Settings
Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs
Editor Volker Gast Editorial Board Walter Bisang Jan Terje Faarlund Hans Henrich Hock Natalia Levshina Heiko Narrog Matthias Schlesewsky Amir Zeldes Niina Ning Zhang Editor responsible for this volume Volker Gast
Volume 310
Language and Identity in Multilingual Mediterranean Settings Challenges for Historical Sociolinguistics Edited by Piera Molinelli
ISBN 978-3-11-055245-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-055427-4 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-055259-1 ISSN 1861-4302 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. 6 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: RoyalStandard, Hong Kong Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com
Acknowledgments This book constitutes the outcome of the PRIN National Project Linguistic Representations of Identity. Sociolinguistic Models and Historical Linguistics, coordinated by Piera Molinelli at the University of Bergamo (PRIN 2010 Project, prot. 2010 HXPFF2_001) and funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research. Seven Italian Research Units took part in the Project at the Universities of Bergamo, Cagliari, Pescara, Pisa, Roma Sapienza, Siena Stranieri and Viterbo. This research group was made up of more than fifty people who worked together fruitfully for three years. Preliminary data and results have been presented by different project members at six international conferences or workshops organized by different research units and held in Cagliari (April 2014), Pescara (May 2014), Siena (June 2014), Rome (September 2014), Como (October 2014), and Pisa (February 2015). A seventh conference held in Bergamo (September 28–30, 2015) concluded our project: some papers presented on that occasion are collected in the present volume. Besides these four books and the two special issues of journals, the research achievements of this project also include the creation of four corpora for the purposes of historical sociolinguistic and pragmatic studies, which are freely available on the project’s electronic archive at www.mediling.eu. I owe my gratitude to our international research partners and distinguished scholars who have taken part in various conferences and seminars: Peter Auer, Kate Beeching, James Clackson, Florian Coulmas, Jesus de la Villa, Gerd Haverling, Mark Janse, Marco Mancini, Gabriella Mazzon, Mario Squartini, Heikki Solin. My sincere thanks go to the more than 50 researchers who have devoted their efforts to the project over the last three years. A special mention and my warmest thanks are due to Chiara Fedriani, in her role as research assistant she always gave generously of her time and uncommon skills. As always, the entire research has benefited from the competent and helpful staff of the University of Bergamo Humanities Library. To them I extend my grateful thanks. Finally yet importantly, I would like to thank the General Editor of the TiLSM Series, Volker Gast. I am also very grateful to De Gruyter’s editors Julie Miess and Frauke Schafft for their kind and helpful assistance during the publication process.
DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-202
Table of contents Acknowledgments
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Piera Molinelli Linguistic Representations of Identity. Texts, Contexts, and Methods in 1 Diachronic Perspective
Linguistic Representations of Identity at the Micro-level of Linguistic Interaction Carlo Consani and Pierluigi Cuzzolin 33 Identity in Speakers’ Discourse
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Carla Bruno Variations of the First Person: Looking at the Greek Private Letters of 49 Ptolemaic Egypt
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Chiara Fedriani, Chiara Ghezzi, and Luigi Talamo Exploring Linguistic Representations of Identity through the DiSCIS 65 Corpus: Evidence from Directive Acts in Plautus and Goldoni
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Luca Lorenzetti Greek in Rome around the Year 1000
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Gabriella Mazzon Code-switching and Style-shifting in the Anglophone World: Medieval and 95 Contemporary Identity Marking and Interaction Strategies
II Linguistic Representations of Identity at the Macro-level of the Linguistic Repertoire 7
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Marina Benedetti, Paolo Di Giovine, Flavia Pompeo and Liana Tronci 115 Identity in the Repertoire: A Bottom Line Alessandro De Angelis Between Greek and Romance: Competing Complementation Systems in 135 Southern Italy
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Margherita Farina The Syro-Arabic Glosses to Barhebraeus’ Metrical Grammar
Gianguido Manzelli 10 The Lexical Influence of Italian on Turkish
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Jesús de la Villa and María Esperanza Torrego Political Background, Pragmatics and Word Order in the Text of the 185 Res Gestae Divi Augusti
III Relations between Sociolinguistic Setting and Linguistic Data Giovanna Marotta, Ignazio Putzu, and Margherita Donati 12 Data from Ancient Languages and Sociolinguistic Analysis
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Paolo Martino 13 ‘Contrata dicta in lingua latina Scandali, in lingua greca Chandachi, et in lingua saracenica Alcastani’. Playing with Identities in the Multilingual 223 Place–names of Medieval Sicily Immacolata Pinto, Giulio Paulis, and Ignazio Putzu 14 Morphological Productivity in Medieval Sardinian: Sociolinguistic 245 Correlates. Action Nouns and Adverbs of Manner Francesca Cotugno and Giovanna Marotta 15 Geminated Consonants in the Vindolanda Tablets. Empirical Data and 269 Sociolinguistic Remarks
IV Identity through Orality, Identity through Literacy Barbara Turchetta 16 The Writer’s Identity and Identification Markers in Writing Code Mixing and 291 Interference Margherita Di Salvo, Laura Mori, and Cristina Muru 17 The Mediterranean Community of Practices between Speaking and Writing 309 in Early Modern Documents
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Giuliano Mion 18 Cypriot Arabic between Orality and Literacy in O typos ton 325 Maroniton Giulia Murgia 19 Aspects of Polymorphism in Arborea’s Carta de Logu Author index Subject index
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1 Linguistic Representations of Identity. Texts, Contexts, and Methods in Diachronic Perspective 1 Introduction This book seeks to explore and discuss the dynamics of the linguistic relationship between identity and otherness by focusing on languages mainly spoken in the Mediterranean area, taking a predominantly (but not exclusively) diachronic approach. The papers collected in the volume particularly focus on situations of prolonged language contact and the spectrum of consequences they produced both on languages and on the sociocultural settings in which contact took place. In this book, identity is taken to mean the social positioning of self and other as realized in specific historical and cultural settings (Bucholtz and Hall 2005: 586). This process can be achieved through linguistic strategies and the selection and/or mixing of linguistic codes used within a specific repertoire. The research carried out in this book rests upon two basic assumptions, firstly that speakers and writers of all historical periods commonly resort to identity markers in their communicative exchanges in order to express, maintain and negotiate the linguistic representation of themselves or of their interlocutors. Secondly, in the reception of discourses and texts, hearers and readers can identify identity markers independently of the speakers’ or writers’ will. Different types of documents can furnish evidence of such identity linguistic dynamics. Therefore, on the basis of different data and various textual genres, and through coherent, but specific methods and expertise, the nineteen chapters of this book share the primary aim of providing evidence for the fact that, irrespective of the geo-linguistic area and the diachronic stage taken into account, the linguistic behaviour of a given speaker/writer enables the hearer/reader to gain information about the speaker’s (or the writer’s) social status, his/her desire to distance herself from social groups other than his/her own, and to recognize his/her membership to a given community. These issues are first addressed from a micro-sociolinguistic perspective, focusing on the speaker’s and on the addressee’s socio-pragmatic strategies of Piera Molinelli, Università di Bergamo DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-001
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identity construction and negotiation in the local context of interaction (Part 1 of the book). Second, Part 2 of the book takes a macro-sociolinguistic perspective, privileging the investigation of those communities and social groups involved in processes of prolonged linguistic and socio-historical contact. From this perspective, multilingual societies represent a privileged object of investigation, as they are characterized by multifaceted processes of identity negotiation. A basic assumption underlying all chapters is that linguistic investigation must be complemented with historical and sometimes also archaeological evidence, on the one hand, and with a careful and in-depth philological analysis of texts, on the other. This is the only way to reconstruct the variation system of corpus languages, known exclusively through written (often literary) data, which in most cases has survived “by chance not design” (Labov 1994: 11), and for which it is often difficult to reconstruct the socio-historical context in which they were produced, the intended audience, the diverging modalities of reception in different historical periods, the dynamics of circulation and diffusion of texts. The use and emergence of identity markers as important elements of communication processes are closely and inherently linked to the production and reception of texts; exploring them in distant historical periods constitutes an even more challenging goal (these issues are specifically tackled in Part 3 of the book). Dealing with issues relating to linguistic identity as they emerge in written documents makes it necessary to consider complex relationships between languages and writing systems and their hierarchical distribution in the communities involved. Indeed, the same languages may have different hierarchical distributions within the same community considered at different historical stages, or the same language can be written with different writing systems, thus revealing different attitudes and different identity meanings over time. The written source can bring out the connection between different languages which are in a dominant vs. subordinate relationship with one another, and the relationship between choice of code and orthography can be revealing of ideologies and assessments made by the authors in terms of the prestige of different codes. Indeed, social motivation is often at the root of language variation as it emerges in written texts at different levels of analysis. Part 4 of the book is devoted to these issues. The analyses of the strategies involved in the construction, projection and reception of linguistic identity in different historical and socio-cultural settings provided in this volume take into account a number of languages considered at significant moments of their history, namely Latin, Ancient Greek, Byzantine Greek, Coptic, some dialects of Italy attested in various diachronic stages, Medieval Sardinian, Syriac, Arabic, Cypriot Arabic, and English. They have also
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been considered in crucial situations of prolonged and intense language contact, such as Greek and Coptic in Egypt, Byzantine Greek in Rome, Latin in Vindolanda (northern England), Mozarabic in Sicily, Byzantine Greek, and vulgar Sicilian in the Sicily of the 12th century, Italian in Turkey, and the so-called Lingua Franca, a mediation language (Vermittlungssprache) in use in the Mediterranean Sea between speakers of Arabic, and later speakers of Turkish, and the European ones. Moreover, some particular ancient documents enable us to investigate lesser-known scenarios of historical language contact, sociolinguistic variation and related manifestations of identity assimilation: case studies discussed in the book include the Liber Politicus written between 1140 and 1143, probably constituting the longest and most complex vernacular song written in Byzantine Greek (Lorenzetti), the Arabic and Greek glosses to Barhebraeus’ Syriac Metrical Grammar (around 1270 BCE; Farina) and the diasystem producing diaphasic variation attested in Arborea’s Carta de Logu (Sardinia, 14th century; Murgia). Evidence about outcomes of social, stylistic and regional linguistic variation, and patterns of linguistic contact and change are provided at all levels of analysis: graphical (Di Salvo, Mori, and Muru; Lorenzetti; Cotugno and Marotta; Mion; Turchetta), phonological (Lorenzetti; Cotugno and Marotta), morphological (Murgia; Paulis, Pinto and Putzu), lexical (Manzelli, Martino), syntactic (De Angelis; Farina; de la Villa and Torrego) and pragmatic (Bruno; Consani and Cuzzolin; Fedriani, Ghezzi, and Talamo). Observations on bilingualism, interference and language mixing, and their implications for language variation and change, are frequently included in the analyses (see especially Benedetti, Di Giovine, Pompeo and Tronci; Di Salvo, Mori, and Muru; Marotta, Putzu, and Donati; Lorenzetti; Manzelli; Martino; Mazzon). The linguistic expression of identity, especially in multilingual settings and language contact situations, is the subject of a number of publications. This topic is usually analyzed from a synchronic perspective (see, e.g., Omoniyi 2000; Block 2005; Omoniyi and Goodith 2006; De Fina, Bamberg, and Shiffrin 2006; Edwards 2009) and is concerned with narrative texts (Schiffrin 1996; Bamberg, De Fina, and Schiffrin 2007), or with a pedagogic and ethnographic approach (cf. Evans 2015). Therefore, the primary novelty of this volume lies in its systematic diachronic perspective and in the effort it makes to apply principles and methods of modern sociolinguistics to corpus languages and socio-historical settings of the past (recent developments of this line of research are to be found in Adams 2003 and Ong 2015). More precisely, the papers collected in this volume take their inspiration from assumptions and approaches of the sub-field of sociolinguistic research which began to view the linguistic construction of identity as a dynamic process taking place in a specific social context, labelled “sociolinguistics of identity” (Omoniyi and Goodith 2006). Its aim is to explore
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the ways in which “people position or construct themselves and are positioned or constructed by others in socio-cultural situations through the instrumentality of language and with reference to all those variables that are identity markers for each society in the speech of its members” (Omoniyi and Goodith 2006: 1). This perspective, among others, has pointed out that identity is not fixed, but can be re-negotiated in different contexts where precise social variables apply, and that identity informs social relationships and the relative communicative exchanges. The approach pursued by sociolinguists of identity emphasized the need to focus on factors that lie outside the linguistic system, in other words, to explore the role played by external factors in influencing the construction and representation of identity. The following chapters largely draw on these claims and principles and explore how, to what extent and in what terms a historical sociolinguistics of identity constitutes a feasible line of research, offering a number of detailed case-studies to verify whether it is possible to gain some understanding about the identity-otherness relation in multilingual settings and in past situations of language contact. These observations, however, are the result of the most important and up-to-date linguistic studies, which focus on present-day societies, where speakers (or writers) make use of languages in current usage, thus entailing the analysis of in vivo data. An investigation focusing on ancient languages, on the other hand, requires a number of theoretical and methodological adjustments; these will be discussed in the next section.
2 Theoretical and methodological approaches 2.1 Methodological assumptions The investigation of sociolinguistic variation in historical periods characterized among other things by a lack of oral documents entails difficulties in the reconstruction of the socio-historical setting and of the communicative context, particularly in situtations of poorly documented languages or multilingual environments where majority languages can hide minority languages, which are then underrepresented in written documents. Accordingly, the studies presented in this book adopt an integrated methodology for overcoming the inconsistencies of textual data. This has helped us to outline the socio-historical background of the available empirical data by benefiting from the insights and principles of different approaches, namely, historical and variationist sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, and textual philology, thus paying attention to aspects such as the paleographic analysis of written documents, archeological and epigraphic evidence, and historical and philological information.
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This point is simple but worth stressing: since the study of the closed corpus of an ancient language relies exclusively on written documents, the amount of attention devoted to the features displayed by the historical context and by the concrete factors (e.g. the kind of writing, the extent of document circulation, the context in which the document was written, to mention but a few well-known examples) is actually crucial if we are to gain some clues about language varieties other than the standard (see Cotugno and Marotta, this volume). The same is true of regional (see Adams 2007 on Latin), social (see Adams 2013; Cuzzolin and Haverling 2009 on Latin; Consani 2006 on Greek) and stylistic varieties (de Melo 2011 on Latin), the linguistic traits of which are complex and not easily detectable. Despite the attention that has been paid to ancient languages like Greek and Latin, an analysis focusing on these issues in relation to the linguistic expression of identity in a broad sense is in fact still lacking, and not available – to my knowledge – for less studied languages and varieties discussed in the following chapters, such as, for instance, Medieval Sardinian, Cypriot Arabic, Coptic or Syriac. All these aspects represent an innovation in the interpretation of the linguistic correlates of the identity-otherness relation in the past and their effects on diachronic variation. An important theoretical and methodological tenet frequently mentioned and addressed in the book is that of Uniformitarianism. According to the Uniformitarian principle, as is well known, what happens today must also have happened in the past, and therefore “the linguistic processes taking place around us are the same as those that have operated to produce the historical record” (Labov 1971: 101). If this principle is correct, the same cognitive mechanisms and pragmatic-functional strategies that governed linguistic use, and the creation and consumption of texts in modern times, should also hold in the past. A word of caution, however, is needed at this point. Even if we assume that the dynamics observed in present-day societies, which led to the defining of categories for the interpretation of social, regional and stylistic variation, were characteristic of ancient societies as well, the application of the same interpretative categories to the study of ancient societies is almost certainly less advisable. Indeed, some historical periods and ancient cultures are still largely unexplored, and it is often difficult, if not impossible, to rely on satisfactory historical and social accounts. Some languages and writing systems are still largely undocumented, and the relationship between the spoken and written varieties of the same language is often far from obvious. As a result, the analysis may be especially difficult, and even more so if the investigation of linguistic variation is concerned. It is apparent that the existing interpretative categories have limited heuristic value, given the absence of the necessary information concerning the
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corresponding documentary, linguistic and social background. These three elements – the documentary, the linguistic and the social profile of the community under investigation – are often tentatively inferred on the basis of present-day socio-cultural models, i.e. by assuming that the same models might be applied to the interpretation of ancient cultures and societies. Also the term “community” is addressed from different perspectives in this book since a “community” can be seen as a group of people living in a given place, or as in terms of a community “of practice”, typically found in multilingual contexts where speakers belonging to different societies share common workplaces and activities and make use of shared patterns of written and oral communication (on this concept, see Hoadley 2012 and Turchetta, this volume). Nonetheless, if we consider the differences in terms of patterns of cultural transmission and population flows, it is apparent that they may have repercussions on the processes of language change (for a critical evaluation of the application of the uniformitarian principle in historical sociolinguistics, see Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2012: 24–25; Bergs 2012; Baldi and Cuzzolin 2015; Putzu 2015; Marotta, Putzu, and Donati, this volume). The combination of different interdependent approaches and methodological practices entails the application of sociolinguistics and ethnolinguistic categories to the analysis of ancient documents and epigraphic records, but, as we will see in the following chapters, also the necessity to make a number of adjustments to those interpretative categories (see further Marotta, Putzu, and Donati, this volume). Hence the authors exploit their own specific competences, such as those offered by scholars carrying out philological (Bruno, Farina, Murgia, Paulis, Pompeo) and epigraphic research (Cotugno and Marotta, de la Villa and Torrego), or those provided by experts in the fields of historical linguistics (Benedetti, Di Giovine, Lorenzetti, Martino, Pinto, Putzu, Tronci), dialectology (De Angelis), historical sociolinguistics (Consani, Cuzzolin, Mazzon), historical pragmatics (Fedriani, Ghezzi), contact linguistics (Manzelli, Mion), ethnolinguistics (Di Salvo, Mori, Muru, Turchetta) and corpus linguistics (Talamo). It becomes clear that the integrated methodology pursued in the following chapters stems basically from a complex vision of the notion of identity, understood as a multifaceted product that is not so much (or not only) a psychological mechanism of self-classification, but rather a social, anthropological and cultural phenomenon that occurs in interactions with others through the weaving of relationships within specific historical contexts. Moreover, some papers collected in this book have expanded the historical and sociolinguistic perspective with a corpus-based approach. Historical (and sometimes diachronic) corpora have helped overcome some inherent difficulties in dealing with “bad data” in a Labovian sense: these electronic resources
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partially solve the problem of the fragmentary nature of ancient texts, help in reconstructing variability in past stages, and in constructing grids to select relevant variables, text genres, linguistic phenomena, linguistic levels of analysis, sociolinguistic features, and so forth (Conde-Silvestre and Hernández-Campoy 2012: 3; Cantos 2012: 103). In addition, multimedia techniques help the researcher contextualize the document, for example by means of digital images which make it possible to compare different hands (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2012: 28–30). The application of philological competence makes it possible to digitize documents containing rich information about the textual tradition and codicological variants; the addition of metadata such as age, gender, social rank, educational background, migration history, social roles and categories of writers enhance the usefulness of electronic corpora gathering together ego-documents such as private letters and diaries (Culpeper and Kytö 2010; Raumolin-Brunberg and Nevalainen 2007). Crucially, however, the effort of constructing electronic resources for historical sociolinguistic research has mostly focused on English (the survey provided by Cantos 2012: 101–103, for instance, is very telling in this respect). Some case-studies base their analysis on new electronic tools specifically designed and built during the three-year project. These corpora represent a novelty in the field since they are based on languages other than English, such as Latin, Medieval Sardinian, and 16th to 18th-century Italian varieties. Let us briefly mention them, with particular reference to those used in some chapters of this book. The Diachronic Socio-pragmatic Corpus of Imaginary Speech (DiSCIS) is a socio-pragmatically annotated corpus comprising comedies by Plautus (for Latin) and Goldoni (for 18th-century Italian) whose tagset comprises manually annotated tags that provide information such as the sociolinguistic status of the speakers (gender, age, social rank); the type of Speech Act; the pragmatic functions of non-propositional elements, such as textual, modal, and interpersonal ones (see Fedriani, Ghezzi, and Talamo’s paper for a detailed description). Other electronic resources worked out during the three-year research project include the Corpus for Latin Sociolinguistic Studies on Epigraphic TextS (CLaSSES), an annotated corpus for variationist analyses on Latin inscriptions (De Felice, Donati, and Marotta 2015, Marotta 2015, 2016), and the Sardinian Medieval Corpus, gathering together 11th to 14th-century Sardinian texts which have been lemmatized and annotated for part of speech (Puddu 2015). The Mediterranean Community of Practice Corpus (MediCoP), in turn, comprises 1436 transcribed texts (commercial recordings, transactions, diplomatic documents and private letters) belonging to seven collections in the State Archives of Venice. These texts date back to the 16th to 18th centuries and were written by Dragomanni, merchants and Venetian or Italian ambassadors (see Di Salvo, Mori, and Muru, this volume).
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It is worth mentioning here another electronic tool created during our research project, based however on spoken data: the PARVA corpus (PARtigiani VAlcamonica), which collates approximately 15 hours of semi-guided interviews with 24 expartisans living in Valle Camonica (Brescia, Italy), an interesting testing-ground for exploring code-switching and other contact phenomena between Italian and Bresciano dialect (Guerini 2013). Needless to say, when engineering such instruments for the purposes of historical sociolinguistic and pragmatic research, which means relying exclusively on corpus languages and written data, scholars have been confronted with a number of methodological issues and empirical constraints. These include: i) the limited amount of data available, which makes for qualitative-oriented rather than purely quantitative-oriented research; ii) the fact that data are closely bound to the written tradition, which is necessarily influenced by literary models (cf. Cuzzolin and Haverling 2009); and, as discussed above, iii) difficulties in reconstructing the precise socio-historical setting in which the documents were produced and circulated, as well as the ideological component projected by the writers (see e.g. Hernández-Campoy and Schilling 2012: 65–70). These two last points introduce an important issue in the context of the present discussion, namely, the specific characteristics of different textual genres considered in historical sociolinguistic research.
2.2 Document types and textual genres Historical sociolinguists rarely have at their disposal oral data, elicited by means of interviews, questionnaires, spoken records, and similar data-gathering strategies, such as field research in modern sociolinguistics dialectology (on this point, see De Angelis, this volume), or on contemporary text types such as newspapers (see Mion, this volume). The written sources they have at their disposal are per se biased towards filtered, indirect evidence of language use and linguistic patterns. As Auer et al. (2015: 5) have recently written, “[n]ot only is historical background information such as scribes’ age, gender, education or role in society often hard to unravel, the written record available is also strongly biased toward formal writings of highly educated men from the upper ranks of society. Studying the use of vernacular forms, for instance, or learning about basic literacy and writing practices from male and female members of lower social ranks, is more challenging”. This is why one of the primary methodological aims of historical sociolinguists is to identify the proper and more telling sources to explore patterns of sociolinguistic variation and change. Arguably, these have to be speech-related
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in some way, and should contain traces of spontaneous, everyday linguistic production. Such manifestations can be glimpsed in two different textual categories, namely literary as opposed to non-literary documents.
2.2.1 Literary sources Literary sources are represented first and foremost by comedies, which by definition contain dialogic and mimetic data and therefore offer the closest approximation to colloquial spoken language in historical texts (see Taavitsainen 1995: 460). Also orations and, in some particular circumstances, private letters, constitute literary productions which can be used to explore communicative patterns in corpus languages (see, e.g., Molinelli 2008; Hall 2009; Dickey 2012 on Cicero’s letters to Atticus and Molinelli 2015c on Cicero’s In Verrem orations; Colvin 1999 and Romagno 2015 on Aristophanes). Epigraphic material, including graffiti, ostraka, writing tablets and defixiones, and in addition papyri, private diaries, didactic manuals containing fiction dialogues, like the colloquia scholica for teaching and learning Latin as a foreign language, recipes, may occasionally contain reflexions of patterns and features of oral communication (see, e.g., Mancini 2012 on Samnite defixiones; Molinelli 2015a on Terentianus’ papyracean letters; Cotugno and Marotta, this volume, on Vindolanda tablets; Ferri 2008a on the colloquia scholica; see Adams 2013: 12–22 and Cuzzolin and Haverling 2009 for a detailed survey on these kinds of sources for Latin). All these sources are “conglomerates of different spoken and written manifestations of language” (Jucker and Taavitsainen 2013: 13, 19) and can be regarded as speech-related in some way, providing evidence of “language history from below” (in the words of Elspass 2012: 156) and insights into patterns of interpersonal communications in previous historical periods. Non-literary documents clearly attest to direct linguistic evidence, which has not been filtered through the manuscript tradition, differing in this respect from literary texts, which have been transmitted and copied across centuries by several generations of scribes and copyists. Cuzzolin and Haverling (2009: 21) refer to this latter category of material as “replica documents”, since they have been replicated by copyists “whose own linguistic systems differ considerably from that of the texts they were copying”. Non-literary documents, by contrast, include those materials written on stone, papyrus, clay, metal or wood contemporary with their composition (Cuzzolin and Haverling 2009: 21). Arguably, they transmit more direct linguistic evidence, which, however, should be taken with the necessary caution, since writing represents in itself a strong “selector of variables” (Mancini 2012: 239): uneducated and illiterate
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speakers did not have access to writing and reading skills, and therefore inscriptions, clay tablets and other epigraphic material is representative of a filtered degree of linguistic knowledge and reading/writing skills (see Solin 2015). The text types examined in the following chapters are various and cover a multi-faceted spectrum of genres and documents – some of which focus on less commonly studied languages and have been little pursued in English-oriented historical sociolinguistic research so far, such as vernacular songs, toponomastic material, writing tablets, legal and administrative texts, commercial recordings and diplomatic documents. Literary sources, by contrast, include a frequently explored genre in historical sociolinguistic research, namely comedies (Fedriani, Ghezzi, and Talamo, this volume), dealing however with much less frequently studied languages: early Latin and 18th-century Italian. The divide between literary and non-literary documents, however, is one with fuzzy boundaries, this often resulting in blurred areas with overlappings. A case in point in this respect is private letters, which can be produced both as literary texts written to be published and as intimate and spontaneous exchanges (see Bruno, this volume). Let us briefly introduce some constitutive traits of the genres analyzed in the following chapters. As recently discussed by Elspass (2012: 156–157), private letters, along with diaries and similar ego-documents, fill gaps in traditional historical linguistics research based on more formal and literary texts providing evidence of higher registers, since they are closer to the “language of immediacy” (in Koch and Oesterreicher’s 1994 words) and typically reflect more colloquial and informal topics and varieties, closely related to prosaic situations of everyday life. Of course, a distinction should be made between letters written to be popularized as literary work and correspondence directly emerging from a writer’s private sphere, to be shared exclusively with the addressee, most typically in a symmetrical communicative situation. For ancient languages, for example, Cicero’s correspondence constitutes an important piece of evidence of the informal variety of Latin used in “everyday conversation in educated èlite in Rome” (Cuzzolin and Haverling 2009: 33) and can be considered closer to literary patterns than, for example, the letters included in the so-called “Tiberianus’ archive”. This archive is made up of papyracean letters found in the region of Fayûm (central Egypt), mostly dictated by the soldier Claudius Terentianus to a scribe and addressed to his father Claudius Tiberianus at the beginning of the 2nd century CE. They show, in clear contrast to Cicero’s correspondence, diastratically low connotated spellings and interesting cases of syntactic developments which anticipate Romance innovations (Adams 1977, Lehmann 1988). This textual genre usually contains various phenomena of diaphasic and diastratic variation and thus provides an excellent testing-ground for exploring linguistic strategies to express, establish
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and negotiate identity positions. Molinelli (2014, forthc.) has focused on a corpus of both Classical and Late Latin letters to explore subjectivity markers. Subjectivity is expressed by the speaker or writer as a non-propositional part of the discourse, and typically emerges in oral usage: in Latin, examples are politeness markers such as rogo, quaeso and amabo ‘please’, elements that strengthen the illocutionary force of an assertion like mihi crede ‘believe me’, interjections, markers of disagreement such as quid ais? ‘what are you saying’?, to mention but a few. Molinelli shows that subjectivity markers can be different in their morphosyntactic nature, acquire communicative value in the context of interaction, while their pragmatic functions can also not infrequently change the semantic content of the original items. In this book, the literary genre of private letters as a resource for investigating identity stances is explored in the paper by Carla Bruno, who focuses on the Greek letters of Ptolemaic Egypt to analyze patterns of alternation in the writer’s self-reference and their pragmatic import in constructing different representations of the self. Comedies and, more in general, theatrical works constitute the other fruitful literary genre par excellence for investigating linguistic representations of identity at different levels, firstly because they are made up of dialogues between fictional characters that typically adhere to contemporary linguistic behaviour and mimetically mirror patterns of everyday spoken communication, and secondly because the characters’ identity is often defined by means of language variation. Evidence for this claim comes from the fact that English-based historical sociolinguistic research has largely focused on comedies (see, e.g., Taavitsainen 1995; Mazzon 2003; Stein 2003; Person 2009; Anipa 2012) and this also holds for recent studies on Latin (Ferri 2008b; Unceta Gómez 2009; Ghezzi and Molinelli 2014; Fedriani forthc.), Ancient Greek (Fontaine and Scafuro 2014; Romagno 2015), and earlier diachronic stages of Italian (Molinelli 2015b). In this book, comedies are analyzed in the paper by Fedriani, Ghezzi, and Talamo, who compare the strategies of pragmatic softening and strengthening in Directive Speech Acts in Plautus’ and Goldoni’s plays (early Latin and 18th-century Italian, respectively). A very specific text type that straddles the line between literary and nonliterary texts in the present book is a vernacular song, the Liber Politicus, which, except for a few lines in Latin, is written in a sort of vernacular Greek rendered in Latin spelling. This document provides many clues about the actual degree of Greek/Latin bilingualism in Rome in the last centuries of the 1st millennium (Lorenzetti, this volume). Grammatical texts constitute another interesting para-literary genre that helps us understand more about diaphasic and diastratic variation, which can in some cases be connected to identitary alignments and positionings. Grammarians sometimes make metalinguistic observations about current “aberrant” linguistic
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phenomena, thus providing information about abnormal spellings, uneducated usage, mistakes, and stigmatization of lower-rank patterns and uses (see Adams 2013: 12–14 for Latin), although they should not be regarded as sociolinguists ante litteram (Mancini 2005). In this volume, this textual genre as evidence when investigating identity-otherness relations in an ancient multilingual setting is represented by Barhebraeus’ Metrical Grammar (around 1270), a concise grammar in verses, meant to be learned by heart, for advanced students of Syriac. This text is particularly interesting for the linguistic content of the Syro-Arabic glosses that were added to the original text, which in some cases reveal interesting insights into the identitary dynamics of cultural dissimilation (Farina, this volume).
2.2.2 Non-literary sources Among non-literary sources, epigraphic evidence (including inscriptions on stone or pottery, writing tablets, seals, coins, ostraka) may in some cases play a major role in the identifying substandard features in corpus languages, offering a glimpse of submerged, non-educated usage linked to diastratic and diaphasic variation (see Adams 2013: 18–19; Marotta 2015). Moreover, multicultural environments are particularly likely to elicit a number of more or less conscious identity strategies, ranging from the choice of language and/or alphabet to the emergence of bilingual morpho-phonetic clues and interference and code-alternation strategies. One of the most ancient multilingual and multicultural situations, which has been object of investigation in our project, is that to be found in Anatolia, the first area to see the expansion of Greek language and culture. Research into the contact which must have taken place within the context of the plentiful trade relations between Greek (Mycenaean) and Anatolian peoples before 1,000 BCE, at a time when Asia Minor was already multilingual and cosmopolitan, is very interesting when evaluating the connection between bilingualism, diglossia and social variation. The Luwian language, also settled in Western Anatolia in close proximity to Greek language and culture, played a leading role in the development of linguistic contact between Greek and Anatolian in the 2nd millennium BCE. An analysis of Greek epigraphic – included the Mycenaean documents – has shown some loanwords taken either straight from Hittite or from some later Anatolian language, in the period following the fall of the Hittite Empire, along with linguistic interference at different levels, including writing and phonology, for instance, in order to shed new light on the specific graphic devices used by Anatolian scribes through a comparison with non-cuneiform syllabic/alphabetic writings (Gasbarra and Pozza 2015).
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Another higly multilingual historical setting useful for exploring linguistic strategies of identity assimilation or dissimilation is the prolonged interaction between Greek and Iranian in the Hellenistic period, when the impact of the prestige exerted by Greek culture and language in the Iranian world can be seen in the superb linguistic competence shown in epigraphic documents. After the 3rd century CE Greek was still spoken and written in the Iranian area, but style and register were completely different. The inscriptions discovered in this area provide abundant examples of structural interference, lexical borrowing, code-mixing, code-alternation, and also historical information about the status of the various ethnic groups (Pompeo 2015; Benvenuto et al. 2015). Yet another interesting case is furnished by the epigraphic corpus of the rural sanctuary of Kafizin, a series of inscriptions to the local Nymph of the Hill recorded between 225 and 218 BCE by people not specially educated such as vase makers, using the alphabet and the Koine as well as the syllabary and a type of highly interferenced dialect, as well as both systems in a limited series of bilingual and digraph documents which show graphic and phonological interference within a highly bilingual context (Consani 2016). The investigation of a multilingual and multicultural environment such as the free port of Delos, in turn, has made it possible to define the notion of both linguistic and cultural identity as opposed to that of otherness, by means of a corpus of bilingual Latin-Greek epigraphs. Some are written (also partially) in the Latin alphabet, and others are Greekwritten but nevertheless traceable to Latin customers. The complete frame is further complicated by the presence of Italics, who are “others” with respect to both Romans and Greeks (Rovai 2015). A rather different and very interesting case discussed in this volume is the comparison between two versions (Latin and Greek) of the same inscription, the Res Gestae Diui Augusti, which describes the same event from different pragmatic perspectives in terms of saliency (see de la Villa and Torrego’s chapter). Another chapter of the book, by Cotugno and Marotta, is concerned with a well-known non-literary source for the sociolinguistics of Latin, the Corpus Vindolandense. The Vindolanda tablets represent the oldest surviving handwritten documents found in Britain and offer an intriguing snapshot of garrison life at a Roman fort between the 1st and the 3rd centuries CE. While the Latin attested in the ink tablets (slivers of wood) is generally correct, it presents some interesting and revealing deviations from normative spelling that can be regarded as clues to sociolinguistic variation along the diaphasic and diastratic dimensions. Indeed, the subject matter to be found on the tablets includes private letters to friends and families, as well as an invitation to a woman’s birthday party, applications for leave, official correspondence and recipes; these documents have long been studied for their orthographic inconsistencies, their
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morpho-syntactic innovative patterns, their lexicon (see e.g. Adams 1995) and in terms of their pragmatic aspects (Molinelli 2008; Halla-aho 2009), while the chapter by Cotugno and Marotta (this volume) offers a reappraisal of specific graphemic-phonetic phenomena. Onomastic and toponomastic data represent another interesting source for historical sociolinguistic research on the expression and manifestation of identityotherness relations in the past (see Consani 2015; Paulis 2016). This holds especially in multilingual settings where lexical innovations and changes can be ascribed to the diastratic connotation of a given variety of the repertoire and where the structure of mixed toponyms can reflect resulting processes of codemixing and code-switching (see Martino, this volume). A large and multifaceted category of non-literary texts is administrative and economic documents such as administrative texts, chancery records, diplomatic documents, and commercial recordings and transactions, which can point towards adherence to spoken patterns and features, for example, because they reflect old traditions of common law and orality in the practice of law and administration (see Virdis 2002; Paulis, Pinto, and Putzu, this volume, on Medieval Sardinian). These features can include emphatic dislocations, argumentative movements, and even dialogic sections, as well as many cases of polymorphism stemming from lack of standardization (see Murgia, this volume). In multilingual trading environments, such as the Modern Mediterranean area, which saw intense crossethnic exchanges, the linguistic behaviour of merchants, notaries, consuls and ambassadors is dynamic and their writing was modeled on and constrained by different variables, including the socio-cultural identity profile of the writer, shared practices, the socio-cultural context, and the function of the text – e.g., commercial, diplomatic, pleading (see Di Salvo and Muru 2016; Di Salvo, Mori, and Muru, this volume). The studies brought together in this book deal not only with specific problems but also with the methodological issues and constraints that each of these textual genres entails.
3 Overview of the contributions to the volume The contributions collected in the volume are divided into four thematic sections, each of which looks at linguistic representations of identity from different but complementary perspectives. The first group of articles focuses on linguistic representations of identity at the micro-level of linguistic interaction, taking into account linguistic strategies of identity construction and (self-)representation at the level of discourse, i.e.,
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in concrete written communication. These strategies include, for instance, functional signals having procedural and (inter-)subjective meaning that work as contextualizing clues signalling the speaker’s communicative needs and goals, frequently labelled as discourse and pragmatic markers (see Fedriani, Ghezzi and Talamo’s paper), address systems comprising nominal and pronominal forms that distinguish between familiar and affective values on the one hand, and reverential and courtesy values, on the other, thus expressing social identity modulations, or self-reference strategies that play a crucial role in selfrepresentation and identity construction (see Bruno’s paper). Part 2 brings together contributions concerning linguistic representations of identity at the macro-level of the linguistic repertoire. Multilingual settings are particularly interesting in this respect since the choice of a given code can play an important role in establishing and maintaining the (self-)representation of speakers, constituting per se an enactment of an identity that carries ideological meanings which are determined by socio-cultural stances and positionings (a topic addressed in Farina’s paper). Relevant phenomena in this context are, for instance, language contact at different levels of analysis (e.g., phonetics: see Lorenzetti’s paper; syntax: see De Angelis’ and de la Villa and Torrego’s papers; and the lexicon, see Manzelli’s paper) and code-alternation strategies. The third part of the book sheds light on the relations between sociolinguistic setting and linguistic data. The contributions in this section are essentially based on an integrated methodological approach according to which linguistic data must be investigated and interpreted through the lens of historical, archaeological and other contextual evidence and seriously take into account philological issues concerning the specific history of a given document. The chapters in this section show that cases of linguistic variation and competition can be fostered and constrained by the socio-historical circumstances of a precise historical setting (see Pinto, Paulis, and Putzu’s chapter). Accordingly, only by ascribing a given text to its proper sociolinguistic context can we evaluate phenomena of linguistic variation possibly connected with the speakers’ (or better, the writers’) identity connotations (see Martino’s and Cotugno and Marotta’s papers). Lastly, Part 4 explores multifaceted relations between written and oral language production, ranging from speech-driven clues related to phonetic variation based on geographic location attested in historical documents (see Di Salvo, Mori, and Muru’s paper), to graphical issues connected to the first attempt to register in a written form an oral language, namely, Cypriot Arabic, in a situation of language contact (as discussed in Mion’s paper), and on to morphological variation possibly driven by sociolinguistic factors (see the paper by Murgia). Special attention is devoted to graphical aspects. Some of the papers contained in this
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section deal with the analysis of sociolinguistic variation and identity representations in historical periods characterized by a lack of oral documents, suggesting an integrated methodology for overcoming the inconsistencies of textual data by benefiting from the insights and principles of various approaches such as historical and variationist sociolinguistics complemented with textual philology (see Murgia’s chapter). Part 1. Linguistic Representations of Identity at the Micro-level of Linguistic Interaction Part 1 opens with the chapter by Carlo Consani and Pierluigi Cuzzolin, which is concerned with linguistic representations of the identity-otherness relation at the micro-level of interaction and discourse (Identity in Speakers’ Discourse). The authors discuss different ways to express identity in relation to the present linguistic paradigms, emphasizing that identity is constructed by the speaker in his discourse, using different degrees of agency, through language strategies and also through the selection of code(s) within multilingual repertoires. The authors go on to offer a detailed synopsis of the textual types discussed in the following chapters of Part 1, focusing on the writers of the texts under scrutiny, on the setting in which such texts circulated or were performed, their intended audience or readers, and also with crucial remarks on the specific characteristics and conventions of the literary genres to which they belong. The discussion shows that different linguistic strategies are coopted to establish and express identity positions: structural and internal (e.g., the use of pronouns within a given system of address), external (e.g., code-mixing and style-shifting strategies), and graphical, for instance in the choice of a given writing system. Carla Bruno investigates the circumstances under which, in the Greek letters of Ptolemaic Egypt, first-person plural markers can replace singular forms (Variations of the First Person: Looking at the Greek Private Letters of Ptolemaic Egypt). The study is based on a survey of 52 letters ranging from the third to the second century BCE and tries to uncover and explain patterns of variation in the sender’s self-reference, shifting from singular to plural, and from plural to singular. The analysis singles out some textual parameters which seem to be relevant in constraining the alternation between singular and plural reference. One of the main points made by the author is that plural reference tends to occur in conventional formulas, also showing a meaningful relationship with modal expressions excluding an immediate reference to the space-temporal coordinates of the utterance and pertaining to the dimension of irrealis – e.g., in the case of unreal, future or non-chronologically anchored events (as in stereotyped epistolary formulas). Variation in self-reference plays a crucial role in the
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process of the identity construction of the addresser (sender)/addressee (recipient) linguistic interaction: in this context, the pluralization of the first-person pronoun appears to be a strategy to conceal and foreground the self. In their paper Exploring Linguistic Representations of Identity through the DiSCIS Corpus: Evidence from Directive Acts in Plautus and Goldoni, Chiara Fedriani, Chiara Ghezzi, and Luigi Talamo illustrate and discuss the theoretical background and structure of a socio-pragmatically annotated corpus currently based only on Plautus’ and Goldoni’s comedies, named DiSCIS (‘a Diachronic Socio-pragmatic Corpus of Imaginary Speech’). Besides presenting its structure, the authors illustrate how the corpus can be searched in order to explore linguistic strategies representing identity with reference to the specific textual genre of comedies. The study focuses on a specific type of Speech Act, namely, Directives, which constitute a fruitful and privileged testing ground for exploring dynamics of identity expression and negotiation, since Directives are by definition potentially impolite acts that can threaten the interlocutor’s face and, as we will see, tend to be softened or intensified under certain circustances by means of pragmatic strategies. More specifically, the article provides a pragmatic and historical-variationist study that compares the use of directive Speech Acts in two different languages, namely Latin and Italian, in two different historical periods (3rd–2nd BCE Latin and 18th-century Italian) across different social classes of speakers differing for gender, age and social rank. One of the main results of the analysis is that the sociolinguistic distribution of Directives is constrained by different parameters in Latin and Italian, namely by gender and social rank, respectively. Another difference concerns the occurrence of Directives on the lips of characters of low social standing in Latin, which is not attested in Italian. The authors suggest that this divergence is presumably due to the specific literary figure of the servus callidus, often involved in the comic mechanism of role reversal, which underlines the importance of considering the specificity of the document taken into account when interpreting and explaining the data. The article by Luca Lorenzetti, Greek in Rome around the Year 1000, is devoted to a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the Liber Politicus (i.e., Polyptychus) by Canon Benedictus, written between 1140 and 1143, probably constituting the longest and most complex vernacular song written in Byzantine Greek. Except for a few lines in Latin, the text is written in a sort of vernacular Greek rendered in Latin spelling and offers fertile terrain for reconstructing a segment of Roman linguistic history that has been mostly neglected. Since the presence of a Greek-speaking community in medieval Rome is well known, this document can be regarded as a convincing piece of evidence to argue about the degree of Greek/Latin bilingualism actually present in Rome in the last centuries
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of the 1st millennium. From the analysis of this text, Luca Lorenzetti reconstructs a sort of sociolinguistic split between Greek and Latin speakers, the milieu of Greek/Latin bilinguals in medieval Rome being probably restricted to Greek clergymen. In the second part of his paper, the author tries to answer the question whether the Latin spelling of a Greek text permits hypotheses, both as to the varieties of Greek, Latin and vernacular Romance spoken in Rome at the time, by presenting and discussing some specific issues in this respect. The first part closes with a contribution by Gabriella Mazzon entitled Codeswitching and Style-shifting in the Anglophone World: Medieval and Contemporary Identity Marking and Interaction Strategies. The paper focuses on sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of medieval English textual language mixing, which, as the author shows, can express both identity positionings and personal stance features. The documents investigated belong to the latemedieval English period and all show instances of language mixture that signal the co-existence of multiple identities: particularly prominent textual genres discussed in the paper are sermons (alternating, e.g., Latin, Middle English and Anglo-Norman), correspondence and medieval drama. In such multilingual texts, the author argues, language choice can have different pragmatic and identitary meanings, such as social positioning, socially-related style-shifting, and stance (also in parodic terms in plays). The paper closes with a comparison between language-mixing strategies in medieval times and in the contemporary era of social media: it is argued that some characteristics of text production in the Middle Ages – for example, formulae and pre-fabricated chunks, which already occurred in early English correspondence – re-emerge in text messages Some examples from “MIX” in Hong Kong, “mix-mix” in the Philippines, “Singlish” and “llanito/yanito” in Gibraltar substantiate this claim and show that research into language mixtures can yield interesting insights about “interlocutors” in terms of communities of practice and/or social networks. Part 2. Linguistic Representations of Identity at the Macro-level of the Linguistic Repertoire Part 2 opens with an introductory chapter by Marina Benedetti, Paolo Di Giovine, Flavia Pompeo, and Liana Tronci entitled Identity in the Repertoire: A Bottom Line, which assesses the most significant and innovative results to have come to light in recent studies on language contact in complex multilingual repertoires from a historical perspective. The studies surveyed in the paper range over a considerable period of time, from ancient Indo-European civilizations to contemporary locations, spanning a broad territory that stretches from the Celtic area to Anatolia and the Near East, with a special focus on
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contact phenomena between prestige varieties (e.g., Greek, especially in the earliest times, in the Eastern Mediterranean; Syriac for eastern Christians who lived as linguistic minorities under Sasanian and Byzantine rules where the main spoken languages were Middle Persian and Greek) and between grammatical models, above all the Greek and the Latin doctrines in the Western world. Alessandro De Angelis deals with a case of syntactic interference from Italo-Greek varieties in some Italo-Romance dialects spoken in Salento, central and southern Calabria and North-Eastern Sicily (Between Greek and Romance: Competing Complementation Systems in Southern Italy). In many parts of these dialectal areas, infinitival dependent clauses headed by some predicates are replaced by finite dependent clauses headed by a complementizer (NorthEastern Sic. mi, Cal. mi/i, mu/u, ma, Sal. cu), followed by the indicative present tense. Earlier studies have pointed out that this kind of replacement is more frequent when the main verb expresses a will or goal, such as unaccusative verbs of motion (mainly andare ‘go’ and venire ‘come’) and verbs expressing a will (volere ‘to want’). Generally, in Standard Italian and in the main Western Romance languages, the verb ‘want’ taking a dependent finite clause instantiates the so-called subjunctive obviation: the pronominal subject of a complement clause in the subjunctive cannot corefer with the matrix clause. Romance subjunctive sentences constrained by the obviation effect could represent the starting point of the so-called “retreat of the infinitive” in these areas: when Romance varieties of the southern Italy (or a form of regional Latin) and Italo-Greek came into contact, structures such as Mario vuole che veda (or the Late Latin pattern VOLET QUOD VIDEAT ) may have been overlapped with formally similar Italo-Greek finite structures. However, while Romance finite structures are “obviative”, in Italo-Greek the null embedded subject can either be coreferent with the matrix subject (= PRO) or it can be disjointed in reference; see, e.g., Graecanic (Calabrian Greek) θéli na míni, which can mean both ‘he wants to stay’ and ‘he wants that he (PRO) stays’. Through this interference process, the Romance pattern Mario vuole che veda ‘he wants that he (PRO) sees’ could be reanalyzed as a control structure, with the covert subject referring to the matrix one (‘he wants that he (= PRO) sees = ‘he wants to see’). De Angelis argues that Romance “obviative” sentences could be reanalyzed, in the Greek-Latin diasystem, as coreferent structures, due to the presence of an Italo-Greek pattern in which the coreferential meaning is the unmarked one. The perspective suggested by the author is that in the domain of modal complement-taking predicates, ‘want’ analogical is the only verbal form which can seemingly legitimate coreferential constructions, because of the availability of a formal identity in the number of the grammatical person between matrix and embedded verb. Precisely the
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presence of these constructs may have helped spread the Greek finite “non obviative” completive pattern in the regional Latin system of southern Italy. Margherita Farina’s paper The Syro-Arabic Glosses to Barhebraeus’ Metrical Grammar discusses the results of her translation and study of Barhebraeus’ Metrical Grammar (around 1270 BCE), with a focus on the linguistic content of the Syro-Arabic glosses that were added to the original text by the copyist and scholar Daniel of Mardin (1360) and on their influence on later commentators. A detailed study of the content of the annotations by Daniel of Mardin and his later followers revealed traces of an interesting linguistic debate over the comparison of Syriac and Arabic, in morpho-syntax, syntax and the syntax-semantic interface. The debate intertwines with the evolution of the socio-linguistic setting of the Syriac communities (especially the Syriac-Orthodox) in the Middle East between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries, showing a progressive shift in the linguistic identification and self-perception of the Syriac commentators from a Syriac-centred towards an Arabic-centred context. More specifically, the Metrical Grammar was composed within a very clear Syriac grammatical framework, after the model of Greek grammatical and logical theories. Barhebraeus combined this traditional model with some major incursions into the new Arabic linguistic perspectives on morpho-syntax and syntax. In discussing Daniel of Mardin’s annotation strategies, Farina shows how he and his later Tur‘abdinian followers seem to identify more and more with an Arabic-speaking culture, in which Arabic linguistics and scholarship represent a reference point for the understanding of traditional Syriac grammar. Although the Syriac language and writing still clearly identifies the Syriac-Orthodox communities, as opposed to the surrounding non-Christian or non-Syriac neighbouring cultures, Arabic represents to them de facto the language of scientific learning. In his paper The lexical Influence of Italian on Turkish, Gianguido Manzelli offers an account of Italian borrowings in Turkish. His study begins with the historical background to the Turkish language and its prolonged contact with the most important maritime republics of Italy, Venice and Genoa, with particular reference to the “golden age” of Italian borrowings in Turkish, between the 15th and the 17th centuries. Subsequently, Manzelli provides the reader with a detailed state-of-the-art account of the earlies studies on the issue. The author looks at the complex relationship between Italian (Venetian, Genoese) and Greek within a highly multilingual setting involving many languages and varieties such as those mentioned, French and Turkish, with a focus on Italian loanwords established in Turkish. The study has highlighted a rich array of semantic fields in which Turkish has borrowed avidly from Italian sources, including, for example, nautical terms (49% out of the total number of Italian loanwords, mainly from
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Venetian), musical terms (10%), clothing (6%), as well as art, the culinary arts, mechanics, fashion, games, signboards and trademarks. Jesús de la Villa and María Esperanza Torrego broaden the scope of the discussion to include translation contexts, focusing on the Latin and Greek versions of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti inscription, which bear fitness to different pragmatic interpretations of the same facts, which ultimately reflects cultural and political disagreements between diverse societies (Political Background, Pragmatics and Word Order in the Text of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti). By means of a detailed comparison between the two versions of the same text, the authors identify a number of differences in word order, which, it is argued, have an essentially pragmatic origin. More precisely, de la Villa and Torrego show that these differences can be accounted for in terms of cultural and political divergences between the addressees of each of the versions of the text: in the Latin case, the citizens of Rome, in the Greek version, the Greek-speaking populations of some cities in the province of Cappadocia. The paper shows that translation studies in a historical dimension can represent a revealing and intriguing source for recognizing not only grammatical differences between source and target language, such as alterations in word order, but also which socio-cultural and contextual facts played a role in triggering these grammatical differences during the translation process, since the same facts are given different syntactic treatment and pragmatic significance in different contexts. Part 3. Relations between Sociolinguistic Setting and Linguistic Data Part 3 opens with the chapter by Giovanna Marotta, Ignazio Putzu, and Margherita Donati, which is devoted to the crucial methodological issues that inform the dynamic relationship between the linguistic data of corpus languages, on the one hand, and the relevance and applicability of models of linguistic variation developed for contemporary societies, on the other – a complex relationship which is at the root of the so-called uniformitarian paradox (Data from Ancient Languages and Sociolinguistic Analysis). The authors discuss the main constraints that historical sociolinguists have to face when analyzing aspects of linguistic variation emerging from repertoires of ancient languages (e.g., the problematic relationship between spelling and pronunciation and the difficulties in precisely reconstructing the phonological diasystems of ancient languages). In this context, non-literary texts constitute a privileged source for the study of sociolinguistic variation, and accordingly the authors offer a critical reappraisal of the text types that can be scrutinized to this end, with particular reference to Latin and Greek. The second part of the chapter broadens the scope of the discussion, extending it to other linguistic repertoires at both micro- and
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macro-sociolinguistic levels of analysis. At the micro level, an important issue discussed by the authors concerns the complex process of interpretation of salient features with relation to the identification of the individual profile of the writer, which also entails a problem of attribution of a given text to an “individual” as opposed to a supra-individual variety. At a macro level of analysis, by constrast, the focus is placed on the values acquired by different codes within multilingual repertoires. As the authors show, dynamics and patterns of linguistic contact in past settings were significantly affected by social differentiations and constraints. Paolo Martino’s chapter focuses on the usability of onomastic (and, more specifically, toponomastic) material in the construction of a research method of historical sociolinguistics (‘Contrata dicta in lingua latina Scandali, in lingua greca Chandachi, et in lingua saracenica Alcastani’. Playing with Identities in the Multilingual Place-names of Medieval Sicily). The setting is Sicily in the 12th century under the dominion of the Norman kings who organized a complex tri-lingual administration that promoted cooperation between functionaries who spoke Arabic, Greek or Latin. At a popular level, however, the situation was different, with three demographic components of the island identified with different cultures and language inevitably becaming a symbol of cultural and religious membership: the Siculo-Arabic or Mozarabic of Sicily, Byzantine Greek, and vulgar Sicilian gradually spread as a basilect. The author refers to this complex situation and untangles the use of tri-lingual place names in Sicily during the reign of William II. In a Greek act of sale of 1277, of which we have a Latin translation from 1346, an area of central-northern Sicily is recorded “in the Latin language as Scandali, in the Greek language as Chandachi, and in the Arabic language as Alcastani”. Besides addressing etymological problems, Martino focuses on sociolinguistic questions raised by parallelism of names, where identity dynamics and cultural conflicts are reflected. In their chapter entitled Morphological Productivity in Medieval Sardinian: Sociolinguistic Correlates. Action Nouns and Adverbs of Manner, Immacolata Pinto, Giulio Paulis, and Ignazio Putzu focus on the historical development of Medieval Sardinian morphology and, more specifically, on the close relationship that exists between the morpho-lexical elements that provide the syntacticpragmatic representation of Subject / Agent, Predicate / Action, and Object / Topic, on the one hand, and adverbs of manner, on the other, and features that are of a purely socio-linguistic nature. By focusing mainly on Late-Medieval Sardinian, namely, from the late 11th century to around 1409/1478, which is the only medieval period in which Sardinian appears in a written official form, the authors demonstrate how certain morpho-lexical choices, both at the level of the “langue” and, in some cases, at that of the individual speaker, are far from
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neutral from a sociolinguistic point of view, reflecting in fact clearly defined historical-social conditioning. The authors show that this applies in particular to morphological productivity, which used to be regarded as an entirely internallanguage concept. The data presented to corroboate this are organized around three specific case-studies that concern the morphology of Medieval Sardinian: for two of these cases (negative prefixation with in- and adverbs of manner in -mente), macro-sociolinguistic factors can be shown to be behind the application (or non-application) of a productive rule. In actual fact, the data discussed in the paper serve to show that it is the complicity of both internal and external forces that can threaten the very survival of the system’s rules, especially those which are in competition with one another. The focus of Giovanna Marotta and Francesca Cotugno’s paper is on consonant gemination in the Vindolanda tablets, the oldest surviving handwritten documents found in Britain (Geminated Consonants in the Vindolanda Tablets. Empirical Data and Sociolinguistic Remarks). The corpus Vindolandense dates back to the historical period when the fort was occupied by the IX cohors Batavorum (roughly from 95 to 103 CE), and comprises 772 ink tablets, only 524 of which, however, are suitable for linguistic and palaeographical analysis. The language that emerges from the tablets is basically correct and conforms to Latin grammatical tradition. However, some deviations from the normative spelling of so-called Classical Latin do occur, including the graphemic and (possibly) phonological process of “spurious gemination” (i.e., CC instead of simple C). The authors discuss in detail the sociolinguistic and geographical implications of the most frequent spurious geminated consonant, namely s, which has been interpreted as a misspelling standing for an archaism or even as a sign of hypercorrection in previous studies. Cotugno and Marotta, however, suggest an alternative scenario, according to which s-gemination may have been motivated in terms of a spelling signalling the tense and voiceless pronunciation of the segment, in agreement with the local pronunciation of Latin by North-Western Germanic speakers. According to the authors, moreover, this process may also have been constrained by lexical factors. Part 4. Identity through Orality, Identity through Literacy Part 4 opens with Barbara Turchetta’s paper, which focuses on the relation between the choice of written signs and techniques, on the one hand, and symbolic meaning and the cultural knowledge of writers, on the other, also discussing how writer identity is constantly stressed and expressed when establishing a relationship with the reader in promoting and confirming her cultural identity (The Writer’s Identity and Identification Markers in Writing Code
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Mixing and Interference). The author argues that writing is a complex conspiration resulting from three main forces, namely, the writer/reader relation according to the selected code and specific variety of language and of writing system, the writer’s attitude towards a reference model in terms of prestige within a community of practices, and the symbolic and cultural values linked to specific styles and varieties in a given historical period (the latter are identity oriented choices). The chapter discusses some examples from different writing systems, collected from a selection of written texts, which show how codeswitching, code-mixing and interference can be either identity oriented or culturally motivated in a given society or non-identity oriented in a multilingual and cross-border context. In addition, parallel writings in translated texts show easy identification markers which do not represent any symbolic or identity oriented choice. Margherita Di Salvo, Laura Mori, and Cristina Muru’s paper The Mediterranean Community of Practices between Speaking and Writing in Early Modern Documents is devoted to the linguistic and graphic behaviour of Mediterranean writers possessing multiple competence in different languages and graphic norms in Early Modern Times. Specifically, the authors have focused on different varieties of Italian featuring the linguistic repertoires of Italian merchants, court clerks and sovereigns which have shaped Early Modern writings to be found across the Mediterranean context. In order to investigate this complex phenomenon, a corpus of 1436 original manuscripts and translations belonging to seven collections kept in the State Archive of Venice was collected – the Mediterranean Community of Practice Corpus (MediCoP). The MediCoP Corpus comprises documents, such as commercial recordings, transactions, diplomatic documents and private letters written by merchants and diplomats, and by interpreters at the Corte del Bailo di Costantinopoli during a time span ranging from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Starting from the assumption that in pre-unification Italy it is possible to find evidence of a priority, even an exclusiveness, of contact with the oral language, the authors focus their attention on speech-driven clues relating to phonetic variation based on geographic location and to graphic inconsistency and fluidity due to the lack of a single code of reference. The chapter offers, among other things, an analysis of allographies and presumable written representations of phonetic phenomena, such as the presence of graphic accents on monosyllabic words, and an investigation into the voicing and the devoicing of stops in the texts under scrutiny, both specific features of the Venetian dialect whose presence could be taken as an indicator of residual interference from it. Giuliano Mion’s study focuses on Cypriot Arabic, a variety of Arabic that derived from a medieval Syro-Lebanese koine of dialects and spoken by the
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Maronite community of Cyprus (Cypriot Arabic between Orality and Literacy in O typos ton Maroniton). Cypriot Arabic, with its little more than one thousand speakers, is considered an endangered language because of the bilingualism among its speakers and the serious decline in their active competence. The first attempt at metalinguistic reflection and revitalization of this language has taken the form of a Cypriot Arabic-Greek dictionary by Antonis Frangiskou. Some years after the publication of his book, the author began to work for a Maronite monthly newspaper entitled O typos ton Maroniton, producing an insert written in both Greek and Cypriot Arabic with teaching material for the acquisition of this language. The chapter offers a detailed analysis based on fifty numbers of O typos ton Maroniton issued between November 2006 and August 2014 and focuses on the project to revitalize Cypriot Arabic promoted by the Maronite newspaper and, more particularly, on the contact between Greek and Arabic as reflected by this first attempt to register this oral language in a written form. Special attention is paid to graphical aspects, as Cypriot Arabic was usually written in the Greek alphabet in the first issues of O typos ton Maroniton and especially in the teaching units, which are of particular interest since Greek grammatical categories are used in order to explain purely Semitic phenomena. Giulia Murgia’s chapter concerns cases of polymorphism attested in a particular and interesting document, Arborea’s Carta de Logu, a collection of norms published in the 14th century by the judge-kings of the Sardinian kingdom of Arborea (Aspects of Polymorphism in Arborea’s Carta de Logu). The language found in this text is considered to be the result of a diasystem, a sort of compromise between two systems in contact, namely the copyist’s linguistic system and the author’s linguistic system. The main aim of this study is to identify the textual stratigraphies layered throughout the document and to provide an explanatory hierarchy of variants occurring in the manuscript and in the incunabulum. The author provides a detailed analysis of a representative sample from the Carta de Logu’s morphological data, with a focus on the plural forms of the definite article (sos/sas vs. is) and the expression of the periphrastic future with or without the connector element (HABĔO + infinitive vs. HABĔO AD + infinitive). Crucially, the two documents, i.e., a manuscript seen as a working copy, and the editio princeps, the official edition more inclined towards the highest status in the linguistic repertoire, show interesting cases of diaphasic variation. The relevant oppositions encountered in the text are discussed through the prism of various sociolinguistic and philological approaches, which help identify an explanatory hierarchy of the occurrence of these variables and help formulate a hypothesis as to the sociolinguistic weight to assign to the variants at play in the manuscript and in the incunabulum.
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References Adams, James N. 1977. The vulgar Latin of the letters of Claudius Terentianus. Manchester: University Press. Adams, James N. 1995. The language of the Vindolanda writing tablets: an interim report. The Journal of Roman Studies 85. 86–134. Adams, James N. 2003. Bilingualism and the Latin Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Adams, James N. 2007. The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC-AD 600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Adams, James N. 2013. Social Variation and the Latin Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anipa, Kormi. 2012. The Use of Literary Sources in Historical Sociolinguistic Research. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, 170–190. Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Auer, Anita, Catharina Peersman, Simon Pickl, Gijsbert Rutten & Rik Vosters. 2015. Historical sociolinguistics: the field and its future. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 1(1). 1–12. Baldi, Philip & Pierluigi Cuzzolin. 2015. “Uniformitarian Principle”: dalle scienze naturali alla linguistica storica? In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 37–49. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Bamberg, Micheal G. W., Anna De Fina & Deborah Schiffrin (eds.). 2007. Selves and Identities in Narrative and Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Benvenuto, Maria Carmela, Lavinia Lucidi & Flavia Pompeo. 2015. Prime applicazioni GIS per la sociolinguistica storica dell’area iranica antica. In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 192–215. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Bergs, Alexander. 2012. The Uniformitarian Principle and the Risk of Anachronisms in Language and Social History. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, 80–98. Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Block, David. 2005. Multilingual Identities in a Global City: London Stories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bucholtz, Mary & Kira Hall. 2005. Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse studies 7 (4–5). 585–614. Cantos, Pascual. 2012. The Use of Linguistic Corpora for the Study of Linguistic Variation and Change: Types and Computational Applications. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, 99–122. Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Colvin, Stephen. 1999. Dialect In Aristophanes: the Politics of Language in Ancient Greek Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Conde-Silvestre, Juan Camilo & Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy. 2012. Introduction. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, 1–8. Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Consani, Carlo. 2006. Per una visione variazionistica del greco antico. In Nicola Grandi & Gabriele Iannaccaro (eds.), Zhì. Scritti in onore di Emanuele Banfi in occasione del suo 60° compleanno, 201–213. Roma-Cesena: Caissa.
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Consani, Carlo. 2015. Ritorno a Kafizin. Esiti del contatto fra lingue e scritture nella Cipro ellenistica. In Carlo Consani (ed.), Contatto interlinguistico fra presente e passato, 133– 148. Milano: LED. Consani, Carlo. 2016. Fenomeni di contatto a livello di discorso e di sistema nella Cipro ellenistica (Kafizin) e le tendenze di “lunga durata”. In Paolo Di Giovine & Valentina Gasbarra (eds.), Dinamiche sociolinguistiche in aree di influenza greca. Mutamento, variazione e contatto. Atti del convegno internazionale (Roma, 22–24 settembre 2014). [Special issue]. Linguarum Varietas 5. 51–65. Culpeper, Jonathan & Merja Kytö. 2010. Early Modern English Dialogues: Spoken Interaction as Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cuzzolin, Pierluigi & Gerd Haverling. 2009. Syntax, sociolinguistics, and literary genres. In Philip Baldi & Pierluigi Cuzzolin (eds.), New perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax. Vol. 1. Syntax of the Sentence, 19–64. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. De Felice, Irene, Margherita Donati & Giovanna Marotta. 2015. CLaSSES: a New Digital Resource for Latin Epigraphy. Italian Journal of Computational Linguistics 1 (1), 119–129. De Fina, Anna, Deborah Schiffrin & Michael Bamberg (eds.), 2006. Discourse and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. de Melo, Wolfgang. 2011. The Language of Roman Comedy. In James Clackson (ed.), A Companion to the Latin Language, 321–343. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Di Salvo, Margherita & Cristina Muru (eds.). 2016. Dragomanni, Sovrani e Mercanti. Pratiche linguistiche nelle relazioni politiche e commerciali del Mediterraneo moderno. Pisa: ETS. Dickey, Eleanor. 2012. How to say ‘please’ in Classical Latin. Classical Quarterly 62(2). 731–748. Edwards, John. 2009. Language and Identity. An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elspass, Stephan. 2012. The Use of Private Letters and Diaries in Sociolinguistic Investigation. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, 156–169. Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Evans, David (ed.). 2015. Language and Identity. Discourse in the World. London/New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Fedriani, Chiara. Forthc. Quapropter, quaeso? Questions and the pragmatic functions of quaeso, obsecro, and amabo in Plautus. In Camille Denizot & Olga Spevak (eds.), Pragmatic Approaches to Latin and Ancient Greek. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ferri, Rolando. 2008a. Il latino dei Colloquia scholica. In Rolando Ferri & Franco Bellandi (eds.), Aspetti della scuola nel mondo romano, 111–177. Amsterdam: Adolf Hakkert. Ferri, Rolando. 2008b. Politeness in Latin Comedy: Some Preliminary Thoughts. Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 61. 15–28. Fontaine, Michael & Adele C. Scafuro. 2014. The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gasbarra, Valentina & Marianna Pozza. 2015. Considerazioni (micro)sociolinguistiche su fenomeni di interferenza in area egeo-anatolica tra II e I millennio a.C. In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 171–191. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Ghezzi, Chiara & Piera Molinelli. 2014. Deverbal pragmatic markers from Latin to Italian (Lat. quaeso and It. prego): The cyclic nature of functional developments. In Chiara Ghezzi & Piera Molinelli (eds.), Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages, 61–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Guerini, Federica. 2013. « Me en ʤer’manja ge ndo ’mia, io sto qui! »: commutazione di codice e organizzazione della conversazione nelle testimonianze degli ex-partigiani in Valle Camonica. Rivista italiana di linguistica e di dialettologia 37. 77–105. Hall, Jon. 2009. Politeness and Politics in Cicero’s Letters. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Halla-aho, Hilla. 2009. The non-literary Latin letters. A study of their syntax and pragmatics. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica. Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel & Natalie Schilling. 2012. The Application of the Quantitative Paradigm to Historical Sociolinguistics: Problems with the Generalizability Principle. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, 63–79. Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Hoadley, Cristopher. 2012. What is a community of practice and how can we support it? In David Jonassen, David H. Jonassen & Susan Land (eds.), Theoretical foundations of learning environments, 287–300. New York: Routledge. Jucker, Andreas H. & Irma Taavitsainen. 2013. English Historical Pragmatics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Koch, Peter & Wulf Oesterreicher. 1994. Schriftlichkeit und Sprache. In Hartmut Günther & Otto Ludwig (eds.), Schrift und Schriftlichkeit/Writing and Its Use. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch internationaler Forschung/An Interdisciplinary Handbook of International Research, 2 Bde., 587–604. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Labov, William. 1971. Some Principles of Linguistic Methodology. Language in Society 1: 97–120. Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol. 1: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Lehmann, Christian. 1988. On the Latin of Claudius Terentianus. P. Mich. VIII, 467–472. In Antonio Ruiz de Elvira (ed.), Homenaje al profesor Lisardo Rubio Fernández. II, 11–23. Madrid: Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Mancini, Marco. 2005. La formazione del neostandard latino: il caso delle differentiae uerborum. In Sándor Kiss, Luca Mondin & Giampaolo Salvi (eds.), Latin et langues romanes, Etudes linguistiques offertes à J. Herman à l’occasion de son 80ème anniversaire, 137–155. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Mancini, Marco. 2012. Su alcune questioni di metodo in sociolinguistica storica: le defixiones sannite. In Vincenzo Orioles (ed.), Per Roberto Gusmani. Linguistica storica e teorica, Studi in ricordo, 1, 239–271. Udine: Forum. Marotta, Giovanna. 2015. Talking stones. Phonology in Latin inscriptions? In Giovanna Marotta & Francesco Rovai (eds.), Ancient Languages between Variation and Norm. [Special issue]. Studi e Saggi Linguistici 53 (2). 39–63. Marotta, Giovanna. 2016. Sociolinguistica storica ed epigrafia latina. Il corpus CLaSSES I. In Paolo Di Giovine & Valentina Gasbarra (eds.), Dinamiche sociolinguistiche in aree di influenza greca. Mutamento, variazione e contatto. Atti del convegno internazionale (Roma, 22–24 settembre 2014). [Special issue]. Linguarum Varietas 5.145–159. Mazzon, Gabriella. 2003. Pronouns and nominal address in Shakespearean English: A socioaffective marking system in transition. In Irma Taavitsainen & Andreas H. Jucker (eds.), Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems, 223–249. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Molinelli, Piera. 2008. Tra oralità e scrittura: rogo nelle lettere private in latino. In Romano Lazzeroni, Emanuele Banfi, Giuliano Bernini, Marina Chini & Giovanna Marotta (eds.), Diachronica et synchronica. Studi in onore di Anna Giacalone Ramat, 365–378. Pisa: ETS.
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Molinelli, Piera. 2014. Marche linguistiche della soggettività nelle lettere private in latino. In Ilona Bădescu & Mihaela Popescu (eds.), Studia Linguistica et Philologica in Honorem Prof. Univ. Dr. Michaela Livescu, 194–205. Craiova: Editura Universitaria. Molinelli, Piera. 2015a. Dialoghi a distanza e pragmatica: marcatori funzionali e lettere private in latino e in greco. In Maria Grazia Busà & Sara Gesuato (eds.), Lingue e contesti. Studi in onore di Alberto M. Mioni, 621–633. Padova: CLEUP. Molinelli, Piera. 2015b. Polite forms and sociolinguistic dynamics in contacts between varieties of Italian. In Carlo Consani (ed.), Contatto interlinguistico fra presente e passato. 283–313. Milano: LED. Molinelli, Piera. 2015c. Plural pronouns and social deixis in Latin: a pragmatic development. In Giovanna Marotta & Francesco Rovai (eds.), Ancient Languages between Variation and Norm. [Special issue]. Studi e Saggi Linguistici 53 (2). 65–88. Molinelli, Piera. Forthc. La rappresentazione linguistica della soggettività in latino volgare e tardo: lettere e dintorni. In Latin vulgaire – Latin tardif XI. Actes du XIe colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif. (Oviedo, 1–4 septembre 2014). Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2012. Historical Sociolinguistics: Origins, Motivations, and Paradigms. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo CondeSilvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, 22–40. Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Omoniyi, Tope (ed.). 2000. Islands and Identity in Sociolinguistics: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan. [Special issue]. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 143. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Omoniyi, Tope & Goodith White. 2006. Introduction. In Tope Omoniyi & Goodith White (eds.), Sociolinguistics of Identity, 1–8. London/New York: Continuum. Ong, Hughson T. 2015. The Multilingual Jesus and the Sociolinguistic World of the New Testament. Leiden: Brill. Paulis, Giulio. 2016. Latino, greco e volgare nella Sardegna bizantina e alto-giudicale. Dinamiche sociolinguistiche e onomastica personale. In Paolo Di Giovine & Valentina Gasbarra (eds.), Dinamiche sociolinguistiche in aree di influenza greca. Mutamento, variazione e contatto. Atti del convegno internazionale (Roma, 22–24 settembre 2014). [Special issue]. Linguarum Varietas 5. 191–209. Person, Raymond F. 2009. ‘Oh’ in Shakespeare: a conversation analytic approach. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 10 (1). 84–107. Pompeo, Flavia. 2015. I Greci a Persepoli. Alcune riflessioni sociolinguistiche sulle iscrizioni greche nel mondo iranico. In Carlo Consani (ed.), Contatto interlinguistico fra presente e passato. 149–172. Milano: LED. Puddu, Nicoletta. 2015. Costituzione del Sardinian Medieval Corpus: prime proposte per la codifica e l’annotazione. In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 282–299. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Putzu, Ignazio. 2015. Il principio di uniformità: aspetti epistemologici e di storia della linguistica. In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 13–36. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena & Terttu Nevalainen. 2007. Historical Sociolinguistics: The Corpus of Early English Correspondence. In Joan C. Beal, Karen P. Corrigan & Hermann L. Moisl (eds.), Creating and Digitizing Language Corpora Volume 2: Diachronic Databases, 148– 171. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Romagno, Domenica. 2015. Sociolinguistic variation and diachronic evidence: A case of Laconian rhotacization in the Lysistrata. InVerbis 5 (1). 159–170. Rovai, Francesco. 2015. Notes on the inscriptions of Delos. The Greek transliteration of Latin names. In Giovanna Marotta & Francesco Rovai (eds.), Ancient Languages between Variation and Norm. [Special issue]. Studi e Saggi Linguistici 53 (2). 163–185. Schiffrin, Deborah. 1996. Narrative as self-portrait: sociolinguistic constructions of identity. Language in Society 25 (2). 167–203. Solin, Heikki. 2015. Che cosa possono dire agli studi linguistici iscrizioni e graffiti? In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 115–137. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Stein, Dieter. 2003. Pronominal usage in Shakespeare: between sociolinguistics and conversational analysis. In Irma Taavitsainen & Andreas H. Jucker (eds.), Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems, 251–307. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Taavitsainen, Irma. 1995. Interjections in Early Modern English: From imitation of spoken to conventions of written language. In Andreas H. Jucker (ed.), Historical Pragmatics. Pragmatic Developments in the History of English, 439–465. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Unceta Gómez, Luis. 2009. La petición verbal en latín, Estudio léxico, semántico y pragmático. Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas – UAM Ediciones. Virdis, Maurizio. 2002. La sintassi nelle Carte volgari cagliaritane. In Associazione “Condaghe di San Pietro in Silki” (ed.), La civiltà giudicale, 381–390. Sassari: Associazione “Condaghe di San Pietro in Silki”.
I Linguistic Representations of Identity at the Micro-level of Linguistic Interaction
Carlo Consani and Pierluigi Cuzzolin
2 Identity in Speakers’ Discourse 1 Introductory remarks Identity, a concept introduced into the scientific debate by Erikson (1950; but see also Fearon 1999 and Molinelli, this volume), is related both to self and to language, from an internal as well as external point of view. This multifaceted topic is currently being widely discussed in the recent literature devoted to it, to the point that a general definition thereof can hardly be proposed.1 Dealing with the topic of identity in speakers’ discourse raises at least two preliminary questions: The first is related to the nature and the role of identity in relation to language, the second, strictly connected with the first one, is about the meaning of “discourse”. In a survey of contributions to this issue, two prototypically different positions on the nature of identity could be underlined, based on the different ways in which language is conceived. On the one hand, there is the line of thought that links the position of structuralism and Chomskyan formalism: According to these paradigms, language and its structures live outside the speaker and are ascribed to the speaker’s mind, or to the over-individual level of “langue” (in Saussurean terms), respectively. In this way, considering language outside the speaker can be used to represent a pre-existent external world, which is independent of the speaker, according to the ideational function (Joseph 2004: 3–4). On the other side, the viewpoint according to which language is strictly connected with the speaker and his/her communicative and relational needs can be envisaged.2 As a consequence of this there is a twofold result: firstly, language is not a neutral and rational instrument separable from its speakers, insofar it is strictly connected to ideologies and to power relations; secondly, meaning is not an objective filling of language, because it results from speaker and his/her agency (Halliday and Martin 1993; Kilpert 2003). Taking this perspective implies an analysis of language as an activity manifesting itself in the form of speech acts and written documents as well, taking also into account speaker’s com1 Joseph (2004), Edwards (2009), Evans (2015). 2 For a general overview see Consani (2016b). Carlo Consani, Università di Chieti-Pescara Pierluigi Cuzzolin, Università di Bergamo DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-002
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municative intentions, his/her social conditionings, each communicative situations, and his/her desire to behave towards a single speaker or groups either positively or negatively. It must be observed, however, that there is, or could be in principle, a remarkable difference between the expression of identity in discourse and the manifestation of identity in the repertoire: the former is basically speaker-oriented, i.e. it tends to put the stress on the personal identity of the speaker, with a more or less high degree of juxtaposition to the other, whereas the latter is grouporiented, in that it particularly points out the difference among various groups that coexist within a community. Since the former is at a micro-level, the latter at a macro-level, usually the linguistic tools employed to express the different orientation vary to a certain extent. Obviously, between the two viewpoints there is continuity rather than a break and both of them are in any case inconceivable without the content in which they are located. It is also obvious that, according to the first perspective, the speaker’s performance of his/her own identity is analysed in relation to language structures (allocutives, person, subjectivity expression), while, according to the second one, identity acquires a totalising function, which realizes itself in language structures and in all strategies, at different linguistic levels, used to form the message, and in speaker’s selection of the codes of his/her repertoire as well. Hence, according to the last perspective, speaker does not perform/exhibit a unique and “monolithic” identity, constructed only one time, but he builds multiple, complex and composite identities that are negotiated and re-negotiated according to the situations, to the addressees and their power relations. The four contributions of this section could be all analysed on the base of the assumption that identity is expression of the speaker and his/her interlocutor in each discourse episode, through the resources offered by language and by each code of the speakers’ repertoire. The various situations presented in these papers represent particular discourse typologies, such as that of the religious domain (Lorenzetti, this volume; Mazzon, this volume), the typology of private letters (Bruno, this volume) and the typology of imaginary speech used by authors such as Plautus and Goldoni (Fedriani, Ghezzi, and Talamo, this volume). Despite the different situations portrayed, in cultural, social and chronological terms, these works are in fact strictly connected by the presence of a high degree of agency.3
3 For an overview on the concept of “agency” see Duranti (2004).
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Agency is here understood as the property of those entities (i) that have some degree of control over their own behavior, (ii) whose actions in the world affect other entities’ (and sometimes their own), and (iii) whose actions are the object of evaluation (e.g. in terms of their responsibility for a given outcome). (Duranti 2004: 453)
According to such a perspective, this factor could characterise in different ways and to different degrees various textual genres such as private epistolary, a comic pièce written to be received by a particular audience, and religious texts written to be played in particular religious situations, which sometimes have a precise performative value.
2 The case studies As written above, it is difficult to talk about identity in a totally abstract way. Moreover, if we consider this topic related to speakers’ discourse, is almost impossible to exclude the external perspective of each speech event, and the context in which each of them takes place. Notwithstanding the difference in the situations analysed in the case-studies of the works present in this section, it is worth reflecting on a hypothetical link connecting them. Therefore, it could be possible to link a micro-sociolinguistic perspective, which is at the base of Bruno’s work (this volume), with situations that involve wider parts of the speech community, and some time also to reflect on different degree of generalisation that each situation could acquire on the base of speakers’ role. In other words, it is worth asking whether, together with the notion of situation, the notion of domain as well could be used;4 in this way, it could be possible to have a deeper degree of generalisation and of data projection from modern to past situations.5 Clearly most of the situations analysed in this section are part of the classical domains of modern sociolinguistics: those that could be hypothesised for Mazzon (this volume) and Lorenzetti (this volume) belong to the religious domain, while the private letters analysed by Bruno could belong to the family domain. Instead, it is more complex to define the case of the imaginary speech of comic authors analysed by Fedriani, Ghezzi, and Talamo (this volume). 4 “Domains are defined in terms of institutional contexts or socio-ecological co-occurrences. They attempt to designate the major clusters of interaction situations that occur in particular multilingual settings. Domains enable us to understand that language choice and topic . . . are . . . related to widespread socio-cultural norms and expectations.” (Fishman 1972: 441). 5 For a general overview on the relationship between situation and domain as a possible link between micro- and macro-sociolinguistic level see Berruto ([1995] 2003: 78–79).
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2.1 Ritual Feasts in Medieval Rome Since analysing identity expressed in speaker’s discourse implies the individuation both of actors interacting with the speaker in each speech/written situation and the related situations, in this section we will provide an in-depth analysis in this direction. Particularly complex is the analysis of the underlying context in the text investigated by Lorenzetti (this volume), for various reasons: first of all, because the text is part of a poem (Liber Politicus), which was written down for the first time almost a century later than the time when the episodes of this song were composed. The song was played by a group of youngsters (Laudes puerorum) in the ritual feasts to celebrate the passage from winter to Easter season (Cornomannia). Second, because even though the text is in Greek, it is written in Latin alphabet, a fact that approximately pictures the underlying linguistic reality. Finally, for the very nature of the language phenomena found in the text, which have an uncertain date and are ambiguous to interpret in relation to the linguistic development of medieval Greek. Obviously, the external scenario and the linguistic data should be treated separately in order to avoid circularity in the line of reasoning. Beginning with the external perspective, it is clear that this song refers to a reality that took place in the past, which is remembered and “updated” by its author, in the attempt of confirming the presence of Roman youngsters with Greek as L1 and attending schools for native speakers of Greek. However, by selecting the Latin alphabet it also becomes clear that the first one who wrote this poem was not able to master the writing system in Greek characters, and he could also possibly have a very poor competence in Greek. This sheds light on an important structural element, i.e. the clues that let people think about the reception of the text from an oral source, characterised by linguistic peculiarities referring to Medieval Greek spoken in Italy. For this reason, the orthographical form of the text seems to be an operation external to the group that used these songs with the intention of fixing a behaviour that was decreasing or even disappearing, or was (being) perceived in this way. On the other way, the nature of the song refers to ritual forms related to important moments of individual and social life, such as those about the coming of the spring and the achievement of puberty. These events used to play an important role in the social cohesion, particularly in a situation where the community of speakers of Greek in Rome should have been recessive from a linguistic and cultural viewpoint, as also pointed out by Lorenzetti.6 6 Cf. Harris (2011: 32–40).
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Consistent with the analysis of this context, there is almost no occurrence of either Latin or Romance lexical elements in the text. This circumstance allows us to suppose that the two linguistic and cultural worlds should be completely separated by now, particularly among clergy, with very rare cases of people competent in both codes, an indispensable requirement for interference phenomena also at the most vulnerable level, i.e. lexicon. Therefore everything confirms the fact that a text, with marked identity and cohesion values, is perceived and pictured from the outside with a setting analogous to that of several historical proofs on lingua franca, characterised by looks, definitions and quotes of witnesses external to the group that used this code.
2.2 Multilingualism in Medieval England Opposite to the situation analysed by Lorenzetti is the context of Mazzon’s work (this volume): the texts analysed by the author reveal the writer’s deep competence in different codes both in the case of religious texts (1) and (3), and in the case of lyrical texts of erotic nature (2). In the first ones, the text in Latin has insertions and alternations with Middle English, while in the second type of texts there is the juxtaposition between Anglo-Norman, Middle English and Latin. The most interesting data deduced by the analysis of the texts are that the use of different codes in a single text reveals the hierarchical organization of the codes in the repertoire of Medieval England, where a functional distribution of Latin, French and Middle English existed: Latin was used in religious and legal domains, French by aristocracy at court, while Middle English was the language used by ordinary people.7 The strict connection between particular values and particular codes of the repertoire put constraints on the choice of the codes by each of the characters (authority, stranger, religious role). In addition, the alternation of codes and the style shift could be used to obtain particular communicative functions, as in the case of the boasting speech from some characters as Erode, Pilate and the Devil, or in the case of irony and sarcasm, by which Christ was insulted during his crucifixion, an effect obtained through code-switching towards the prestigious languages which used to be used for parodic aims. Besides the religious texts, Mazzon very well demonstrates that multilingualism and the use of different codes were characteristic of English and the Medieval European literature, and were frequently employed in some specific genres such as tragic operas and epistolaries. 7 See the references in Mazzon’s chapter.
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Moreover, it is interesting to note that a wider and metalinguistic use of multilingualism ceases during the Renaissance and shows up again only in the post-Colonial period, with more marked manifestations than in the Medieval age. This parallel, which is the focus of the last part of Mazzon’s paper, is extremely interesting and it might be in connection with the imposition of Standard English starting from the end of the XV century, after the passing of the previous triglossia situation. On the other side, the more and more extended use of English as a global language in the last decades creates the conditions for the emergence of language mixtures based on English and used in Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines and Gibraltar. According to the author, these last mixed languages, originally exclusively spoken languages, thanks to computer-mediated communication could be used in the written form, a fact that allows us to analyse them in accordance with the methodology used for Medieval English texts. It is treated as an analogy that overcomes the simple superficial juxtaposition of the two situations, since the use of code-switching and of mixed-language does not reveal a deficit in competence in one of the code in contact. It rather reveals conscious choices and communicative norms which refer to the presence of different communities of practice: the more recent history shows that these mixed language forms mostly used in the speakers’ discourse, at least in some cases are developing into a more stable code, even though they are not commonly used for intergenerational transmission.
2.3 The comic genre Fedriani, Ghezzi, and Talamo’s work (this volume) well shows how the creation of a purpose-build micro-corpus could overcome some limits of historical sociolinguistics both from a quantitative (restricted and casual preservation of texts) and qualitative point of view (lack of speech data, impossibility of direct data elicitation from the speakers). The choice to form a corpus of texts belonging to the comic genre (DiSCIS), which is notoriously closer to speech than other literary genres, since it reproduces discourse situations and dialogic exchanges, is particularly productive in order to investigate four analysis levels (discourse, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, contact level), on the base of which the collection and marking of data is done. This first limited analysis is based on linguistic acts of directive typology (order/request, advice/suggestion, permission, prohibition) and it is applied to a sample based on eight Plautus’ comedies and one Goldoni’s play, with more than 100.000 tokens resulting. The obtained data have an important meaning
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according to the discourse perspective, i.e. the main focus of the articles in this section. In fact, among the different analysed functions at discourse level, Adjacent Subacts, in the type of modal and interpersonal ones, are particularly interesting, since they are direct expression of the speaker’s position and behaviour towards his interlocutor and towards the content of the message. As is clear from the analysis carried out, this allows us to construct, at least partially, the role relations that characterize who takes part in the dialogues, also recovering in this way a typical aspect of speech. Qualitative and quantitative data, resulting from this methodology, reveal the value that such a sample has: even though they belong to the same genre, they were composed in periods and in linguistic and sociolinguistic situations that were deeply different: comparing Latin situation with Italian one, a difference between the sociolinguistic and pragmatic result is particularly clear. From the viewpoint of sociolinguistics, in the case of Plautus, the parameter that turns out to be the most important in encoding directive acts is gender: orders are performed by male characters, mostly with a high social status; while, in Goldoni the same typology of acts is performed by high social status characters that are both males and females indifferently. The social stratification is the factor that could explain the above-mentioned difference in configurations: it is clear that the macro social structures widely differ if we take into account parameters such as presence/absence of slaves or female status in Plautus’ and Goldoni’s works. From the viewpoint of pragmatics, the use of discourse markers employed to change orders, to strengthen or weaken them, show a distribution that is comparable to that of Plautus’ and Goldoni’s texts: this fact confirms that accommodation strategies toward the interlocutor are elements that constantly remain permanent, independently of time passing and even though the social context changes. Taking into consideration the issue of the applicability of internal and external language data of the modern situations to the past, it is clear that it does not need to be underlined (on the discussion about the Uniformitarianism Principle, see now the volume edited by Molinelli and Putzu 2015). Finally, going beyond the particular situation examined, it is worth noticing that, analysing texts such as the comic ones or other imaginary speech texts, we always face literary fictions: this means that the social connotations of the characters could not be used to portrait the real social structures in a direct and mechanic way. A significant example from Plautus is the character of the servus callidus ‘smart slave’: from the limited percentage of linguistic acts of these type of characters aiming at comic effects, it is impossible to deduce
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anything on slaves’ social status and their real way of life in Rome during the III/II century BCE. The necessary distinction between data deduced from literary norms, which characterise the imaginary speech, and its relative structures is always valid as a general principle,8 although it should be always kept in mind that: (2)
The identities of real and fictional individuals are actually not all that easy to distinguish. When it comes to the subject of a biography, it can be difficult to say whether it is a real or a fictional personage that we are dealing with. Real individuals occasionally assume ‘false’ identities [. . .] and more than occasionally misrepresent their own characteristics, for example when listing their leisure-time activities on a curriculum vitae. (Joseph 2004: 4)
2.4 Private letters In the field of historical sociolinguistics to deduce data from private letters is a well-known and reliable practice. Most of the works belonging to the Helsinki school and to historical sociolinguistics of English is based on materials collected in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC);9 even though in the last decade several studies on “ego-documents” on other modern European languages have appeared,10 however a similar methodology has almost never been applied thus far to the two classical languages.11 Bruno’s work (this volume) is one of the first analysis in this field, focussing on Greek private letters written on papyri of the Ptolemaic period, in the perspective of the expression of subjectivity and the relations between speaker and receiver. It is true that these letters are characterised by formulas and by repetition of peculiar creations, even though moderate stylistic variations and others literary techniques related to speaker and receiver social status could be found (Bruno 2015). However, the study of variation in the use of the first person singular and plural in the subject position could let us deduce interesting data. According to the analysis proposed, the use of we is associated with the more formulaic 8 Cf. Consani (2016b). 9 Cf. Bergs (2005); Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1996); Nevalainen and RaumolinBrunberg (2003). 10 For a general overview see Elspass (2012). 11 Obviously both documentary and linguistic research on letters of the Ancient World are present; on this regard see Pighi (1964) and Adams (1977) for Latin and Evans (2007) and Klauck (2006) for Greek.
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parts of the letters and with the presence of modal and non-actual predicates, hence excluding an immediate reference to hic et nunc of the communication, which is crucially characterised by the use of the first singular person. This conclusion is interesting from a twofold point of view: considering the strategies of representation of the speaker, the use of the plural seems to be a typical strategy of ego concealment and its downgrading to a secondary position of the communicative act; from a more general point of view, this type of behaviour and its correlations with the discourse structure confirms the value of some of E. Benveniste’s theories on the person relations in the verb, on subjectivity and formal mechanisms of the communicative act. These results, which well integrate in the field of the strategies to perform identity at discourse level that emerge in this section, are important premises for a detailed study from a quantitative and chronological, and qualitative point of view, also considering bilingualism Greek/Egyptian, a topic from which interesting and important conclusions are drawn.12
3 General remarks On the base of both the considerations about the four articles of this section and from the results and conclusion of the works of this line of research related to the expression of identity in speaker’s discourse, it is possible to make some general reflections.
3.1 Language domains and theoretical approaches All the works of this section focus on situations of the past: in the first centuries B.C. and the following periods those in which Latin and Greek are involved; a situation of plurilingualism that existed also in Medieval England, where Middle English, French, Anglo-Norman and Latin coexisted. However, several works belonging to this research line involve different modern situations, with particular reference to Romance diasystem (standard Italian, Italian dialects).13 In accordance with the general approach of the research pursued in this volume, in the survey of the different language situations analysed, two main 12 On this regard, see Evans and Obbink (2010) and Vierros (2012). 13 See Consani (2015b), Molinelli and Putzu (2015), Marotta & Rovai (2015), Di Giovine and Gasbarra (2016).
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approaches are privileged: the first one focusses on the interface between synchrony and diachrony, which stands out particularly in the development of the Romance diasystem, where, overcoming Saussure’s dichotomy, language change dynamics and its motivations are analysed in different language periods. The second one involves the study of contact situations and the role they played in language change, both in peripheral areas of the Romance diasystem, where contact situations with other languages had been long and deep (Sardinia: Latin/Sardinian/Catalan, Calabria: Latin/Romance/Greek), and in the same language domain characterised by bilingualism with or without diglossia (Greece and Egypt in the Hellenistic period), as well as in medieval England. In these cases identity traits could be found mainly in the “official” contact aspects: what characterised language contact in the light of identity processes could be found in the official language aspects which often regard the lexical level and imply a language perspective, according to which language is considered as a social and cultural element. Language is considered the main result of culture, social and political structure, a result that is sometimes subordinate to those elements (cf. Cuzzolin 2015): a “conservative” identity, which contrasts with the “innovative” one, which is the basis of language aspects instead. It is quite evident that the past and present situations considered are an important basis to try to analyse whether it is possible to project on a quite remote past, at least, some of the modern sociolinguistic paradigms. Obviously, this does not mean to extend in an uncritical way the uniformitarian principle also in sociolinguistics: in fact, this would mean to apply to situations of the past an analysis schema used for modern settings. Such situations are deeply different from the ones of the past from different point of views (the limits and the paradoxes that are implied in this way of working were underlined by Baldi and Cuzzolin 2015). In addition, this cannot and should not be an obstacle for those scholars who try to delineate the sociolinguistic and historical setting on the base of concrete data, independent of the language documentation: the paradoxes mentioned above would be avoided, keeping the reconstruction of the setting independent from the analysis of language data (cf. Consani 2015a).
3.2 Performing identity In the research field at issue in this volume, the expression of the position or attitude of the speaker/writer towards the actors of the communicative act and, in the case of written documents, towards different types of receivers is obtained through different, even deeply different, ways.
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The most immediate technique to express one’s identity is the use of linguistic means that the codes used give to speaker/writer: as already pointed out, this regards both the selection of morpho-syntactic traits and lexical and phraseological choices; along this strategy, pragmatic and discourse elements are used to influence discourse structure. This second perspective is particularly interesting from a diachronic point of view as well, as is clear from the analysis of pragmatic markers in Latin, in Italian and in some of the other Romance varieties emerged from the evolution of Latin, in order to individuate particular processes of grammaticalisation and pragmaticalisation (Ghezzi and Molinelli 2013, 2014). An aspect that is related to the one mentioned above is the expression of subjectivity, particularly in the epistolary genre, and the development of the pronominal systems of allocutives from Latin to the Romance diasystem and to Italian, overcoming the traditional barriers of the structuralism between discourse/ language system and synchrony/diachrony. The employment of this method of analysis to Latin (Molinelli forthc.) and to Greek (Consani 2014a) confirms the possibility to apply methods of sociolinguistics, of pragmatics and social psychology, i.e. the linguistic reflexes of positive and negative polite forms, to corpus-Sprachen. Besides, this type of works can also meet the need to study the diaphasic dimension from a diachronic point of view, the only dimension that was not explicitly considered by Adams in his work on Latin. Moreover, this approach could open interesting perspectives on the study of deixis, and shed light on the evolution of the motion and exchange verbs from semantically fully verbs to discourse markers both in Latin and in Italian through a process of pragmaticalisation in both languages. This is particularly interesting for its consequences on the relation between speech/writing and for the application of methods of language change used for modern languages to languages that are attested by written data only. One of the most frequent strategies to express identity in discourse are speaker’s language choices among the languages of the individual and social repertoire, choices that can be both marked or unmarked according to the values of the speech community under investigation. This type of strategy is particularly important since it could be adopted for the analysis of modern settings (e.g. Franco-Provençal communities in Apulia), and of different historical periods of the Romance languages (Sardinia of XV and XVI century, medieval England and so on) and of Classical and Hellenistic Greek diasystem. If it is correct to claim that a particular language choice is in itself unmarked, but marked in comparison with another language choice only, this interpretation could be a valuable tool for the analysis and interpretation of written documents.
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This enables us to reflect on the role that particular genres, i.e. the epistolary one, or particular forms of a language used in Celtic world could have had or still have. Along with the choice among the languages, a fundamental aspect of multilingual situations, another strategy that is used in order to express a bilingual identity is the use of code-switching and code mixing both in the present (cf. the final part of Mazzon’s work, this volume) and in the past (Consani 2014b).
4 Discussion 4.1 Repertoire vs. discourse From a meta-theoretical point of view, looking at the studies comprised in this volume, the first element that could be underlined is a deep quantitative difference between the works about the expression of identity through the languages of the repertoire and those dealing with the expression of identity in speaker’s discourse: the first ones are much more than the others are. Hence, it is worth reflecting on the reasons of this research trend. Overviewing the works focussing on language contact, at least since Trubeckoj’s idea of the Sprachbund (1928), it is undoubtedly right that the study of contact between language systems plays a fascinating role in literature, despite Weinreich’s revolution, according to which the place of language contact is the bilingual speaker. This claim has received several different demonstrations in the field of studies on contact-induced grammatical changes as well, among the others Heine and Kuteva’ work (2005), which has been of great influence. Moreover, the above mentioned quantitative difference, could also be due to the fact that the speaker’s identity is often expressed by his/her choice of a language, through which he could identify himself and allows the others to identify him.
4.2 Textual typology Considering the textual typology and the literary genres used in the works, an important premise of historical sociolinguistics is confirmed: the epistolary genre and imaginary speech texts play an important role for this kind of methodological research. Indeed, both imaginary speech texts, particularly those related to previous periods of modern languages, and corpus-Sprachen with variously written documentation, are a valuable starting point to observe some accessory elements,
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which are strictly related to speaker/writer identity, such as language attitudes and his/her opinions about linguistic facts (language varieties, dialects, uses and values attached to them). Indeed, attitudes and opinions present in plays reflect the author’s language behaviour and, above all in comic genre, it might be thought that they mirror public attitudes the play was written for. As it was written, it represents an interesting glimmer on the value scales, that the pictured societies attributed to language and to its use as expression of values related to speaker’s personality (Willi [2002] 2007). Research in this direction shows the role played by the Comedy authors, starting from Aristophanes for the Greek world, and Plautus for the Latin one and it is shown how this genre could be usefully compared with data related to the history of the modern Romance and Germanic languages. As epistolary genre, the extension of research besides works of CEEC is remarkable from a quantitative and qualitative point of view; in this perspective, works related to the letters of Greek and Latin world are particularly valuable, since they are characterised by multidisciplinary approaches (Bruno 2015, this volume; Molinelli 2014). Indeed, starting from philological and textual data, on the one side, these works shed light on linguistic elements as deictics and on the ways to express subjectivity both in synchrony and diachrony; on the other side, they are analysed in a pragmatic perspective through which it is possible to underline all instruments that speaker/receiver use to mark her/his position and underline her/his attitudes towards receiver and towards context in general. It is clear that it is a favoured observatory to look at the expression of one’s identity in particular discourse situations.
4.3 Oral and written plurilingualism Another element that could be deduced is that all multilingual situations, even though there are some general opposite opinions (Sebba 2012), were characteristic of the past in the same way as of present. In addition, the use of more than one code in a written document reveals that in Antiquity and Middle Age, such authors were deeply competent in both linguistic codes (Mazzon this volume; Murgia 2014; Consani 2015a, 2016a), whereas in analogous manifestations of the modern world (particularly phenomena of code-switching) the switch from a language to another is often due to speaker poor competence in one of the languages. Hence, in Antiquity and Medieval world, plurilinguism was used as the result of a conscious strategy, even a resource in order to use it for different aims, and among them, to express speaker’s identity: the case study Mazzon (this volume) analysed is a clear example of this.
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Since written texts are planned and have a high degree of implicit indexicality, on the one side, they are characterised by several limits concerning the possibility to reconstruct the diaphasic and diastratic context in which they were composed. However, on the other side, they are a powerful tool to detect and individuate authors’ cultural and ideological attitudes (cf. Turchetta, this volume): from this point of view, and with reference to the expression of speaker/writer’s identity, it could be claimed that written texts seem to be more valuable than the oral ones, characterised by their casualty and evanescence. It is enough thinking that, beyond the linguistic aspects, from the choice of a particular writing system instead of another in a situation in which different systems exist, several writer’s attitudes could be deduced (Turchetta, this volume; Consani 2015a), something that turns out difficult to deduce through speech.
References Adams, James N. 1977. The vulgar Latin of the letters of Claudius Terentianus. Manchester: University Press. Baldi, Philip & Pierluigi Cuzzolin. 2015. “Uniformitarian Principle”: dalle scienze naturali alla linguistica storica? In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 37–49. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Bergs, Alexander. 2005. Social Network Analysis and Historical Sociolinguistics. Studies in Morphosintectic Variation in the Paston Letters (1421–1503). Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter. Berruto, Gaetano. 2003 [1995]. Fondamenti di sociolinguistica. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Bruno, Carla. 2015. Aspetti della variazione nelle lettere papiracee in lingua greca dell’Egitto tolemaico. In Marina Benedetti (ed.), Rappresentazioni linguistiche dell’identità. [Special issue]. Quaderni di AIΩN (n.s.) 3. 33–50. Bruno, Carla. Variations of the First Person: Looking at the Greek Private Letters of Ptolemaic Egypt. This volume. Consani, Carlo. 2014a. Ancient Greek Sociolinguistics and Dialectology. In Georgios K. Giannakis (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics. Vol. I, 117–124. Leiden/ Boston: Brill. Consani, Carlo. 2014b. Code-switching. In Georgios K. Giannakis (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics. Vol. I, 308. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Consani, Carlo. 2015a. Ritorno a Kafizin. Esiti del contatto fra lingue e scritture nella Cipro ellenistica. In Carlo Consani (ed.), Contatto interlinguistico fra presente e passato, 133– 148. Milano: LED. Consani, Carlo (ed.). 2015b. Contatto interlinguistico fra presente e passato. Milano: LED. Consani, Carlo. 2016a. Fenomeni di contatto a livello di discorso e di sistema nella Cipro ellenistica (Kafizin) e le tendenze di “lunga durata”. In Paolo Di Giovine & Valentina Gasbarra (eds.), Dinamiche sociolinguistiche in aree di influenza greca. Mutamento, variazione e contatto. Atti del convegno internazionale (Roma, 22–24 settembre 2014). [Special issue]. Linguarum Varietas 5. 51–65.
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Consani, Carlo. 2016b. Variazione e mutamento nel diasistema greco antico. In Patrizia Cordin & Alessandro Parenti (eds.), Problemi e prospettive della linguistica storica. Atti del XL Convegno annuale della Società Italiana di Glottologia (Trento, 22–24 ottobre 2015), 53– 73. Roma: Il Calamo. Cuzzolin, Pierluigi. 2015. Identità e alterità fra i Celti. Alcune riflessioni. In Carlo Consani (ed.), Contatto interlinguistico fra presente e passato, 345–357. Milano: LED. Di Giovine, Paolo & Valentina Gasbarra (eds.). 2016. Dinamiche sociolinguistiche in aree di influenza greca. Mutamento, variazione e contatto. Atti del convegno internazionale (Roma, 22-24 settembre 2014). [Special issue]. Linguarum Varietas 5. Duranti, Alessandro. 2004. Agency in Language. In Alessandro Duranti (ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, 451–473. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Edwards, John. 2009. Language and Identity. An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elspass, Stephan. 2012. The Use of Private Letters and Diaries in Sociolinguistic Investigation. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, 156–169. Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Erikson, Erik H. 1950. Childhood and Society. New York: Norton. Evans, David (ed.). 2015. Language and Identity. Discourse in the World. London/New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Evans, Trevor. 2007. Greetings from Alexandria. In Jaakko Frösén J., Tiina Purola & Erja Salmenkivi (eds.), Proceedings of the 24th International Congress of Papyrology (Helsinki, 1st–7th of August 2004), 299–308. Helsinki: Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. Evans, Trevor & Dirk Obbink (eds.). 2010. The Language of the Papyri. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fearon, James D. 1999. What is identity (as we now use the word)?. httpsː//web.stanford.edu/ group/fearon-research/cgi-bin/wordpress/53-2/ (accessed 10.1.2016) Fedriani, Chiara, Chiara Ghezzi & Luigi Talamo. Exploring Linguistic Representations of Identity through the DiSCIS Corpus: Evidence from Directive Acts in Plautus and Goldoni. This volume. Fishman, Joshua A. 1972. Domains and the Relationship between Micro- and Macrosociolinguistics, in John J. Gumperz & Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics. The Ethnography of Communications, 435–453. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Ghezzi, Chiara & Piera Molinelli. 2013. Tra grammatica e pragmatica: ciclicità di sviluppi funzionali (lat. Quaeso e it. Prego). Studi Italiani di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata 41. 441–457. Ghezzi, Chiara & Piera Molinelli (eds.). 2014. Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Halliday, Michael, Alexander Kirkwood & James Robert Martin. 1993. Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Harris, Max. 2011. Sacred Folly. A New History of the Feast of Fools, Ithaka-London: Cornell University Press. Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva. 2005. Language Contact and Grammatical Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joseph, John E. 2004. Language and Identity. National, Ethnic, Religious, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kilpert, Diana. 2003. Getting the full picture: A reflection on the work of M. A. K. Halliday. Language Sciences 25. 159–209.
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Klauck, Hans-Josef. 2006. Ancient Letters and the New Testament. A Guide to the Context and Exegesis. Waco Texas: Baylor University Press. Lorenzetti, Luca. Greek in Rome around the Year 1000. This volume. Marotta, Giovanna & Francesco Rovai (eds). 2015. Ancient Languages between Variation and Norm. [Special issue]. Studi e Saggi Linguistici 53 (2). Mazzon, Gabriella. Code-switching and Style-shifting in the Anglophone World: Medieval and Contemporary Identity Marking and Interaction Strategies. This volume. Molinelli, Piera. 2014. Marche linguistiche della soggettività nelle lettere private in latino. In Ilona Bădescu & Mihaela Popescu (eds.), Studia Linguistica et Philologica in Honorem Prof. Univ. Dr. Michaela Livescu, 194–205. Craiova: Editura Universitaria. Molinelli, Piera. Forthc. La rappresentazione linguistica della soggettività in latino volgare e tardo: lettere e dintorni. In Latin vulgaire – Latin tardif XI. Actes du XIe colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif. (Oviedo, 1–4 septembre 2014). Molinelli, Piera. Linguistic Representations of Identity. Texts, Contexts, and Methods in Diachronic Perspective. This volume Molinelli, Piera & Ignazio Putzu (eds.). 2015. Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica. Milano: Franco Angeli. Murgia, Giulia. 2014. Un “sociolinguista” cinquecentesco: Girolamo Olives e i suoi Commentaria et Glosa in Cartam de Logu (1567). Rhesis. International Journal of Linguistics, Philology, and Literature 5 (1). 79–112. Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (eds). 1996. Sociolinguistics and Language History. Studies based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2003. Historical Sociolinguistics. Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Longman Pearson Education. Pighi, Giovan Battista. 1964. Lettere latine d’un soldato di Traiano. Bologna: Zanichelli. Sebba, Mark. 2012. Researching and Theorising Multilingual Texts. In Mark Sebba, Shahrzad Mahootian & Carla Jonsson (eds.), Language Mixing and Code-Switching in Writing. Approaches to Mixed-Language Written Discourse, 1–26. London: Routledge. Turchetta, Barbara. The Writer’s Identity and Identification Markers in Writing Code Mixing and Interference. This volume. Vierros, Marja. 2012. Bilingual Notaries in Hellenistic Egypt. A Study of Greek as a Second Language. Brussels: Koniklijke Vlaamse Academie Van België Voor Watenschappen en Kunsten. Willi, Andreas. 2007 [2002]. Language on Stage: Aristophanic Language, Cultural History, and Athenian Identity. In Andreas Willi (ed.), The Language of Greek Comedy, 111–149. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carla Bruno
3 Variations of the First Person: Looking at the Greek Private Letters of Ptolemaic Egypt 1 Introduction 1.1 Illogical plurals in Greek Ptolemaic papyri The use of first-person plural markers – alongside the singular – in the sender’s self-reference is not uncommon in Greek private letters of the Ptolemaic period.1 In the literature, they are generally considered as marking the senders’ identification within a group, e.g. their staff (in the large administrative correspondence, well-documented under the Ptolemies) or their family (in more personal communications), and understood as conveying a ‘generalizing’ or ‘sociative’ nuance. They are hence ultimately referred to as a (although undetermined) plurality.2 However, first-person plural occurrences cannot always easily be ascribed to genuine plurals, and such variations in number often appear without explanation. This can be seen through the comparison of the passages (1) to (3) below, taken from P. Cair. Zen. 1.59015, and extracted from the drafts of the letters written by Zenon, close associate of the finance minister Apollonios, following the recovery of three runaway slaves. Apparently, in the decription of the circumstances in which he has learnt the current position of the fugitives, the author shifts from the singular (cf. 1, from the draft to Pasikles, the agent in charge of the recovery) to the plural (cf. 2 and 3, respectively to Epikrates and Peisistratos, both also involved in the matter).
1 Such variations are not limited to the epistolary style; see Bruno (Forthc.) for a survey (and an interpretation) of plural (instead of singular) first-person markers instances in the language of tragedy. 2 These cases are generally seen as introductory to the modestiae and (much later) maiestatis uses (cf., among others, Slotty 1927; Mayser 1926; Zilliacus 1953). Carla Bruno, University for Foreigners of Siena DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-003
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(1)
ἀνήγγελέν μοι Κρότος γεγραφέναι σε αὐτῶι | ὅτι οἱ παῖδες οἱ ἀποδράντες μηνυτρίζοιντο | εἶναι παρὰ τῶι Κολλοχ\ούτωι/ \καὶ/ τῶι Ζαιδήλ\ωι/ \τῶι/ ἀδελφῶι ‘Krotos informed me that you had written to him that the runaway slaves have been reported (for a reward) to be with Kallochoutos and his brother Zaidelos’ (P. Cair. Zen., I, 59015, ll. 2–4)
(2)
προσή̣γγ̣ [ελται δὲ] | ἡ̣μῖν̣ ε̣ῖ ̣να̣ι ̣ τ̣[ούτους παρ]ὰ Κολλοχούτωι ̣ ‘We were informed (lit. ‘it was announced to us’) that they (scil. the slaves) are with Kallochoutos’ (P. Cair. Zen., I, 59015, ll. 20–21)
(3)
ἀνήγελλεν ἡμῖν Κρότος γεγραφέναι | Πασικλῆν μηνυτρίζεσθαι τοὺς ἀποδράντας | παῖδας ‘Krotos informed us that Pasikles had written that the runaway slaves have been reported (for a reward)’ (P. Cair. Zen., I, 59015, ll. 27–29)
While in (2) the shift to the plural is related to other morpho-syntactic variations, actually involved by the impersonal clause structure, the plural is more unexpected in (3), due the close parallelism between (1) and (3), where the same lexical items recur in the same linear order.
1.2 Methods and methodology Apart from documents in which the author consistently presents himself using the singular or the plural (such as Zenon’s draft in 3, where only the plural appears to be available for the sender),3 this study focuses on letters featuring shifts from singular to plural (and from plural to singular) in the sender’s selfreference, with the aim to describe the circumstances under which first-person plural markers (here referred to as ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’) can replace singular forms (here referred to as ἐγώ ‘I’). Accordingly, all pronominal, adjectival and verbal forms occurring in the first person within a selection of letters of the early Ptolemaic period taken from White (1986) have been considered and discussed, ruling out the ones likely to be genuine plurals.4 3 The plural for the sender is particularly common in administrative correspondence (between officers), cf. Plut. Moralia Steph., 816 for an anecdote where the father invites him to use the first-plural person instead of the singular, in order to also include his absent colleague in his mission report. This use is conversely less ordinary in the letters of privates, who tend to prefer the singular form, even when interacting with institutions (through petition). 4 This study is based on a survey of 52 letters (from the third to the second century B.C.) taken from White (1986)’s anthology, which is a small but representative collection of papyrus letters up to the third century A.D. (cf. also Porter and O’Donnell 2010: 293). The translations are mostly taken (or adapted) from White (1986) and suitably provided with literal rephrasings according to the original text.
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However, given the difficulty to reconstruct the letters’ situational context from vague internal hints, the ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ reference is not always clearly understandable. The epistolary form appears to depend on the use of a large number of stereotypical and conventional formulas; the composition of ancient letters is consequently quite repetitive and predictable in both wording and content.5 Conjectures on the context can thus be complicated, especially considering that the sender could also share additional information with the messenger, who was then able to add further details to texts often spare in the use of words,6 as illustrated in the closing of the petition of the Greek Simale, mother of a certain Herophantos, for whom she begs Zenon to intercede with Apollonios. (4)
τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ | πυνθάνου τοῦ φέροντ̣ός σοι τὰ γράμματα. οὐ γὰρ ἀλλότριος ἡμῖν ἐστιν. ‘As far as concerns other matters, learn from who brings the letter, since he is not stranger to us.’ (P. Col., III, 6, ll. 14–15)
Under such state of affair, the linguistic context can therefore be crucial in order to determine the communicative situation in which the letter occurs, and on which personal deixis depends. As a consequence, the opening greeting formula – the so-called ‘pre-script’ – results in the first basic anchoring of the personal deixis occurring in the body of the message, where both correspondents are introduced (in the third person) by means of their names.7 In their first appearance, sender (i.e. the addresser) and recipient (i.e. the addressee) thus present themselves as objects, not yet as subjects of enunciation.8 5 Cf. Bruno (2015) for a survey of some of the conventions for epistolary opening and closing, with a special emphasis on some subtle variations depending on the interaction between sociolinguistic parameters, such as the object of communication, the social status of the correspondents and their mutual relationship. 6 Cf. White (1986: 217) and the bibliography quoted therein. 7 The formula, unequivocally identifying the epystolary format, consists of a typical tripartite sentence featuring the sender’s name in the nominative (i.e. superscriptio), the recipient’s name in the dative (i.e. adscriptio) and the greetings verb form χαίρειν (i.e. salutatio), (cf. Klauck 2006: 17 and the references quoted therein for a discussion). The ἐπισταλτικὴ σύνταξις ‘epistolary syntax’ drew the attention of Apollonius Dyscolus, who describes the sentence as implying the ellipsis of the verb form (such as λέγει ‘he says’) from which the infinite might depend (cf. Π. συντ., III, §§ 63–65). 8 Pronominal deixis will here be dealt with using the basic theoretical framework of ‘enunciation’ theory as formulated in Benveniste ([1946] 1966a, [1956] 1966b, [1958] 1966c, [1970] 1974), with a special reference to recent restatements and implementations proposed in La Fauci and Tronci (2014), La Fauci (2016), and Pieroni (2010; 2014). The model énonciation vs. énoncé is here rendered with the terminological distinction ‘enunciation’ vs. ‘statement’ (cf. Marnette 2005 on the difficulties of transposing the French concepts in English).
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However, as far as plural forms are concerned, their deictic reference is not plainly retraceable, because they are not only used for the sender exclusively, like in the passages in (2) and (3) above, but also for the sender and somebody else.9 For instance, in the passage below, taken from the letter that the gym manager Hierokles addresses to Zenon about the athletic training of a certain Pyrrhos, the verb form ἐπιστάμεθα ‘we know’ refers to several persons, i.e. the first- and the third-person. (5)
ἔ[γραψάς] | μοι περὶ Πύρρου, εἰ [μὲ]ν ἀκρει[βῶ]ς ἐπιστάμεθα, ἀλείφειν αὐτόν, εἰ δὲ μέ, μὴ ̣ συνβῆ[ι ἀνήλω-] | μά \τε/ μάταιον προσπεσ̣εῖν καὶ [ἀ]π̣ὸ τῶν γραμμάτων ἀποσσπαθῆναι. π[ερ]ὶ μὲν οὖ[ν τοῦ με] | ἐπίσστασθαι οἱ θεοὶ μάλιστʼ ἂν εἰδέησαν, Πτολεμαίωι δὲ φαίνεται, ὅσα κατʼ ἄ[νθρωπον], | ὅτι τῶν νῦν ἀλιφομένων, οἳ προειλήφασιν χρόνον πολύν, πολὺ κρείττων ‘You wrote to me regarding Pyrrhos, (telling me) to anoint him (for gymnastic training), if we know with certainty that he will be a success, but if not certain, to make sure that he not incur useless expense nor be distracted from his studies. Now, so far as my being certain is concerned, (only) the gods know for sure, but it seems to Ptolemy, so far as a man can tell, that Pyrrhos is much better than those presently being trained, who started training a long time before him, and that very soon he will be much beyond them’ (White 1986: 38). (P. Cair. Zen., I, 59060, ll. 2–5)
Here, the exclusive nature of the plural can reasonably be inferred from the lines immediately following ἐπιστάμεθα ‘we know’, where the subjective (cf. με ‘me’, l. 3) and non-subjective (cf. Πτολεμαίωι ‘Ptolemy’, l. 4) components of the plural are – so to say – dissociated.10 On the other hand, first-person plural can also refer to the sender’s association with the recipient. The inclusive interpretation of the verb form πράξωμɛν 9 As is well known, first person pluralisation does not involve entity multiplication, the notion of plural being inconsistent with its subjectivity component: “« nous » est, non pas une multiplication d’objets identiques, mais une jonction entre « je » et le « non-je »” (Benveniste 1966a: 233). This is an ancient and recurrent issue in the meta-linguistic reflection on pronouns: Τὰ γοῦν πληθυντικὰ τοῦ πρώτου προσώπου ἐμπεριεκτικὰ δύναται εἶναι καὶ παντὸς προσώπου (‘First person plural can then also include every person’) states Apollonios Dyskolos in its Περὶ ἀντωνιμίας ‘On pronouns’ (G.G. I, 19: 9ss.). 10 According to a generally acknowledged terminology, depending on the inclusion of the addressee or not, first plural complexes can respectively be defined as ‘inclusive’ or ‘exclusive’. It is well known that such a functional distinction can also be formally opposed in some languages. Cf. Siewierska (2004: 82) for an overview (with a taxonomy) of the main types over the world’s languages.
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‘we would do’, in the passage (6) below, can, for instance, be suggested by the phrase παραγενηθεὶς σύν σοι γενόμενος ‘having been assisted by you’ immediately preceding (cf. l. 11). The author of the document is the prison officer Barkaios, who expresses his gratitude to his colleague Apollonios for his support in recovering some fugitives, and invites him to work again together in the future. (6)
καὶ ἐὰν τολμήσωσι καὶ καταβῶσι ἐκτὸς τοῦ ἀσύλου, διασάφησόν μοι, | ὅπως παραγενηθεὶς σύν σοι γενόμενος πράξωμέν τι ‘and if they (scil. the prisoners) dare to go down outside the sanctuary, inform me, in order that, having been assisted by you, we would be enabled to do something (lit. ‘we would do something’)’ (White 1986: 72) (UPZ, 1, 64, ll. 10–11)
Analogous combinations of first and other (second or third) persons are excluded in cases like (2) and (3), where the ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ reference is in fact only fulfilled by the sender. In that case, the plural might easily be replaced by the singular (as the comparison with 1 shows).11 The distinctiveness of the ἡμεῖϛ forms referring to the sender must then be determined, not only by their opposition to the singular (with which they can alternate), but also by their contrast with genuine plurals (with which they are in opposition).
3 Data discussion 3.1 Plural vs. singular: textual and morpho-syntactic patterns of distribution The plural ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ outnumbers the singular ἐγώ in the Zenon’s draft to Pasikles partially quoted in (1), which displays in fact the only occurrence of the singular in the text. A selection of the salient passages of the letter is presented in (7), which gives a sample of the variation encountered:
11 The phenomenon is, according to Benveniste (1966a), bound to the subjective instance of the first-person plural: “[« nous »] c’est un « je » dilaté au-delà de la personne stricte, à la fois accru et de contours vagues. De là viennent en dehors du pluriel ordinaire deux emplois opposés, non contradictoires” (ibid.: 234–235): the pluralis maiestatis and modestiae. The process is suggestively seen in terms of hyperbole or litotes by La Fauci and Tronci (2014: 103). See Pieroni (2010) for a theoretical refinement of Benveniste’s « je » dilaté in the notion of “expanded nos”.
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a.
Πασικλεῖ. εἰ ἔρρωσαι, καλῶς ἂν ἔχοι· ὑγιαίνομεν δὲ | καὶ αὐτοί. ἀνήγγελέν μοι Κρότος γεγραφέναι σε αὐτῶι | ὅτι οἱ παῖδες οἱ ἀποδράντες μηνυτρίζοιντο | εἶναι παρὰ τῶι Κολλοχ\ούτωι/ \καὶ/ τῶι Ζαιδήλ\ωι/ \τῶι/ ἀδελφῶι. ‘To Pasikles. If you are well, it would be excellent; we too are well. Krotos informed me that you had written to him that the runaway slaves have been reported (for a reward) to be with Kallochoutos and his brother Zaidelos’ (P. Cair. Zen., I, 59015, ll. 1–4)
b.
τοῦτο γὰρ | ποιήσας εὐχαριστήσ[εις ἡμῖν. ][[[. . .] . . . ]] \ὃ/ δʼ ἂν ἀνηλώσηις | [δώσ]ομεν. ‘For by doing this, you will do us a favour. And whatever you spend we will repay’ (P. Cair. Zen., I, 59015, ll. 9–11)
c.
[καὶ σὺ δὲ ἐάν τινος] | [χ]ρείαν ἔχη[ις] τῶν ἐν τ[ῆι χώραι, γράφε ἡ]μῖν· | π̣οιήσομεν γὰρ φιλικῶ[ς]. ‘Moreover, if you ever have need of anything in the country, write to us, for we will gladly do it’ (White 1986: 29) (P. Cair. Zen., I, 59015, ll. 13–15)
One first difference apparently concerns the plural vs. singular textual distribution. Compared to ἐγώ ‘I’, ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ occurs in the most conventional and stereotyped passages of the letter, where the author’s expressiveness appears somewhat limited by the use of the set of prescribed formulas that – from the opening salutation to the closing farewell – structure the letter. As a consequence, the ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ forms recur in the opening customary pleasantries on the correspondent’s health following the salutation (cf. 7a), where the sender, Zenon, reassures the recipient about his health (cf. ὑγιαίνομεν . . . αὐτοί ‘we are well’, ll. 1–2).12 Symmetrically, they are found in the closing (cf. 7c), in the sender’s promises to repay the received favour, (cf. ἡμῖν ‘to us’ and π̣οιήσομεν ‘we will do’ respectively at lines 14 and 15). Finally, in the body of the message, the plural forms recur within another recurrent topos of the letter writing – the fulfilment of a request of the sender as a favour from the recipient – typically expressed by the verb forms of εὐχαριστέω ‘I do a favour’.
12 See Klauck (2006: 21ss.) for a survey of the standard components of the health wish formula (cf. Exler [1923] 1976), also in its relationships with the Latin formula valetudinis. The pattern, as shown in Evans (2007: 305), is particularly recurrent in letters from Hellenic or Hellenized environments. Cf. Bruno (2015) for an overview of possible formal variants in the wording.
Variations of the First Person
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Interestingly, such distributional patterns occur with a certain frequency within the corpus investigated. Instances of ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ for the sender are, for example, found in nearly two thirds of the cases singled out in the health wish formula. At times, the plural can abruptly alternate with the singular in the very same passage, which results in an estranging anacoluthon that highlights the basic subjective instance of such forms, as exemplified by (8) and (9) below. (8)
Δρόμων Ζήνωνι χαίρειν. τοῖς θεοῖς πᾶσιν χάριν ἔχομεν, | εἰ αὐτός τε ὑγιαίνεις καὶ τὰ λοιπά σοι κατὰ λόγον γέγονεν. | ἐρρώμεθα δὲ καὶ αὐτός, καὶ καθότι μοι ἔγραψας τὴν πᾶσαν ἐπι- | μέλειαν ποιοῦμαι ὅπως ἂν μηθεὶς ἐνοχλῆι τοὺς παρὰ σοῦ. ‘Dromon to Zenon greeting. I offer up thanks to all the god if you yourself are well and if all your other affairs have been as you want. I myself am also well (lit. ‘we myself are also well’), and just as you wrote I am taking every care that no one bothers you people.’ (White 1986: 52) (P. Cair. Zen., III, 59426, ll. 1–4)
(9)
Σαραπίων Πτολεμαίωι καὶ Ἀπολλωνίῳ \τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς/ χαίρειν. εἰ ἔρρωσθαι, ἔρρω- | μαι δὲ καὐτοι ‘Sarapion to his brothers, Ptolemy and Apollonios, greeting. If you are well, (it would be excellent); I myself am well (lit. ‘I ourselves am well’).’ (White 1986: 73) (UPZ, 1, 66, ll. 1–2)
Plural forms – which are common in such conventional and formulaic expressions – could then be related to the linguistic expression of politeness and play a crucial role in the modulation of the correspondents’ interactional space. On the other hand, singular forms are not excluded from the health wish formula, and they especially occur in more personal and emotional writings, where the affective distance between the correspondents does not need to be preserved. This is the case in (10), taken from the letter of Isias to her husband, Hephaistion, whom she begs to come back home and rejoin his family, and to interrupt his seclusion in the Memphis Serapeum. (10)
Ἰσιὰς Ἡφαιστίωνι τῶι ἀδελφῶ[ι χαί(ρειν).] | εἰ ἐρρωμένωι τἆλλα κατὰ λόγον | ἀπαντᾶι, εἴη ἄν ὡς τοῖς θεοῖς εὐχο- | μένη διατελῶ, καὶ αὐτὴ δʼ ὑγίαινον | καὶ τὸ παιδίον καὶ οἱ ἐν οἴκωι πάντες | σου διὰ παντὸς μνείαν ποιούμενοι.
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‘Isias to Hephaistion greeting. If you are well and your other affairs turn out in a like fashion, it would be as I have been continually praying to the gods; I myself am also well and the child and all in the household are continually thinking of you’ (White 1986: 65) (UPZ, I, 59, ll. 1–5a) There is, in the passage, a striking contrast between the singular forms introducing Isias and the evocation of her crowded family, which anticipates the choral scene suggested by the collocation μνείαν ποιούμενοι ‘remembering’, prone to be interpreted as either first person (referring both to Isias and her household) or third person (referring only to her household). On the other hand, senders can also include somebody else in the health wish formula, as shown in other letters. In (11), for instance, Artemidoros, a renowned physician under the Ptolomies, also reassures his recipient, Zenon, on Apollonios health. (11)
Ἀρτεμίδωρος Ζήνωνι χαίρειν. εἰ ἔρρωσαι, εὖ ἂν ἔχοι· ἔρρωμαι δὲ καὶ ἐγὼ καὶ Ἀπολλώνιος ὑγίαινεν καὶ | τἄλλα ἦν κατὰ γνώμην ‘Artemidoros to Zenon greeting. If you are well, it would be excellent; I myself am also well and Apollonios is healthy and everything else is satisfactory.’ (White 1986: 50) (P. Cair. Zen., II, 59251, ll. 1–2)
Singular forms then also occur when the usual routine in the health wish topos is contradicted by the sender’s current poor health, as in (12), taken from the quick note addressed to Zenon by a certain Mnasistratos: (12)
[Μνασίστρατος Ζ]ήνωνι χαίρειν. καλῶς ἂν ἔχοι εἰ ἔρρωσαι καὶ ὑγιαί- | [νεις τῶι σώματι. ἐ]γὼ εἰς μεγάλην δὲ ἀρρωστίαν ἐνέπεσον καὶ εἰς ἀπο- | [ρίαν. ‘Mnasistratos to Zenon greeting. It would be excellent if you are (feeling?) well and if you are physically sound. I have fallen into a grave illness and into a difficult strait.’ (White 1986: 37) (P. Col., III, 10, ll. 1–3)
Furthermore, authors tend to present themselves with the ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ forms, when they urge the recipient to reply. This is another recurrent pattern of letter writing, as illustrated in the examples selected and quoted below in (13)–(15), where senders’ plural representation seems to reflect, again, a politeness strategy, in this case to mitigate the illocutionary force of the request.13 13 See also Fedriani, Ghezzi, and Talamo (this volume), on Latin and Italian, for a survey of linguistic strategies to mitigate Directive Speech Acts, respectively, in the plays of Plautus and Goldoni.
Variations of the First Person
(13)
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καὶ σὺ δὲ γράφε πρὸς ἡμᾶς περὶ ὧν ἂν βούληι· ποιήσομεν γὰρ αὐτό σ̣[οι] προθύμως. ‘And write to us concerning whatever you want; for we will eagerly do it for you’ (White 1986: 33) (P. Cair. Zen., V, 59804, l. 12)
(14)
γράφε δὲ καὶ σὺ ἡμῖν τί ἄν σοι | [ποιοῦ]ν̣τ̣[ες χαρ]ι ̣ζοίμεθα. ‘You also must write to us regarding whatever we could do to favour you (lit. ‘doing what we could do you a favour’)’ (White 1986: 35) (P. Mich., I, 6, ll. 5–6)
(15)
χαριεῖ οὖμ μοι σαυτοῦ τε ἐπιμελόμενος | ἵνα ὑγιαίνηις καὶ ἡμῖν γράφων ἐάν τί σοι βούληι γίνεσθαι ὧν ἡμεῖς δυνάμεθα. ‘Therefore, you will do me a favour taking care of your health and writing to us if there is anything you want which we are able to get.’ (P. Cair. Zen., II, 59251, ll. 3–4)
Remarkably, in all the passages so far quoted, number variation also co-occurs with other recurrent morpho-syntactic properties. There is, for instance, a clear tendency of ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ to combine with modally marked predicates. For example, in the Zenon’s draft to Pasikles (cf. 7), the plural – unlike the singular – occurs in the apodose of conditional clauses (i.e. εὐχαριστήσεις ἡμῖν ‘you will do us a favour’ at l. 10, and [δώσ]ομεν ‘we will give’ at l. 12), and in an order expressed by the imperative (cf. γράφε ἡ]μῖν ‘write to us’, l. 12). Similarly, ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ relates to an imperative verb form in passages (13) and (14), while it occurs in the implicit protasis of a conditional clause in (15). As far as tense is concerned, there is a significant relationship with the future tense (cf. εὐχαριστήσεις ‘you will do a favour’, δώσομεν ‘we will give’, ποιήσομεν ‘we will do’ respectively at ll. 10, 11 and 12 of the Pasikles’s draft), which shares with the above-mentioned modal types the property of referring to a non-actual event, beyond the spatiotemporal coordinates of the enunciation situation.14 The picture that emerges from this is that when ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ occurs, it tends to exclude a reference to the time of enunciation, both in its morpho-syntactic and textual preferences. As a matter of fact, the conventional formulas, where ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ often occurs, also go beyond contingency, since they are rooted in a socially 14 The well-known connections between future and modality also appear in a diachronic perspective: numerous future tenses are actually developed from modal forms. Cf., among others, Palmer ([1986] 2001) for a general overview.
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and institutionally recognized system of conventions through which the relationship between the correspondents is filtered.15
3.2 Plural vs. singular: a complementary distribution? Conversely to ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’, ἐγώ ‘I’ – which is less bound by stereotypes – tends to correlate with psychological predicates, such as in the incipit of Dromon’s letter to Zenon above in (8), where it appears in the collocation τὴν πᾶσαν ἐπιμέλειαν ποιοῦμαι ‘taking the greatest care’ (l. 4) in opposition to ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ that occurs in the health wish topos immediately preceding. This pattern is also found in the letter below, addressed by a certain Sostratos to Zenon to introduce his protégé Aischylos, where ἐγώ ‘I’ forms only appear with the psychological verbs οἶμαι ‘I think’ and σπεύδω ‘I strive’ (respectively at ll. 1 and 5 of the excerpt in 16): (16)
Σ̣ώστ̣ρ̣α̣το ̣ ς Ζήνωνι χαίρειν. οὐκ οἶμαι μέν σε ἀγνοεῖν περὶ Αἰσχύλου ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν | ἡμῖ ̣ν̣ ἀ̣λ̣λ̣ό̣τρ̣ ιος, ἀναπέπλευκεν δὲ πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἵνα συσταθῆι Κλεονίκωι. [. . .] | [. . .] τοῦτο δὲ | π̣[οιήσ]ας ε[ὐχαρι]στήσεις ἡμῖν· σπεύδω γὰρ περὶ αὐτοῦ. γράφε δὲ καὶ σὺ ἡμῖν τί ἄν σοι | [ποιοῦ]ν̣τ[̣ ες χαρ]ι ̣ζοίμεθα. | ἔρρωσο. ‘I do not think you are ignorant regarding Aischylos, that he is no stranger to us. He has now sailed up river to your company in order to be introduced to Kleoniskos. [. . .] By doing this you will do us a favour; for I am interested in him. You also must write to us regarding whatever we could do to favour you.’ (White 1986: 34–35) (P. Mich., 1, 6)
It is noteworthy that ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ occurs in complementary distribution, in more conventional passages: where the sender refers to his familiarity with Aischylos, the boy to be introduced, (cf. l. 1) and where he expresses his gratitude to the recipient, committing himself to repay the favour (cf. ll. 5–6).16 Again, verb tenses and mood vary in correlation with number, so that ἐγώ ‘I’ occurs with 15 See Ghezzi (2015) on Italian thanking phrases for some pragmaticalization patterns of routine politeness formulas in interactional contexts. On the high (inter)subjective value of similar “pre-fabricated” expressions see also Mazzon (this volume). 16 The wording in both cases reflects common epistolary stylistic patterns. Cf. (4) above for a comparable use of the phrasing οὐκ ἔστιν ἡμῖν ἀλλότριος ‘he is not stranger to us’ (where the present expresses a generic assertion) and (7b) for a similar use of the verb εὐχαριστέω ‘I do (someone) a favour’.
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the indicative present, and ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ with the future ε[ὐχαρι]στήσεις ‘you will do a favour’ (cf. l. 4), the imperative γράφε ‘write’ (cf. l. 5) and the optative χαρ]ι ̣ζοίμεθα ‘we would do a favour’ (cf. l. 5). Significantly, the same tensemood markers – present and indicative – can display different functional values in presence of ἐγώ ‘I’ and ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’. In the former case, οἶμαι ‘I think’ and σπεύδω ‘I strive’ are anchored to the enunciation plane, while in the latter, ἔστιν ‘he is’ appears as a generic assertion projecting the relationship between Sostratos and Aischylos beyond the contingency of the letter communicative act. The variation appears to be subject to similar conditions in Apollonios’s message to Panakestor in (17), where the finance minister shows his dissatisfaction with Panakestor’s supervision of his estates. The ἐγώ ‘I’ to ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ shift here correlates with the transition from the plain expression of his feelings (cf. κατεπλησσόμην ‘I was astounded’) to the more stereotyped request for a reply (featuring, just as in 13 and 14 above, an imperative verb form), where the use of the plural gives a mitigating effect on the request. (17)
κατεπλησσόμην τὴν ὀλιγωρίαν σου ἐπὶ τῶι μηθὲν γεγραφέναι μήτε περὶ τῆς | συντιμήσεως μήτε περὶ τῆς συναγωγῆς τοῦ σίτου. ἔτι οὖν καὶ νῦν γράψον ἡμῖν ἐν οἷς ἕκαστά | ἐστιν. ‘I am astounded by your negligence in not having written either about the valuation or about the gathering of the crops. So even now, write to me (lit. ‘to us’) immediately how everything is’ (White 1986: 42) (PSI, V, 502, ll. 8–10)
To sum up, first-plural person markers can be available for the sender’s selfreference when the spatio-temporal coordinates of the enunciation situation (i.e. hic et nunc) and the statement diverge, so that the sender – placing his role of uttering subject to background – presents himself as a stated object. This could be further corroborated by the following circumstance: ἐγώ ‘I’ forms prevail in passages containing direct references to the writing act (in other words the enunciation act). In contexts where the sender apparently regains his enunciative role, the preference goes for ἐγώ ‘I’, as exemplified in (18) and (19) below.17 (18)
γέγραφα οὖν σοι | ὅπως ἂν εἰδῆις ‘Therefore, I wrote to you that you would to know’ (White 1986: 33) (P. Cair. Zen., V, 59804, ll. 10–11)
17 Interestingly enough, the singular is also preferred in petitions epistolary genre, where the sender’s appeal to the recipient is typically marked by verbs such as δέομαι ‘I beg’, ἱκετεύω ‘I beseech’ and ἀξιόω ‘I ask’, plainly referring to the speech act subtype.
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οἶδα γὰρ ὅτι σοῦ | βουλομένου ἔσται ἡμῖν πάντα. ὑπογέγραφα δέ [σ]οι καὶ τῆς ἐλθούσης μοι παρʼ Ἀπολλωνίου \ἐπιστολῆς/ τὸ ἀν- | τίγραφον, ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ ὧν ἀπέσταλκα αὐτῶι. ‘For I know that we (I) will have everything that you want. In addition, I have appended (lit. ‘I have written under’) for you a copy of the letter which came to me from Apollonios, as well as my response to him’ (White 1986: 42) (PSI, V, 502, ll. 5–7)
Conversely, ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ forms tend to be preferred in passages involving a narrative attitude, where there is a substantial attenuation of the first-person subjective instance. For example, in (20) below (partially presented in 2 above), the shift to the plural marks the transition from the enunciation level (cf. ὑπογέγραφα ‘I have written under’, l. 6) to the statement plane: ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ is thus the form that the sender takes once he has projected himself in the chain of events.18 (20)
ὧν [τὰ ὀνόματα] | καὶ τὰς εἰκόνας ὑ̣π̣ο̣γέ̣ γ̣ ραφά σοι. προσή̣γγ̣ [ελται δὲ] | ̣ ἡ̣ μῖν̣ ε̣ῖ ̣να̣ι ̣ τ̣[ούτους παρ]ὰ Κολλοχούτωι ‘I have appended (lit. ‘I have written under’) for you their names and descriptions. We were informed (lit. ‘it was announced to us’) that they (scil. the slaves) are with Kallochoutos’ (P. Cair. Zen., I, 59015, ll. 19–21)
Similar patterns of variation can also be found in (21), another piece of correspondence between Panakestor and Apollonios, where Panakestor tries to apologize for his late reply. (21)
ἐκομισάμην τὴν παρου σου ἐπιστολὴν τοῦ Παχὼνς ιδ παρὰ Ζωίλου, ἐν ἧι γράφεις | θαυμάζων ὅτι οὐθέν σοι ἀπέσταλκα περὶ τῆς συντιμήσεως κ̣α̣ὶ τῆς συναγωγῆς τοῦ σπόρου. ἡμῖν δὲ | συνέβη παραγενέσθαι εἰς Φιλαδέλφειαν τοῦ Φαμενὼθ ιϛ καὶ ̣ [ε]ὐ̣θὺ γράψαι Ζωίλωι καὶ Ζωπυρίωνι | [καὶ τοῖς βασιλικοῖς γραμματεῦσιν παραγενέσθαι πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ἵ ̣να τὰ ὑπὸ σοῦ συντεταγμένα οἰκονο- | μήσωμεν.
18 The emergence of a narrative attitude is also emphasyzed by the shift to an impersonal predication that correspondingly backgrounds the subject function. On the modality by which person (crucially interacting with tense) can concur to explicit a narrative instance, cf. Benveniste [1959] 1966d, whose reflections are embodied in the histoire vs. discours dichotomy, partially overlapping Weinrich’s (1964) ‘narrative’ vs. ‘commentative’ tense articulation.
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‘I received your letter on Pachon 14 from Zoilos, in which you express astonishment that I have sent you no word about the valuation and the gathering of the crops. It happened when we arrived (lit. ‘it happened to us to arrive’) in Philadelphia on Phanemot 16 that I immediately wrote to Zoilos, Zopyrion and the royal secretaries (asking them) to come to us, in order we could act according to your orders.’ (White 1986: 42) (PSI, V, 502, ll. 11–15) Again, while ἐγώ ‘I’ forms refer to the sender-recipient interaction in the enunciative framework, such as receiving a message (cf. ἐκομισάμην ‘I have received’, l. 11) and giving the expected answer (cf. ἀπέσταλκα ‘I have sent’, l. 12), ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ emerges when Panakestor describes the events in which he was involved and his expectations for the future.19
4 Concluding remarks In conclusion, the analysis highlights some (textual and morpho-syntactic) parameters to which number alternation in the sender self-reference seems to be sensitive, shedding light on the principle underpinning the variation. Senders tend to introduce themselves using the plural in the most conventional and stereotyped parts of the letter, where pluralisation functions as a politeness strategy modulating the interlocutor distance.20 Moreover, there is a remarkable relationship with modal and, more generally, non-actual predicates. In particular, ἡμεῖϛ ‘we’ appears to be a variant of ἐγώ ‘I’ in passages that exclude an immediate reference to the space-temporal coordinates of the enunciation situation (i.e. hic et nunc), e.g. because it is unreal, projected towards the future or the past, or just because it is ‘beyond’ an actual present, as in stereotyped epistolary formulas.21
19 Note that οἰκονομήσωμεν ‘we could manage’ could reasonably be interpreted as a genuine plural, referring to Panakestor’s cooperation with the secretaries dealing with Apollonios’s arrangements. 20 See Molinelli (2015b), on Latin, for other pragmatic functions performed by the pluralization of the first person pronoun in Cicero. 21 An analogous process also seems to be underpinning the emergence of an “expanded nos” in Latin, cf. Pieroni (2010, 2014).
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In such a mismatch between enunciation and statement level, the sender can background his role of uttering subject. Pluralisation of the first person pronoun therefore appears to be a strategy to conceal the self in the addresser (i.e. sender) vs. addressee (i.e. recipient) linguistic interaction.22
References Benveniste, Émile. 1966a [1946]. Structure des relations de personne dans le verbe. In Problèmes de linguistique générale, 1, 225–235. Paris: Gallimard. Benveniste, Émile. 1966b [1956]. La nature des pronoms. In Problèmes de linguistique générale, 1, 251–257. Paris: Gallimard. Benveniste, Émile. 1966c [1958]. De la subjectivité dans le langage. In Problèmes de linguistique générale, 1, 258–266. Paris: Gallimard. Benveniste, Émile. 1966d [1959] Les relations de temps dans le verbe français. In Problèmes de linguistique générale, 1, 237–250. Paris: Gallimard. Benveniste, Émile. 1974 [1970]. L’appareil formel de l’énonciation, In Problèmes de linguistique générale, 2, 79–88. Paris: Gallimard. Bruno, Carla. 2015. Aspetti della variazione nelle lettere papiracee in lingua greca dell’Egitto tolemaica. In Marina Benedetti (ed.), Rappresentazioni linguistiche dell’identità. [Special issue]. Quaderni di AIΩN (n.s.) 3. 33–50. Bruno, Carla. Forthc. Dietro la maschera. Apparizioni della prima persona nell’Antigone di Sofocle. In Felicia Logozzo & Paolo Poccetti (eds.), Ancient Greek Linguistics: new approaches, insights, perspectives. Berlin/New York/Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. Evans, Trevor. 2007. Greetings from Alexandria. In Jaakko Frösén, Tiina Purola & Erja Salmenkivi (eds.), Proceedings of the 24th International Congress of Papyrology (Helsinki, 1–7 August, 2004), 299–308. Helsinki: Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. Exler, Francis X. J. 1976 [1923]. The form of the ancient Greek letter of the epistolary papyri (3rd c. B.C.–3rd c. A.D.). A study in Greek epistolography. Washington D.C.: Ares. Fedriani, Chiara, Chiara Ghezzi & Luigi Talamo. Exploring Linguistic Representations of Identity through the DiSCIS Corpus: Evidence from Directive Acts in Plautus and Goldoni. This volume. Ghezzi, Chiara. 2015. Thanking formulae. The role of language contact in the diachrony of Italian. In Carlo Consani (ed.), Contatto interlinguistico fra presente e passato, 315–341. Milano: LED. Klauck, Hans-Josef. 2006. Ancient Letters and the New Testament. A Guide to the Context and Exegesis. Waco Texas: Baylor University Press. La Fauci, Nunzio. 2016. Noi, persona politica. In Rita E. Librandi & Rosa Piro (eds.), L’italiano della politica e la politica per l’italiano. Atti dell’XI Convegno ASLI (Napoli, 20–22 novembre 2014), 387–400. Firenze: Franco Cesati. 22 By means of non-canonical uses of personal deixis, uttering subjects in fact shape and refine the range of their expressions in both the representation of themselves and the others (cf. Mühläusler and Harré 1990). See Molinelli (2015a) on pluralisation as a deferential strategy codified in the system of social deixis for the asymmetrical relationship with the interlocutor.
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La Fauci, Nunzio & Liana Tronci. 2014. Noi in Se questo è un uomo. In Maria Chiara Janner, Mario A. Della Costanza & Paul Sutermeister (eds.), Noi – Nous – Nosotros. Studi romanzi – Études romanes – Estudios románicos, 95–125. Bern: Peter Lang. Marnette, Sophie. 2005. Speech and Thought Presentation in French: Concepts and strategies. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Company. Mayser, Edwin. 1926. Grammatik der Griechischen Papyri aus der Ptolemäerzeit, II, 1. Berlin & Leipzig: W. de Gruyter & Co. Mazzon, Gabriella. Code-switching and Style-shifting in the Anglophone World: Medieval and Contemporary Identity Marking and Interaction Strategies. This volume. Molinelli, Piera. 2015a. Polite forms and sociolinguistic dynamics in contacts between varieties of Italian. In Carlo Consani (ed.), Contatto interlinguistico fra presente e passato, 283–313. Milano: LED. Molinelli, Piera. 2015b. Plural pronouns and social deixis in Latin: a pragmatic development. In Giovanna Marotta & Francesco Rovai (eds.), Ancient Languages between Variation and Norm. [Special issue]. Studi e Saggi Linguistici 53 (2). 65–88. Mühläusler, Peter & Rom Harré. 1990. Pronouns & People. The linguistic construction of social and personal identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Palmer, Frank R. 2001 [1986]. Mood and Modality, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pieroni, Silvia. 2010. Nos as expression of the ‘ego’ in Cicero’s Letters to Atticus (books I–IV). In Peter Anreiter & Manfred Kienpointner (eds.), Latin Linguistics Today, Akten des 15. Internationalen Kolloquiums zur Lateinischen Linguistik (Innsbruck, 4–9 April 2009), 595–607. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität. Pieroni, Silvia. 2014. Persone e testi. Sulla correlazione tra « io » e « tu », specialmente in latino. Pisa: Pacini Editore. Porter, Stanley & Matthew O’Donnell. 2010. Building and Examining Linguistic Phenomena in a Corpus of Representative Papyri. In Trevor Evans & Dirt D. Obbink (eds.), The language of the papyri, 287–311. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Siewierska, Anna. 2004. Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slotty, Friedrich. 1927. Der sog. Pluralis modestiae. Indogermanische Forschungen 44, 155–90. Weinrich, Harald. 1964. Tempus: besprochene und erzählte welt. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. White, John L. 1986. Light from ancient letters. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Zilliacus, Henrik. 1953. Selbstgefühl und Servilität. Studien zum unregelmässigen Numerusgebrauch im Griechischen. Helsingfors: Akademische Bokhandeln.
Chiara Fedriani, Chiara Ghezzi and Luigi Talamo
4 Exploring Linguistic Representations of Identity through the DiSCIS Corpus: Evidence from Directive Acts in Plautus and Goldoni 1 Introduction This paper aims to illustrate the theoretical background and structure of a sociopragmatically annotated corpus based on Plautus’ and Goldoni’s comedies, named DiSCIS (Diachronic Socio-pragmatic Corpus of Imaginary Speech). After presenting the corpus in Sect. 2, we illustrate how it can be used in order to explore linguistic strategies representing identity. More precisely, we will focus on a specific type of Speech Act, i.e., Directives, which constitute a fruitful laboratory to explore the dynamics of identity expression and negotiation. Directives are by definition potentially impolite acts that threaten the interlocutor’s negative face and, as we will see, tend to be modulated under certain circumstances through pragmatic strategies. This will be the topic of Sect. 3, where we offer a pragmatic and historical-variationist case study that compares the use of Directives in two languages, namely Latin and Italian, in two different historical periods, across different social classes of speakers differing by gender, age and social rank. Before turning to the data, however, a definition of identity is needed. Identity is understood here as the social positioning of self and other (cf. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985: 181; Bucholtz and Hall 2005; Turchetta, this volume) and encompasses different ways in which “people position or construct
Notes: This paper was written as part of a University of Bergamo PRIN project Linguistic representations of identity. Sociolinguistic models and historical linguistics coordinated by Piera Molinelli (PRIN 2010, prot. 2010 HXPFF2_001). The DiSCIS corpus is freely available at www.mediling.eu. Although the paper has been conceived by all authors together, Sect. 1 has been written by Chiara Ghezzi, Sect. 2 by Luigi Talamo and Sect. 3 by Chiara Fedriani. The Conclusions have been written together. Our thanks go to Pierluigi Cuzzolin, Piera Molinelli, and Volker Gast for their comments on previous versions, and to the audience at the PRIN Conference held in Bergamo in September 2015, especially to Carlo Consani and Gabriella Mazzon, for useful feedback. Usual disclaimers apply. Chiara Fedriani, Università di Genova Chiara Ghezzi and Luigi Talamo, Università di Bergamo DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-004
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themselves and are positioned or constructed by others in socio-cultural situations through the instrumentality of the repertoires of languages at their disposal” (Omoniyi and White 2006: 1). These “different ways” can range from macro-level phenomena such as code-switching and code-mixing practices, since language choice plays a relevant role in establishing and maintaining identity within a speech community, to micro-level facts such as phonetic variants expressing sociolinguistic correlates, as well as the use of functional signals conveying a number of discursive and socio-interactional values, namely discourse and pragmatic markers. This study focuses on this last category of functional items and investigates how and when they are used in two corpus languages to construct and convey identity positions at the micro level of interaction (on their role in identity formation processes at different diachronic stages of Latin and Italian see, e.g., Cuzzolin and Molinelli 2014; Ghezzi and Molinelli 2014; Fedriani and Molinelli 2013; Fedriani and Ghezzi 2013). The DiSCIS corpus has been planned and built to allow a systematic investigation of pragmatic strategies involved in the linguistic representation of identity. Since historical and socio-pragmatically-oriented corpora that make it possible to elicit and investigate pragmatic items from a sociolinguistic perspective are available above all for English (e.g. the Corpus of Early English Correspondence: Raumolin-Brunberg and Nevalainen 2007; A Corpus of English Dialogues: Culpeper and Kytö 2010), the creation of a such a corpus was an urgent necessity both for Latin and Italian – especially for Italian in previous diachronic stages. As regards Latin, the available tools mostly provide morpho-syntactic (e.g., the Latin Valency Lexicon, the Latin Dependency Treebank) and lexical information (Latin Wordnet), or they focus on information structure (the PROIEL corpus) (see McGillivray 2013: Ch. 2 for an updated synopsis of the resources available in Latin corpus linguistics). As for Italian, we do have corpora both based on written (e.g., ColFIS, Repubblica, ItWac) and oral data (e.g., LIP, C-Oral Rom); however, they again only provide morpho-syntactic and lexical information, or, only rarely, information about prosodic (C-Oral-Rom) or morphological structure (CoLFIS corpus). Among these, only a few (e.g., LIF) also include theatrical works. Moreover, the only tool that gathers together texts produced during earlier stages of the Italian language is restricted to the OVI corpus. As a result, the annotation of sociolinguistic and pragmatic features has hitherto been neglected for both languages especially regarding texts produced in previous historical periods. Crucially, however, Kytö (2010: 56) has programmatically underscored that when compiling new electronic tools for historical pragmatic research, the compelling need is to design corpora that contain information about colloquial or non-standard varieties and data that are representative of linguistic behaviour
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of so far under-represented groups such as women, lower social ranks and uneducated speakers. In this respect, the DiSCIS corpus represents a preliminary resource that tries to fill this gap in Latin and Italian historical corpus linguistics. Needless to say, a word of caution is required when speaking of colloquial varieties as a potential mirror of orality in relation to corpus languages. Historical pragmatics research necessarily relies on written texts that are always subject to the influence of literary models and to multiple constraints imposed to some extent by literacy (see Molinelli 2008; Cuzzolin and Haverling 2009: 38). Bearing these cautionary notes in mind, we have selected texts and varieties as close as possible to the spontaneous spoken language of the historical periods considered. Textual genres that seem particularly promising in this regard include theatrical works, private letters, and artificial or invented dialogues (on this point, see e.g. Taavitsainen and Jucker 2010a: 8; Molinelli, this volume; Bruno, this volume). Comedies, in particular, “provide the nearest approximation to everyday spoken language in historical texts” (Taavitsainen 1995: 460) since they systematically contain examples of what Culpeper and Kytö (2000) call constructed imaginary speech. Although there is much truth in this view, we are aware that the language of comedy too is a literary (and therefore, artistic and artificial) construct spoken by fictional characters and not by real speakers. In the next Section we provide some detailed information about the data contained in the corpus and the tagset we have designed for the purpose of annotating them.
2 The DiSCIS corpus The DiSCIS corpus currently comprises 8 comedies by Plautus, amounting to 82,783 tokens, and one by Goldoni, La famiglia dell’antiquario (20,443 tokens). One of the crucial issues when designing a purpose-built corpus is to define an adequate tagset capable of registering the linguistic features one aims to render searchable. This is why we have created a system of XML tags to manually annotate sociolinguistic traits and pragmatic phenomena. These are categorized at four distinct level of analysis, namely, Discourse level, Speech Act level, Sociolinguistic level, and the level of Contact phenomena. Before looking at them in detail, it is worth mentioning some of the theoretical and pragmatic principles that have guided the design of our tagset. From a discursive-structural perspective, we have relied in part on the Val.Es.Co. model developed at the University of Valencia (Pons 2014, Briz Gómez et al. 2003), a segmentation model applied to spoken conversation. We have
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selected those units of analysis, which seemed relevant to the specific characteristics of our ancient written data and refined it by enriching its tagset with some new categories. In doing this, we have tried to adapt the structure provided by the Val.Es.Co. model to the specific characteristics of constructed imaginary speech that characterizes comedy. This resulted in a pragmatic-discursive model to identify, segment, analyze and annotate pragmatic phenomena, adding to the discursive structural level provided by the Val.Es.Co. model three other categories which turned out to be crucial to our analysis: typology of Speech Acts, the sociolinguistic status of characters, and contact phenomena. The remainder of this section gives a brief description of these four levels of analysis. At the Discourse level, we first included a functional category developed by the Val.Es.Co. group, namely Adjacent Subacts, that is, non-propositional expressions that can be attached to acts and have procedural meaning. Adjacent Subacts are typically, but not always, constituted by discourse and pragmatic markers. There are three main types of Adjacent Subacts, corresponding to three distinct pragmatics-discursive functions. Interpersonal Adjacent Subacts modulate and express social cohesion between interlocutors and include those linguistic items that index their social relationship and social identities. Latin politeness markers like amabo ‘please’ (ex. 1) typically fall into this category. (1)
Ego eloquar: sed amabo advortite animum ‘I’ll tell you. But please pay attention, you two’1
(Plaut. Mil. 382)
Textual Adjacent Subacts, in turn, index textual coherence and cohesion and display a range of related functions, such as discourse planning and discourse organization. Evidence for this function comes, for instance, from the Latin floor-yielding and turn-taking devices quid ais (tu) ‘what are you saying?’, scin quid ‘do you know what. . .’, age ‘come on’. Thirdly, modal Adjacent Subacts express the speaker’s personal stance, that is, her subjective attitude towards the interlocutor or towards the conveyed content. An example of a modal subact is in (2), where the clause ut opinor ‘I think’ lowers the commitment projected by the speaker on to the assertion just expressed: (2)
Homo hic ebrius est, ut opinor ‘This man’s drunk, I think’
1 The English translations of Plautus are by W. de Melo (Loeb).
(Plaut. Am. 574)
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Since in some cases different values of a given subact can correlate with different positions in the sentence, Adjacent Subacts have also been tagged according to the slot they occupy (initial, medial, final, or independent), in order to retrieve possible associations between their occurrence in the right or left periphery and their function (see Beeching and Detges 2014 for recent reappraisals of this issue). Moreover, Adjacent Subacts are also annotated depending on the type of discourse unit they are embedded in, namely intervention, act, or subact. Lastly, Adjacent Subacts occurring in sequences can be annotated as chains, when two or more equifunctional elements follow one another, or accumulation, if the co-occurring elements have different values (see Bazzanella 1995 for terminology). At the Speech Act level we have identified and tagged different types of Speech Acts. Drawing on Searle’s (1975) classification of illocutionary speech acts into assertives (or representatives), directives, commissives, and expressives, we subsequently identified more fine-grained acts actualizing each class, relying in part on Risselada (1993) for directive acts, Taavitsainen and Jucker (2010b) for expressive ones, and Bach and Harnish (1979), Searle and Vanderveken (1985), and Pinkster ([1990] 2008) for the other classes. Furthermore, we added two act types occurring in interrogative exchanges, namely questions and answers. These fine-grained acts are listed in Table 1. Table 1: Illocutionary Speech Acts à la Searle and fine-grained acts Assertives
Statement
Directives
order/request advice/suggestion permission prohibition
Commissives
promise/swearing threat offer
Expressives
thanking compliments apology greeting accepting rejection exclamation
Interrogative exchange
question answer
The last two levels of annotation include the Sociolinguistic level, basically pointing to the sociolinguistic features of the characters that utter them, namely gender, age (young, as the adulescens in Plautus, adult, or old), and social rank
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(low, comprising, e.g., servants, cooks; middle, e.g., the doctor in Plautus or the rich merchant in Goldoni; and high – typically, masters and matronae in Plautus as well as nobles in Goldoni). Another parameter we worked out is Langnicity, which attests the co-occurrence of more than one linguistic code (and the related cultural system) within a repertoire as represented in a given text. The interaction of specific codes within different texts is specified in the Guidelines to the corpus. Lastly, at the level of contact phenomena we annotated exogenous lexemes in Plautus partially following Maltby (1995) and refining his classification of words of Greek origin arranged in descending order of “Greekness”. As for Italian texts, our tagset allows the possibility of annotating and searching for exogenous element constituting cases of integrated vs. non-integrated borrowing and instances of code-switching and code-mixing with dialect or with another language. These characteristics build up our socio-pragmatic tagset, which was technically implemented as a collection of XML tags; each tag has a number of features with corresponding values. XML is a markup language that provides further information on existing texts; it is largely employed to digitally annotate different types of texts, ranging from technical documentation to medical and judiciary texts, and it is used in the field of Digital Humanities to enrich texts with philological and linguistic information. The part of code in Fig. 1 reproduces the annotation of a small portion of our corpus.
Figure 1: Example of annotation from the DiSCIS corpus
Our corpus features two level of annotations: (i) morpho-syntactic and lexical, and (ii) socio-pragmatic. At the first level, texts were automatically divided into tokens and annotated for part_of_speech and lemma. The first column of Fig. 1 contains the text token, the second column the part_of_speech and the third the lemma; for instance, the token quid is analyzed as a pronoun (PRON) and annotated for its lemmatic form, quis.
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At the second level of annotation, texts are described by embedding relevant textual portions within XML tags; for instance, the interrogative sentence Quid? is analyzed for socio-pragmatic characteristics by embedding it within the two XML tags and ; the first tag describes the sentence as a Speech Act of the question type (feature Type with value “question”), while the second tag gives sociolinguistic and pragmatic information about the speaker, namely, gender, age and rank (features Gender, Age and Rank) and commitment to the uttered sentence (feature UnitSubactAdjacent). Corpus annotation was individually performed by the first two authors of the paper using the open-source text annotation tool Brat,2 originally devised for the annotation of bio-medical texts. Once annotated, the corpus was automatically converted to XML and encoded into the IMS Open Corpus WorkBench,3 a piece of software for indexing linguistic corpora. The corpus can be accessed through the command line Corpus Query Processor tool or via the graphic user interface available at http://www.mediling.eu.
3 Directive Speech Acts in Plautus and in Goldoni In this Section we turn to a specific case-study that has been carried out using the DiSCIS corpus. It focuses on a specific class of Speech Acts, namely, Directives, that in our view is crucial to the linguistic expression, modulation and maintenance of identity, since Directives are by definition potentially threatening acts which are often softened by mitigators, politeness markers, and hedges, or strengthened by exhortative items; these are all subsumed under the category of pragmatic markers and are annotated as Adjacent Subacts in DiSCIS. Our aim has been to disentangle the distribution of pragmatic markers occurring in Directives across sociolinguistic categories in two different diachronic moments: 3rd– 2nd BCE Latin represented by Plautus’ Amphitruo and 18th-century Italian as reflected in Goldoni’s play La famiglia dell’antiquario. Let us first characterize the functional space of Directives. According to Searle (1975), Directives cause the interlocutor to perform a given action (this is the typical case of requests, orders, and advice), or simply let her do so (by means of permissions); alternatively, Directives can also prevent the interlocutor from doing something (by means of prohibitions). The common semanto-pragmatic feature shared by Directives is that they all entail a demand that provokes
2 http://brat.nlplab.org/ 3 http://cwb.sourceforge.net/
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a reaction on the part of the interlocutor. The functional core of directivity is morpho-syntactically realized in 3rd–2nd BCE Latin by means of the following strategies: besides verbs in the imperative, verbs in the subjunctive mood (ex. 3), and, very rarely, verbs inflected in the future tense (ex. 4), performative (ex. 5) and modal verbs (ex. 6), and interrogative sentences (ex. 7). (3)
(4)
Age eamus, mea gnata, ad matrem tuam ‘Come on, my daughter, let’s go to your mother’ tu cavebis ne me attingas ‘you will make sure that you don’t touch me’
(Rud. 1179)
(As. 373)
(5)
Obsecro ut per pacem liceat te adloqui, ut ne vapulem ‘I entreat that you allow me to speak to you in peace, without getting a thrashing’ (Am. 388)
(6)
Potin ut abstineas manum? ‘Can’t you keep your hands off?’
(Am. 903)
ALCUMENA abin hinc a me, dignus domino servo? SOSIA abeo, si iubes ‘A. Will you go away from me, a slave worthy of his master? S. I’m going if you tell me so’
(Am. 857)
(7)
In 18th-century Italian, directives are expressed by similar strategies: we find again verbs in the subjunctive (ex. 8), and, very often, verbs in the future (ex. 9), performative (ex. 10) and modal verbs (ex. 11), and interrogative sentences (ex. 12); moreover, also impersonal verbs are used (ex. 13): note this strategy is not attested in Latin to express orders and requests. (8)
(9)
(10)
E bene, che si paghino, che si paghino ‘Well then, let’s pay them, let’s pay them’
(Fam., I, 1)
Per domani mi farai una cuffia ‘You will make a bonnet for me by tomorrow’
(Fam., I, 8)
Vi prego, datemi voi il denaro per un abito ‘I pray you/Please, give me the money for the dress’
(Fam., I, 5)
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(11)
(12)
(13)
Vorrei che mi faceste comparir bene colla signora Contessa Isabella ‘I would like you to cast me in a good light with Countess Isabella’ (Fam., I, 21) Che bisogno c’è che le diciate giovane o vecchia? ‘What is the need to call her young or old?’ (Fam., II, 1) Non si gettano i denari in questa maniera ‘You don’t throw away money like that’
(Fam., I, 10)
In our tagset, Directives are articulated in a more fine-grained classification comprising four subtypes of acts, namely orders and requests, advice and suggestions, permissions, and prohibitions. Following the pragmatic and interactional perspective adopted by Havertake (1979: 31–32), we distinguish between orders and requests, i.e., impositive acts that serve to influence the intentional behaviour of the interlocutor in such a way that she performs the requested action primarily for the benefit of the speaker, and advice and suggestions, nonimpositive directive speech acts whose demanding content is supposed to primarily benefit the interlocutor herself. We will leave prohibitions out of the discussion, since their outcome is to force the interlocutor not to perform an action, and thus have a different semanto-pragmatic import. The quantitative occurrence of types of Directives in the DiSCIS corpus is outlined in Table 2, with reference to examples taken from the corpus. Table 2: Directives in Amphitruo and in La famiglia dell’antiquario Amphitruo
La famiglia dell’antiquario
Act type
Frequency
Example
Frequency
Example
Orders/requests Advice/suggestions Permission Total
73 15 7 95
ex. 14 ex. 16 ex. 18
134 144 17 295
ex. 15 ex. 17 ex. 19
(14)
(15)
(16)
Sosia, age me huc aspice ‘Sosia, come on, look here at me’
(Am. 750)
Datemi quella sedia ‘Give me that seat’
(Fam. I, 1)
SOSIA Quaeso, quin tu istanc iubes pro cerrita circumferri? AMPHITRUO Edepol qui facto est opus ‘S. Please, why don’t you have an exorcism done for this madwoman? A. Yes, that needs to be done’ (Am. 775–776)
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(18)
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ANSELMO Io vi consiglierei a fare quello che fo io. PANTALONE Che vuol dir? ANSELMO Lasciarle friggere nel proprio grasso. ‘A. I would advise you to do what I do P. What do you mean? A. Let them stew in their own juice’ AMPHITRUO Alcumena, unum rogare te volo. ALCUMENA Quidvis roga ‘AM . Alcumena, I want to ask you one thing. AL . Ask anything you like’
(Fam. II, 10)
(Am. 708)
ANSELMO Caro signor Pantalone, io vi dò tutta l’autorità che volete. GIACINTO Sì, caro signor suocero, prendete voi l’economia della nostra casa ‘A. Dear Sir, I give you all the authority that you want. G. Yes dear father-in-law, manage the economy of our house’ (Fam. III, 8)
Drawing on this classification, we now present the results of our corpus-based analysis, whose main aim was (i) to provide a functional characterization of Directives in relation to gender-dependent distributions and other sociallyrelated divides, also related to the social status of the interlocutors and to the micro-context of interaction; and (ii) to shed light on the role played by pragmatic markers within Directive acts in managing the linguistic expression of identity. Firstly, we contrasted the sociolinguistic distribution of orders with that exhibited by other Directives. In Plautus’ Amphitruo, orders, that is, the most threatening and impolite among Directive acts, are mostly uttered by male characters, mainly of high social rank. This diverging pattern is considerably less frequent in the case of all other Directives: requests, advice, suggestions and permissions are also frequently used by males of lower social rank and by women of high social status (Fig. 2). In Goldoni’s play a similarly clear-cut social stratification emerges; however, it is structured along a different sociolinguistic parameter. Orders are mostly expressed by characters of high social rank, namely nobles, or of middle rank (merchants), but are never uttered by people belonging to the lower classes. The crucial point to be made here, however, is that women of high social rank also give orders (Fig. 3). This contrasts with the scenario we have seen in the Amphitruo, where orders are sociolinguistically distributed according to the character’s gender and the vast majority are uttered only by men.
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Figure 2: Sociolinguistic distribution of orders and other types of Directives in Plautus
Figure 3: Sociolinguistic distribution of orders and other types of Directives in Goldoni
In both plays the characters who most rarely produce Directives are women of low social status. Note, however, that while in Goldoni such characters mostly utter a specific kinds of requests, namely prayers and supplications, in Plautus they even give orders to their masters, as in ex. (20):
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AMPHITRUO Iam istuc gaudeo, utut erga me merita est. BROMIA Mitte ista atque haec quae dicam accipe ‘A. I am happy about that now, no matter how she behaved toward me. B. Stop that and take in what I’m telling you’ (Am. 1100–1101)
This observation is worth stressing since it touches upon an important issue, namely that in Plautus men of low social condition give orders more often that socially high women do, as illustrated in Fig. 2. The reason for this unexpected distribution, which runs contrary to what happens in Goldoni’s play, is that in Plautus the slave is often depicted as a servus callidus (‘tricky slave’), a stock character whose brilliant expedients and clever jokes bring about a happy ending for the lovers, often also mocking his master and humiliating other highstatus characters. While trying to find a solution to his young master’s sentimental problems, it can happen that the slave gives orders to the young lover to help him accomplish his trickery. Similarly, and in a parallelism in comic structure, also the ancilla can be callida, occasionally giving orders to her master, as in ex. (20) above, where Bromia shows communicative dominance over her master (on the theatrical specificity of the ancilla callida, see Questa 2004; for an interesting comparison with a similar distribution of Directives in the mouth of the parasite Curculio, see Cabrillana 2016, esp. 199–201). This less canonical sociolinguistic connotation of orders in Plautus thus mirrors the peculiar fictional structure of his plays and is typical of their plots rather than of the linguistic circumstances of spoken Latin of the time. Let us now turn to the second part of our corpus-based analysis, the modulation of Directives by means of pragmatic markers (tagged in DiSCIS as Social Adjacent Subacts) and its relation with sociolinguistic variables. In general, Directives are mitigated or strengthened in 24% of cases in Plautus’ play and in 15% of cases in Goldoni’s comedy. In Plautus, the most frequent pragmatic markers occurring in Directives are age and sis ‘come on!’, both juxtaposed with orders with an exhortative value (see Fedriani and Ghezzi 2013). Next comes quaeso ‘please’, which, together with the equifunctional forms amabo and obsecro, expresses politeness. Sane ‘pray then, if you will’, in turn, is typically attested in permissions and orders that have a concessive nuance. Their frequency is summarized in Fig. 4. In a similar vein, the most frequent pragmatic marker occurring in Directives in Goldoni’s play is orsù ‘come on!’, an exhortative marker that has an effect on the illocutionary force of the conveyed order, followed by the attention-getting device sentite ‘listen’. Politeness markers (per amor del cielo, per carità ‘for heaven’s sake’ and ti/vi/La prego ‘I pray you’) that soften the pragmatic strength projected by a given order are less frequent. Their frequency is given in Fig. 5.
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Figure 4: Frequency of pragmatic markers in Amphitruo’s Directives
Figure 5: Frequency of pragmatic markers in Directives in La famiglia dell’antiquario
Interestingly, pragmatic markers modifying Directives are much more frequent in masculine talk both in Plautus (78% of cases) and in Goldoni (71%). The presumable reason for this similar distribution is that the more frequent pragmatic markers, sis and age in Latin and orsù in Italian, all have an exhortative and strengthening function, which is typically associated with male speech, rather than the mitigative function typical of feminine talk. Ex. (21) shows the typical function of age(dum) uttered by a high-standing male character, Amphitruo: (21)
AMPHITRUO Agedum, exsolve cistulam ‘A. Go on, open the chest’
(Am. 783)
Likewise in Goldoni’s play it is Count Anselmo, the highest-ranking male character, who uses orsù:
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ANSELMO Orsù, lasciatemi un po’ stare ‘A. Come now, leave me alone’
(Fam., I, 5)
Politeness markers, although more frequently used by female characters (see e.g. ex. 23 and 24), emerge across all social classes. (23)
ALCUMENA Noli amabo, Amphitruo, irasci Sosiae causa mea ‘A. Please, Amphitruo, don’t be angry with Sosia, for my sake’ (Am. 540)
(24)
CAVALIERE Presto, va nella tua camera e chiuditi dentro. Vedrò io d’aiutarti COLOMBINA Per amor del cielo, non mi abbandonate. ‘CAV. Soon, go into your room and shut yourself inside. I shall try to help you. COL. For heaven’s sake, do not abandon me (Fam., III, 6)
Summing up, some generalizations can be made: Directives are scattered along different social divides in the sociolinguistic space mirrored in the two comedies, being reserved to men in Plautus and to socially high characters in Goldoni. Other differences in social distribution, such as the occurrence of orders in the mouths of Plautine slaves, can be explained in the light of the peculiar comic procedures that were characteristic of Plautus’ theatre. Although differently distributed, Latin and Italian Directives share a similar pattern in that they are modified across similar classes of pragmatic markers whose frequency and sociolinguistic distribution is comparable. These data show that similar pragmatic mechanisms seem to work along the same lines: male characters are linguistically portrayed though the massive use of pragmatic markers strengthening the exhortative value of Directives, whereas the compelling need to mitigate demanding acts appears to be shared by all kinds of characters in both plays.
4 Conclusions When designing a corpus for an ancient language, the linguist immediately faces a number of qualitative and quantitative constraints, including (but not limited to) the absence of oral data and the lack of native speakers – this implying that data are necessarily bound to the written, often literary, tradition; the fact that the selection of texts we have at our disposal has survived in a random and often sporadic manner; the fact that the pool of available texts is quantitatively closed; the difficulty of reconstructing a precise socio-historical setting in which the texts were produced and transmitted. Given these limitations, today’s
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option of compiling ‘megacorpora’ of millions of words can hardly be pursued. The alternative is to create a purpose-built ‘micro corpus’ for a precise type of linguistic investigation concerning a specific phenomenon or level of analysis, in order to provide qualitative reassessments at a micro-linguistic level and paying attention also to philological aspects (on this point, see Jucker and Taavitsainen 2014: 13). These are precisely the methodological basis and goals that inspired the creation of the DiSCIS corpus – a small-sized tool with an annotation schema specifically designed to carry out sociolinguistic and pragmatic research into ancient languages, with a focus on items that play a role in processes of identity maintenance, negotiation and change. Our corpus-based study on Directives has hopefully shown how this corpus can be consulted to retrieve possible associations between a specific function (e.g., the semanto-pragmatic core of Directives) and its sociolinguistic correlates. Moreover, using the corpus it is possible to verify how a given function is morpho-syntactically encoded in a given text and whether it is associated with pragmatic elements. In our study, we first classified Directives following sociolinguistic criteria and saw that their use is constrained by different parameters in Latin and Italian, namely gender and social rank, respectively. We noted that another difference concerns the occurrence of Directives in the speech of characters of low social standing in Latin, which is not attested in Italian, and hypothesized that this divergence is presumably due to the specific literary figure of the servus callidus, often involved in the comic mechanism of role reversal. This comic strategy is also linguistically pursued by Plautus, by means of, among other things, a strategic distribution of orders in the mouths of slaves. We subsequently focused on pragmatic modulation of Directives and saw that while male characters most often resort to phatic markers, which impact on the illocutionary force of a given order or request, politeness markers are used in an undifferentiated way by characters belonging to all social categories. Further research on this and other functional and pragmatic domains will enable us to refine the role played by different types of social organization in the two historical periods under scrutiny in determining differences in sociolinguistic distributions of forms and functions and in pragmatic uses.
References Bach, Kent & Robert M. Harnish. 1979. Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Boston: MIT Press. Bazzanella, Carla. 1995. I segnali discorsivi. In Lorenzo Renzi, Giampaolo Salvi & Anna Cardinaletti (a c. di), Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione, vol. 3, 225–257. Bologna: il Mulino.
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Beeching, Kate & Ulrich Detges (eds.). 2014. Discourse Functions at the Left and Right Periphery. Leiden: Brill. Briz Gómez, Antonio & Grupo Val.Es.Co. 2003. Un sistema de unidades para el estudio del lenguaje coloquial. Oralia 6. 7–61. Bruno, Carla. Variations of the First Person: Looking at the Greek Private Letters of Ptolemaic Egypt. This volume. Bucholtz, Mary & Kira Hall. 2005. Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse studies 7 (4–5). 585–614. Cabrillana, Concepción. 2016. Directives in Latin comedy: Pragmatics, dramatic role and social status. Journal of Latin Linguistics 15 (2). 179–214. Culpeper, Jonathan & Merja Kytö. 2000. Data in Historical Pragmatics: Spoken Interaction (Re)cast as Writing. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1 (2). 175–199. Culpeper, Jonathan & Merja Kytö. 2010. Early Modern English Dialogues: Spoken Interaction as Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cuzzolin, Pierluigi & Gerd Haverling. 2009. Syntax, sociolinguistics, and literary genres. In Philip Baldi & Pierluigi Cuzzolin (eds.), New perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax. Vol. 1, Syntax of the Sentence, 19–64. Berlin: de Gruyter. Cuzzolin, Pierluigi & Piera Molinelli. 2013. Contatto linguistico e tipologie di mutamento: sintassi e pragmatica a confronto. In Marco Mancini & Luca Lorenzetti (a c. di), Le lingue del Mediterraneo antico. Culture, mutamenti, contatti, Atti del Convegno internazionale (Università della Tuscia, Viterbo 17–18 settembre 2012), 95–121. Roma, Carocci. Fedriani, Chiara & Chiara Ghezzi. 2013. Marcatori funzionali deverbali in greco, latino e italiano: sviluppi paralleli e natura della convergenza. In Marco Mancini & Luca Lorenzetti (a c. di), Le lingue del Mediterraneo antico. Culture, mutamenti, contatti, Atti del Convegno internazionale (Università della Tuscia, Viterbo 17–18 settembre 2012), 151–180. Roma: Carocci. Fedriani, Chiara & Piera Molinelli. 2013. Ut ita dicam and cognates: a pragmatic account. Journal of Latin Linguistics 1: 71–99. Ghezzi, Chiara & Piera Molinelli. 2014. Deverbal pragmatic markers from Latin to Italian (Lat. quaeso and It. prego): The cyclic nature of functional developments. In Chiara Ghezzi & Piera Molinelli (eds.), Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to the Romance Languages, 60–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Havertake, Henk. 1984. Speech acts, speakers and hearers. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Jucker, Andreas & Irma Taavitsainen. 2014. Diachronic corpus pragmatics. Intersections and interactions. In Irma Taavitsainen, Andreas Jucker & Jukka Tuominen (eds.), Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics, 3–26. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kytö, Merja. 2010. Data in historical pragmatics. In Andreas Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Historical Pragmatics, 33–68. Berlin: de Gruyter. Le Page, Robert & Andrée Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of Identity: Creole-based approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McGillivray, Barbara. 2013. Methods in Latin Computational Linguistics. Leiden: Brill. Maltby, Robert. 1995. The distribution of Greek loan-words in Plautus. Papers of the Liverpool/ Leeds/Langford Latin Seminar 8. 31–69. Molinelli, Piera. 2008. Tra oralità e scrittura: rogo nelle lettere private in latino. In Romano Lazzeroni, Emanuele Banfi, Giuliano Bernini, Marina Chini & Giovanna Marotta (a c. di), Diachronica et synchronica. Studi in onore di Anna Giacalone Ramat, 365–378. Pisa: ETS. Molinelli, Piera. Linguistic Representations of Identity. Texts, Contexts, and Methods in Diachronic Perspective. This volume.
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Omoniyi, Tope & Goodith White. 2006. Introduction. In Tope Omoniyi & Goodith White (eds.), Sociolinguistics of Identity, 1–8. London/New York: Continuum. Pinkster, Harm. 2008 [1990]. Latin Syntax and Semantics. London: Routledge. (Rev. version 2008: http://cybergreek.uchicago.edu/lss/). Pons Bordería, Salvador. 2014. Models of discourse segmentation in Romance languages. In Id. (ed.), Discourse Segmentation in Romance Languages, 1–21. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Questa, Cesare. 2004. Pardalisca regista della Casina. In Sei Letture Plautine, 137–154. Urbino: Quattroventi. Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena & Terttu Nevalainen. 2007. Historical Sociolinguistics: The Corpus of Early English Correspondence. In Joan C. Beal, Karen P. Corrigan & Hermann L. Moisl (eds.), Creating and Digitizing Language Corpora Volume 2: Diachronic Databases, 148– 171. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Risselada, Rodie. 1993. Imperatives and Other Directive Expressions in Latin: A Study in the Pragmatics of a Dead Language. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben. Searle, John R. 1975. A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts. In Keith Günderson (ed.), Language, Mind, and Knowledge, 344–69. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Searle John & Daniel Vanderveken. 1985. Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taavitsainen, Irma. 1995. Interjections in Early Modern English: From imitation of spoken to conventions of written language. In Andreas H. Jucker (ed.), Historical Pragmatics. Pragmatic Developments in the History of English, 439–465. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Taavitsainen, Irma & Andreas H. Jucker. 2010a. Trends and developments in historical pragmatics. In Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Historical Pragmatics, 3–30. Berlin: de Gruyter. Taavitsainen, Irma and Andreas H. Jucker. 2010b. Expressive speech acts and politeness in eighteenth century English. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Eighteenth Century English: Ideology and Change, 159–181. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turchetta, Barbara. The Writer’s Identity and Identification Markers in Writing Code Mixing and Interference. This volume.
Luca Lorenzetti
5 Greek in Rome around the Year 1000 1 Greeks and the Greek language in Medieval Rome Canon Benedict’s Liber Politicus (i.e., Polyptychus) written, according to Paul Fabre (1889), between 1140 and 1143 but related to events over a century earlier, offers a valuable example of what Margaret Alexiou (2003: 87) defined as “the longest and most complex vernacular song text to have survived in Byzantine Greek”. “Laudes puerorum in medio XLe”, the most extensive version of the text, contain fragments of a khelidónisma, a “swallow song” for the return of Spring, interspersed with hymns sung by the students of the Greek schools in the city. The first verses can also be found in another part of the book amongst the hymns performed during the “Cornomannia”, a sort of carnival ritual celebration which involved all the Roman parishes and the Pope himself. What makes the text particularly interesting is the fact that although it is in Greek, it uses the Latin alphabet. This is a peculiarity which understandably increases the level of difficulty of text analysis and comprehension, so much so as to induce some interpreters to dispirited comments on the clarity of the text. An example for all is Hans-Georg Beck’s comment in his Geschichte der byzantinischen Volksliteratur: “Die Rekonstruktion des griechischen Textes ist lange noch nicht in allen Teilen überzeugend gelungen” [The reconstruction of the Greek text has not yet been completely successful in all its parts] (Beck 1971: 27). We can get an idea of the context by comparing the incipit with one of the possible retroversions in Greek and its translation, as shown in Table 1. Table 1: Text incipit (according to Fabre 1889), retroversion and translation (according to Patala 1996) Ycodes potachere chere metopanton deoysoro Orosisto mello O Kerasisilthe Carpoforunta Keagalliunta Tysa galliusi
Oἰκοδέσποτα, χαῖρε. Χαῖρε, μετὰ παντὸς δέους ὁρῶ, ὁρῶ εἰς τὸ μέλλο(ν). Ὁ καιρὸς εἰσῆλθε, καρποφοροῦντα καὶ ἀγαλλιοῦντα τοῖς ἀγαλλιοῦσι.
Maître de la maison, salut. Salut, avec grande crainte je vois, je vois dans l’avenir. Le (prin)temps est entré qui porte des fruits et qui réjouit ceux qui se réjouissent.*
* “Master of the house, welcome! Welcome, I see with great awe, I see in the future. Spring has come, which brings fruits and delights all who rejoice.”
Luca Lorenzetti, Università della Tuscia DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-005
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As previously mentioned, it is not always easy to understand exactly which is the Greek text underlying the Latin script. As a consequence, the differences between the various attempts at analysis are not at all irrelevant. Let us take for example the comparison between four different retroversions of the incipit itself (English translations mine, except for Alexiou’s version): (1)
ύ, ὦ δέσποτα, χαῖρε, χαῖρε μετὰ πάντων. εἰσορῶ εἰς τὸ μέλλο ὦ χαῖρ᾽ αρ, εἴσελθε καρποφοροῦν τὰ . . . καὶ ἀγάλλον τὰ (Tommasini 1901): “You, Master, welcome, welcome together with all. I see in the future: rejoice, Spring, come and bring fruits the . . . and rejoice ”;
(2)
Oἰκοδέσποτα χαίρε, χαίρε μετα πάντων deo εἰσορώ orosistomello ὁ καιρός εἰσήλθε καρποφορούντα καὶ ἀγαλλιούντα τοῖς ἀγαλλιοῦσι (Maas 1912): “Welcome Master of the house, welcome together with all . . . I foresee . . . the season came bringing fruits and bringing joy for those who rejoice”;
(3)
Oἰκοδέσποτα, χαῖρε. Xαῖρε, μετὰ παντὸς δέους ὁρῶ, ὁρῶ εἰς τὸ μέλλο(ν). Ὁ καιρὸς εἰσῆλθε, καρποφοροῦντα καὶ ἀγαλλιοῦντα τοῖς ἀγαλλιοῦσι (Patala 1996): “Master of the house, welcome! Welcome, I see with great awe, I see in the future. Spring has come, which brings fruits and delights all who rejoice.”
(4)
οἰκοδέσποτα χαῖρε χαῖρε μετ{ω} πάντων ὧδε εἰσορῶ ὁρῶ σ’ εἰς τὸ μέλλο ὧ χαῖρ᾽, ἔαρ, εἰσῆλθε, καρποφοροῦντα καὶ ἀγαλλιοῦντα τοῖς ἀγαλλιοῦσι (Alexiou 2003): “Hail, master of the house, hail with all, I behold, I’ll see you in the future, o hail, spring, come hither, bringing fruits and rejoicing for those who rejoice.”
Given the situation, it also becomes clear why most scholars have avoided carrying out a comprehensive linguistic analysis. To quote only the most recent view on the text, “modern scholars can only deplore its garbled nature, and the impossibility of its transcription, let alone translation and interpretation. [. . .] word division and phonology alike are so bizarre as to suggest an attempt to fit sounds that they [scil. the scribes] had only heard (as opposed to ones which could also be read) into latinized word patterns” (Alexiou 2003: 87). Therefore, generations of scholars, amongst whom are people of the calibre of Paul Maas and the above-mentioned Paul Fabre, have concentrated on the constitution and edition, on the most plausible readings, the possible retroversions in Greek script and, more generally, the meaning of the text in the religious and literary
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history of Mediaeval Rome1. The possibility that the text could supply clues to the reconstruction of a segment of Roman linguistic history which is certainly not amongst the most richly documented has been neglected, when not avoided, precisely because it is too complex to verify. Although not richly documented, it is certainly not amongst the least interesting on a sociolinguistic level. In fact, although the presence of a Greek community in Medieval Rome is well known and has been fully studied, the hypotheses on demographics and linguistic behaviours of that community are inevitably based, once again, more on antiquarian and historical sources than on the linguistic analysis of the texts. Jean-Marie Sansterre (1978, I: 225) in his book on Greek monasticism in Rome commented: À l’epoque byzantine et plus précisément au VIIe s. au moins, on baptisait à Rome des petits enfants de langue grecque. Le fait – peu connu en dehors des liturgistes – est capital, car ces baptêmes ne pouvaient pas être simplement occasionnels [. . .]. Au contraire, leur nombre et, corollairement, celui des naissances devait être appréciable. Répondant de façon manifeste à un souci pastoral, la tradition du symbole en grec prouve donc l’existence à Rome, au VIIe s. au moins, d’une popolation hellénophone laïque assez nombreuse par rapport à l’ensemble des habitants de la ville. [In the Byzantine period and, more precisely, in 7th century at least, Greek-speaking children were baptized in Rome. The fact – little known except to liturgists – is crucial, because these baptisms simply could not be casual [. . .]. On the contrary, their number and, as a corollary, the number of births should have been of some importance. Evidently answering to a pastoral issue, the tradition of the Greek symbol proves the existence in Rome, in the 7th century at least, of a secular Greekspeaking population, quite numerous in relation to the inhabitants of the whole city].
On the other hand, Sansterre himself (1978, I: 76) finished an intense chapter dedicated to the “Facteur linguistique” [linguistic factors] with the observation that in Rome “jamais, au cours de la période envisagée [scil., VI–IX cent.], la connaissance du grec n’y fut fort répandue en milieu latin. Bien au contraire, elle fut le plus souvent exceptionelle et de qualité médiocre. [. . .] Cela ne plaide 1 We will mention here only the main works: Fabre (1889): edition, interpretation and historical classification of the text; Tommasini (1901): re-edition and critical re-interpretation of Fabre’s edition; Krumbacher (1902): review of Tommasini’s work, with new suggestions for interpretation; Maas (1912): new edition and interpretation; Herzfeld (1977): classification of the text within the tradition of oral literature related to the “swallow songs”; Sansterre (1978): mention of the text and related historical inferences; Mosino (1982): attempt at text language localization; De Mauro and Lorenzetti (1991): mention and brief comment of the text; Patala (1996): re-edition, analysis and translation; Alexiou (2003): analysis and interpretation of the text relevance in a linguistic and cultural history perspective; worthy of note also for the systematic comparison with the oral tradition already highlighted by Herzfeld (1977). Further bibliography in Patala (1996: 518 n. 57). The only English translation of the text, to the best of my knowledge, is the one by Alexiou (2003).
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guère en faveur de l’existence de contacts étroits et fréquents entre la population romaine et une partie des moines” [Never, during the period under consideration, the knowledge of Greek was very widespread in Latin. On the contrary, it was mostly exceptional and of poor quality. [. . .] This is hardly in favor of the existence of close and frequent contacts between the Roman population and part of the monks]. The Greek speaking community in Rome has undoubtedly a marginal and minor presence, yet it is such as to justify the diffusion of texts like that under consideration here. We know very little, if anything at all, not only of the Greek but also of the Romance variety used in Rome at the time under consideration, the first isolated record of which is an inscription found in Commodilla’s catacomb dating to the first half of the 9th century.2 Notwithstanding the interpretative difficulties mentioned earlier and granted that caution is necessary when embarking on this analysis to avoid any misinterpretation, the temptation to use our text as a source of direct information is strong. Due to space restrictions we will only deal with a couple of general issues or, rather, preliminaries for further studies: is it actually possible to get from these texts plausible clues to some degree (minimal as it may be) of Greek/Romance bilingualism in Rome during the last centuries of the first millennium? As is well known, allographies3 are a preferred source for the analysis of linguistic and graphic varieties in contact; moreover, as we will soon see, we are dealing with a text which is notably influenced by its corresponding oral form. Could this possibly allow us to make linguistic hypotheses on the varieties in contact and perhaps, on some aspects of the oral repertoires in use in Rome at the time? To answer these questions it is necessary to question a series of critical points that emerge from the tradition of the studies quoted in Note 1.
2 The Language of the Text 4 There are several obstacles to language dating and localization of one or another Greek feature in the text. To start with, it is important from a methodological point of view to restrict the attempts to those forms which are reasonably certain; and 2 Cf. De Mauro and Lorenzetti (1991: 318–20). 3 The term allography, which has several connotations even within the same areas of study, is intended here in the sense used by Mancini (2014): we have allography when a text in a given language is written in a different script from the one normally adopted for that language. 4 Amongst the studies quoted, Patala’s (1996) is the one which devotes more space to linguistic considerations, and we will often use her classifications in the present paragraph.
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yet in those cases where data is elusive this must not be perceived as an impediment, but rather as one of the facts to take into account in the evaluation of alternative reconstruction hypotheses. As for the dating process, the little we know about it leaves us in a condition of uncertainty. Starting with Fabre (1889: 10–11), virtually all scholars agree that the edition date of the Liber Politicus, set (using internal historical clues) between 1140 and 1143, cannot coincide with the time of the composition of the hymns. On the other hand, the Cornomannia ceremony which, as already mentioned, contains some of the verses under investigation, dates back to at least the 9th century. This can be inferred from its mention by John the Deacon (deceased before 882) and the statement in the very same Liber Politicus that it never took place after the pontificate of Gregory VII (1073–1085). Aside from these certain chronological confines, namely the end of 9th century – end of 11th century, we can only but speculate. However, these speculations are not useful for our purpose. It is obvious that the original text dates back when the use of Greek in the Roman Church was active and vibrant. However this implies, first of all, that we must consider a time interval which could reasonably last from the 7th to the 9th century,5 and, secondly, that there is no certainty that the text archetype was not already corrupted. Unfortunately, the chronology of the linguistic phenomena, in theory more promising, cannot offer us more certainty. In Medieval Greek, as Horrocks notes (2010: 273), “because so little vernacular material has been preserved from the period before the 12th century, there are many phenomena that cannot be dated with precision”. Nevertheless, there seem to be some useful linguistic indicators pointing in this direction. We will narrow them down to those we believe are the most significant.6 A particularly discriminant phenomenon for the chronological environment we are interested in is the treatment of front vowels. In the 10th century Greek still distinguished between /y/, both original and originating from οι, and /i/, both original and originating from η, ει (cf. Browning 1983: 56–57, 1997: 163). In the Roman text the merger between the two phonemes appears completed. The Latin letters used to produce the resulting phoneme /i/ are and , apparently in open variation, although with different frequencies, connected neither
5 “Aussi, ces chants remontent sans doute à une époque où la population « grecque » laïque était assez importante pour entretenir l’une o l’autre école de quartier [. . .], ce qui fut le cas au VIIe s. au moins”. [Thus, these songs probably date back to a time when the secular “Greek” population was large enough to maintain one or the other neighborhood school . . . , which was the case in the 7th century at least] (Sansterre 1978, II: 208 n. 124). 6 Unless otherwise specified, we refer to the text from Cambrai’s ms.
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to etymology nor to suprasegmental or metric variables.7 Below are a few examples which are far from being exhaustive: 1a) for gr. [y]: diaydor = διὰ ὕδωρ ‘with water’; christo toy o = χριστῷ τῷ ὑιῷ ‘to Christ, to the son [of David]’; yperba = ὑπέρβα ‘pass on!’ 1b) for gr. [y]: fige fige = φύγε φύγε ‘flee, flee away’; pirgo = πύργον ‘tower’; simbule = σύμβουλε ‘counselor’; siskene = σύσκηνε ‘comrade’ 2a) for gr. [oi ̯]: Tysa galliusi = τοῖς ἀγαλλιοῦσι ‘those who rejoice’; ycodes = οἰκοδέσ(ποτα) ‘master of the house’ 2b) for gr. [oi ̯]: icodomisa = οἰκοδόμησα ‘I built’; Polistis = πολλοῖς τοῖς ‘to the many’ 3a) for gr. [i]: ylaros = ἱλαρὸς ‘cheerful’ 3b) for gr. [i]: didascalo = διδάσκαλος ‘teacher’; Palino.de = πάλιν ὧδε ‘again herein’ 4a) for gr. [ei]: Bitabisileu y curios = Βῆτα βασιλεύει κύριος ‘Beta [name of the letter]. Best reigning ruler’ 4b) for gr. [ei]: Graphi = γράφει ‘writes’ 5a) for gr. [e:]: O tyrathanate = Ὧ (σω)τὴρ ἀθάνατε ‘O immortal Saviour’; eleyson ymas = ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς ‘have mercy upon us’; toyconti = τῷ ἥκοντι ‘to [Christ] who is coming’ 5b) for gr. [e:]: Bitabisileu y curios = Βῆτα βασιλεύει κύριος; abina abina = ἁβήνα ἁβήνα ‘whip, whip’.8 Everything points to a rather established phonological process, which would have been unlikely before the 11th century in Rome, after all, a peripheral area with regards to the main centres of Byzantine Greek expansion. Another distinctive development, both in chronological and diatopic terms, is the simplification of long consonants. This phenomenon, already present on papyrus scrolls, becomes generalized in most of the Greek-speaking world only 7 The text has certainly a rhythmic structure, albeit one difficult to pin point. According to Maas (1912: 43, n. 17) the text consists of couplets of free septenaries. 8 Maas ἁβήνα , Alexiou ἀβήνα ; Patala (1996: 520), without explicit motivations, prefers to render ἄποινα ἄποινα ‘récompense, récompense’ [reward]. Late Greek borrowed Latin habēna ‘rein; whip-lash’ also in the meaning of ‘thong, strap (for beating)’ and adapted it as ἁβήνα, ἁβινα, ἀβινα or ἀβένα: see Sophocles (1900: s.v.), Trapp (2001: s.v.).
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at the start of the 11th century. However, its generalization found considerable resistance in certain areas such as Southern Italy, which was cut off from innovation after 1071 (Horrocks 2010: 274). Our text offers various examples of simplification, for the most part confined to the continuous consonants and sonorants: tesaraconta = τεσσαράκοντα ‘fourty’, gramatha = γράμματα ‘letters’. Next to these, however, are also as many cases of geminates retained in Latin writing: Gamma gennate = Γάμμα γεννᾶται ‘Gamma [name of the letter]. [Christ] he was born’; Agallias tepedes = ἀγαλλιᾶστε παῖδες ‘rejoice, children’. In some instances there are even cases of hyper-gemination as in mantannontes = μανθάνοντες ‘learning’. In this case the text appears to be recording a situation in progress, with an incipient innovation which has not yet reached all forms systematically. It is fair to assume that the many Greek monks who had migrated from the monasteries in Southern Italy to Rome and the Lazio region (for example the Basilian Abbey in Grottaferrata, founded in 1004) could have played a role in such preservation. Although it is almost impossible to verify this hypothesis, the analysis of a further phonological phenomenon, itself also a result of conservation, could support it: the absence of voicing in the nasal plus occlusive clusters. The numerous examples in the text systematically preserve the writing of the voiceless item: carpoforunta = καρποφοροῦντα ‘bringing fruits’; keagalliunta = καὶ ἀγαλλιοῦντα ‘and rejoicing’; singinunta = συγκοινοῦν (τὰ. . .) ‘who share’; craicazontes = κραυγάζοντες ‘screaming’; prugintas = προύχoντας ‘leaders, noblemen’; Pente. Pente. Allapente. dicapente = πέντε, πέντε, ἄλλα πέντε, δεκαπέντε ‘five, five, and five (gives) fifteen’; even in phonosyntax, Tintulogu = (τὴν) τοῦ λόγου ‘[what they seized from] your words’ etc. The only form to undergo voicing appears to be tubanda = τὰ πάντα ‘as a whole, entirely’, attested however only in one of the manuscripts. Franco Mosino (1982: 100) interpreted the /nt/ cluster behaviour in our text as a possible concordance between the Greek spoken in Rome and that spoken in Southern Italy. This would be in line with what we have just observed with regards to the treatment of the geminates. Moving on to morphology, the extension to all types of a form of invariable active participle in -οντα, the precursor of -οντας in modern Greek, is historically characteristic. Again, this development appears toward the end of the 10th century (Browning 1983: 78; Horrocks 2010: 298; Patala 1996: 527). In our text it is exemplified by the phrase o kerasisilthe carpoforunta keagalliunta = ὁ καιρὸς εἰσήλθε καρποφοροῦντα καὶ ἀγαλλιοῦντα (ed. Maas): ‘the season has come which brings fruits and delights’. In conclusion, with all due caution, it seems that the linguistic appearance of the text allows the narrowing of the interval suggested earlier on the basis
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of historical considerations. The phenomena we have described point, almost convergently, to a later period, one closer to the beginning of the second millennium than to the end of the first, therefore not much earlier than their recording in writing. The outcome is significant for at least two reasons which are partially contradictory and therefore seem even more problematic – at least at a first glance. On the one hand, the low chronology suggested by the linguistic phenomena places the text at a time when, as already mentioned, knowledge of Greek in secular Rome had somewhat decreased and it is likely that school children taking part in ceremonies repeated hymns and doggerel in a Greek which no longer corresponded to the Greek they actually used. On the other hand, the inclusion of the above mentioned innovations in the texts seems to have occurred relatively fast. This does not match the image of a community whose Greek was fossilised, restricted to liturgy and a series of formulaic expressions. Nor can the innovations be attributed simply to the work of the scribes, given the special character of the tradition we are analysing: an oral text with no literary and writing models which the scribes could refer to. To solve this apparent contradiction we can think that, where present, the active competence of the Greek language was restricted solely to the adult members of the clergy who were exposed to the influences and dynamics of contemporary Greek (which mirror very clearly the well-known historical contacts between the Greek community in Rome and those in the South) and could pass them on to school children who by now were only “Greek” by birth and no longer – if they had ever been – by language. The children of the various Roman scholae – Roman speakers, literate in Latin, immersed in an environment where the use of Greek was confined to the liturgical domain (official ceremonies included) – could sing the words their teachers taught them even without understanding them completely. As Fabre observed (1889: 11), “Sans doute on a pu longtemps chanter des hymnes dont on ne saisissait plus le sens” [Undoubtedly one could long sing hymns whose meaning was no longer understood].
3 The Text and the Writer After reconstructing the sociolinguistic context in which our text was compiled, we must now enquire into the linguistic and writing repertoire of the person who first put the text into writing. Understandably this is an aspect which studies have focussed on to a lesser degree, concentrating instead on the immediate context in which the text was written. Here the scholars agree in principle, however there are some interesting facets to this.
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According to Fabre (1889: 28 n.1), the language of the songs is a Greek “transcrit ab auditu, avec la prononciation figurée; mais le copiste a eu soin de grouper les syllabes de manière à former, autant que possible, des mots à désinence latine, ce qui en complique beaucoup la lecture” [Transcribed ab auditu, with figurative pronunciation; but the copyist has taken care to group the syllables in such a way as to form, as far as possible, words with Latin ending, which makes it very difficult to read]. Maas’ reconstruction (1912: 30) is essentially consistent with an initial source ab auditu: the archetype of the two manuscripts on which he based his edition (the only two known at the time) was the work of a scribe “der eine nach dem Gehör mit lateinischen Buchstaben geschriebene Vorlage verständnislos und ungenau kopierte” [who copied an original, written with Latin letters, after hearing, without understanding and imprecisely].9 Maas’ clarification is important because it invites us to distinguish the faults due to the initial transcription from those attributable to the writing tradition: the former being of more linguistic interest, the latter of philological interest. Referring just to the written section of the tradition Patala notes (1996: 523): “Les copistes, ne connaissant pas bien ou pas du tout la langue grecque, ont fait beaucoup d’erreurs. Mais auparavant pendant l’ère byzantine, le grec était connu et parlé ou du moins compris, surtout par le clergé. Il y avait des chants et des prières bilingues et vers l’an 700, l’élement hellénophone au sein du haut clergé était prépondérant” [The copyists, who do not know the Greek language well or not at all, have made many mistakes. But before the Byzantine era, Greek was known and spoken or at least understood, especially by the clergy. There were bilingual songs and prayers and around 700 CE, the Hellenophone element within the upper clergy was predominant].10 Not entirely clear in our opinion is the position of Alexiou (2003: 87), who seems to think of a polygenetic transcription from the spoken language (“the scribes”) rather than of two separate moments: “The scribes were sufficiently conversant with ecclesiastical Greek to render liturgical phrases, interspersed throughout the Laudes, according to reasonably consistent and comprehensible patterns of word division and transcription. By contrast, in the vernacular song, word division and phonology alike are so bizarre as to suggest an attempt to fit sounds they had only heard (as opposed to ones which could also be read) into latinized word pattern”.
9 The evidence for our text are the ms 554 (olim 512) from the Cambrai Library (12th century, on which the majority of the editions is based), the Vallicelliano 73 (15th century) and the Vaticanus latinus 5438 (15th century). 10 The second part of Patala’s observations herewith reported is based entirely on Sansterre (1978).
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All considered, if the hypothesis presented at the end of Sect. 2 is somehow plausible, then the linguistic profile of the transcriber of the first text should not be impossible to trace. First of all, it is highly unlikely that the speaker/writer had an active competence in Greek: otherwise it does not make sense why and how a Greek speaker, literate in Greek, would prefer to write a Greek text using the Latin alphabet, and in doing so alter word boundaries by prosodic prominence and reuniting mots phonétiques (οἰκοδέσποτα χαῖρε ‘Master of the house, welcome’ = ycodes potachere etc.). Equally unlikely, given the frequency of phenomena of word concretion or word segmentation (ycodes potachere, Keagalliunta, Tysa galliusi = οἰκοδέσποτα χαῖρε, καὶ ἀγαλλιοῦντα, ‘and rejoicing’, τοῖς ἀγαλλιοῦσι ‘those who rejoice’ etc.), is that this is a transcription from an original text written in Greek.11 This leads us outside the Greek monastic environment and toward a layman, a Latin writer, belonging to the Greek community, who attended a Greek school where he probably learnt by heart the song he would later transcribe. Not much time must have elapsed between the writing of the archetype and the writing of the oldest record. It is likely, in fact, that the original written text already contained some distortions which rendered many passages of the song difficult to decipher even for a Greek speaker.
4 Conclusions Linguistic data agree with historical data compiled and highlighted by Sansterre (1978, I: 62–76), whose conclusions we mentioned at the beginning of this paper. Having established the presence of an ecclesiastical class not perfectly bilingual does not entitle us, however, to speculate about a true Greek/Latin social bilingualism, albeit socially and quantitatively narrow, present in Rome at the end of the first millennium. On the contrary, that sort of sociolinguistic separation already noted on other occasions (De Mauro e Lorenzetti 1991: 319–320) seems to be confirmed. A further, albeit minor confirmation of this separation, comes from the observation of the lexicon, a linguistic component which so far we have not taken into consideration. The extreme shortage of Latin elements in our songs is striking, and such that it cannot be explained fully by simply referring to the foreign origin of the 11 The hypothesis in itself would not be totally farfetched: Adams (2003: 65), commenting the letter from Iulius Lepus to Archibius (P. Oxy. XXXVI .2772, text of 11 CE), has warned scholars “against the automatic assumption that every instance of transliterated Greek or Latin must be attributed to the writer’s illiteracy in the target language”. Nevertheless, as we said above, our text seems too rich in phonetic spellings for the idea to be taken into account.
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khelidonísmata tradition. Of the three hundred plus words contained in the text, there is only one to our knowledge, namely magister, which can be traced back with certainty to a Latin loan. We have already discussed abina, a word which can be traced back to the Latin habēna ‘rein; whip-lash’ or Greek ἄποινα ‘compensation, reward’. Another possible Latinism is tinabula, included in a series of blessings asked of the Lord: paraschu [. . .] tegna. Probatha tinabula. damaritinagria = παράσχου [. . .] τέκνα, πρόβατα, τινάβουλα, δαμάρι τὴν ἄγρια(ν) ‘(Immortal Savior), give them . . . children, sheep, rattles, a wild calf’. However this is one of the most uncertain forms of restitution: to Alexiou’s reading τινάβουλα is opposed πτηνόπουλα ‘winged fowl’ (Maas 1912, Krumbacher 1902) and πτηνά, ποῦλα, both ‘birds’ (Tommasini 1901). The same magister ‘teacher’ is practically glossed over with διδάσκαλος in two adjoining verses which obviously refer to listeners of a different language: O magister ymon. O didascalo symon = Ὁ μαγιστερ ὑμῶν, ὁ διδάσκαλος ὑμῶν ‘our teacher’. The Greek language in the ancient capital of the West had undergone a progressive shrinking in its domains which relegated it to being used exclusively in Greek liturgy. At the time under investigation it was understood little, poorly or not at all, so much so that it could be used in Carnival ceremonies where the Dean of the Schola cantorum, wearing a horned headpiece and mounting a donkey backwards, would throw coins to the people; so much so as to be assimilated to esoteric and almost magic pseudo Jewish expressions, as in the verses recorded by Benedict ten lines after the Greek verses of the Cornomannia: mansionarius barbarice cantat metros Iaritan. Iaritan. Iarariasti. Raphayn. Iercoyn. Iarariasti, et ceteri qui secuntur ‘the house-keeper sings verses in a strange language: Iaritan etc.’ (Fabre 1889: 23). In this historical and sociolinguistic framework, the allography documented by our text was not actually the result of a choice, since the writer had probably no choice at all: in the terms highlighted by Turchetta (this volume), we are faced with a case of allography as an identification mark, rather than a real conscious attempt of marking a linguistic identity. These are all clear indications of a well-defined boundary between Greek and Latin in Rome during the Late Antiquity period, and a boundary which at the time was almost impossible to cross: Greek was about to exit forever that linguistic scene.
References Adams, James N. 2003. Bilingualism and the Latin Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alexiou, Margaret. 2003. After Antiquity. Greek Language, Myth, and Metaphor. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Beck, Hans-Georg. 1971. Geschichte der byzantinischen Volksliteratur. München: Beck.
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Browning, Robert. 1983. Medieval and Modern Greek. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Browning, Robert. 1997. Von der Koine bis zu den Anfängen des modernen Griechisch. In HeinzGünther Nesselrath (ed.), Einleitung in die griechische Philologie, 156–168. Wiesbaden: Springer. De Mauro, Tullio & Luca Lorenzetti. 1991. Dialetti e lingue nel Lazio. In Alberto Caracciolo (ed.), Storia d’Italia. Le regioni dall’Unità a oggi. Il Lazio, 307–364. Torino: Einaudi. Fabre, Paul. 1889. Le polyptyque du chanoine Benoît: étude sur un manuscrit de la bibliothèque de Cambrai. Lille: Au Siège des Facultés. Herzfeld, Michael. 1977. Ritual and Textual Structures: The Advent of Spring in Rural Greece. In Ravindra K. Jain (ed.), Text and Context: The Social Anthropology of Tradition, 29–50. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Horrocks, Geoffrey. 2010. Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers. Oxford: WileyBlackwell. Krumbacher, Karl. 1902. Besprechung zu Tommasini 1901, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 11. 586–88. Maas, Paul. 1912. Metrische Akklamationen der Byzantiner, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 21. 28–51. Mancini, Marco. 2014. Le pratiche del segno. Un’introduzione all’etnografia della scrittura. In Marco Mancini & Barbara Turchetta (eds.), Etnografia della scrittura, 11–44. Roma: Carocci. Mosino, Franco. 1982. Testimonianze di greco volgare a Roma fra tardo-antico e medioevo, Rivista di cultura classica e medievale 24. 97–101. Patala, Zoe. 1996. Les chants grecs du ‘Liber Politicus’ du Chanoine Benoît, Byzantion 66. 512– 30. Sansterre, Jean-Marie. 1978. Les moines grecs et orientaux à Rome aux époques byzantine et carolingienne (milieu du VI e s. – fin du IX e s.). Bruxelles: Académie Royale de Belgique. Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides. 1900. Greek lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine periods (from B.C. 146 to A.D. 1100). New York: C. Scribner’s sons. Tommasini, Vincenzo. 1901. Sulle laudi greche conservate nel ‘Liber politicus’ del canonico Benedetto. In Scritti vari di filologia in onore di E. Monaci, 377–386. Roma: Forzani. Trapp, Erich. 2001. Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität, besonders des 9.–12. Jahrhunderts. Wien: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Turchetta, Barbara. The Writer’s Identity and Identification Markers in Writing Code Mixing and Interference. This volume.
Gabriella Mazzon
6 Code-switching and Style-shifting in the Anglophone World: Medieval and Contemporary Identity Marking and Interaction Strategies 1 Introduction The scientific community has, until recently, underestimated the extent and the significance of the use of two or several codes in written texts. This is perhaps due to the long-standing reluctance to deal with language mixture in philological studies (in turn connected with the general rejection of language mixture, especially in relation to the written word; Bennett-Kastor 2008: 30–1), as well as to the primacy of the spoken language in modern sociolinguistics. We had to wait for the development of historical sociolinguistics for multilingual texts to come to our attention,1 and for the creation of new genres and text-types, especially in connection with computer-mediated communication, for the issues related to mixed-language identity signals to come to the forefront of wider and more systematic research efforts. Projects such as the one that originated this and several other volumes and articles have now revealed that language mixture in texts was already prominent in antiquity (Adams, Janse, and Swain 2002; see also chapter by Turchetta in this volume), and became quite pervasive in the Middle Ages, especially thanks to the encounter between one of the first “global” languages, Latin, and the emerging vernaculars. This paper aims at contributing to such studies, as well as at being a sort of “bridge” between the first and the second parts of this volume – although a more systematic analysis of the formal features of “mixtilingual” texts is certainly a priority (especially as concerns the syntactic element; Romaine 2016), I will concentrate on the sociolinguistic and pragmatic factors in English textual language mixing, i.e. on the signalling, at the micro-level, not only of identity
1 And even then only on a limited basis: most editions and historical corpora tend to exclude such texts, and to omit portions in other languages from mixed texts; dedicated publications, starting with the 1990s, have been so far relatively sporadic. Gabriella Mazzon, Leopold-Franzens Universität Innsbruck DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-006
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but also of stance. I also hope to show similarities between language-mixing strategies in medieval times and in the present era of social media, which is often said to be comparable to the Middle Ages in terms of (some features of) text production.
2 Language mixing in the Middle Ages As Sebba (2012) emphasises, multilingualism in writing has suffered from a considerable delay in getting the attention of scholars, as opposed to code-mixing in oral practice. Nevertheless, studies on code-switching and code-mixing in the history of English have been progressing significantly for the last two decades (see survey in Schendl 2012: 29–30), and what has emerged, especially thanks to collections like Schendl and Wright (2011a), is the existence of actual “mixed codes,”2 used especially in connection with specific subgroups in a community and with communities of practice (McColl Millar 2012: 9). Such mixed codes go further than prototypical code-switching, and in fact, although the boundary between code-switching and code–mixing is always blurred, mixed codes seem to relate to a set of stable practices that are different from codeswitching in the prototypical sense – they were probably perceived as quite distinct varieties, within which the very idea of code-switching could be meaningless to text-producers (Schendl and Wright 2011b; Trotter 2011: 157). Furthermore, while modern code-switching theories often involve hypotheses of “limited competence” in either language as one of the triggering factors, the use of language mixing in writing generally points to a high level of knowledge of the languages involved, as Wright (2001: 363) already noted. This increases the chances that code-mixing could be used for different reasons, which may have to do with extra-linguistic factors, and which will briefly be explored below. Recent studies in historical sociolinguistics, highlighting this and related evidence, bring new insight (in spite of the limits in the evidence, especially related to the bias of any such sample towards the upper end of the social scale in terms of production and fruition of the texts, and to the fact that many of these belong to specialised registers and show language mixture especially in “technical” terms), not only for what they contribute to our knowledge of structural elements in language mixture, and particularly syntax, but also for what
2 Machan (2003: 103) goes as far as to claim that specific business varieties of Late Middle English appear to be “interlanguages” of English, French, and Latin.
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they reveal on text producers and receivers in terms of language identity and of stance.
2.1 The pragmatics of medieval code-switching and style-shifting Produced in a highly varied cultural climate (with the aftermath of the Norman domination, the persistent authority of Latin in the religious domain as well as in philosophical and scientific writing – gradually more and more often challenged by the developing European vernaculars, and the lingering influence of the Scandinavian component, which only in this period starts to show lexical and grammatical traces in manuscripts), late-medieval English texts show degrees of language mixture that can be indicative of multiple/overlapping/ambiguous identities, and that seem to serve various communicative purposes. In particular, this paper briefly mentions the marking of text-types and registers (Sect. 2.1.1), of social levels (Sect. 2.1.2), and of speech acts and conversational moves (Sect. 2.1.3).
2.1.1 Marking textual levels and text types Some text-types appear more prone to mixing than others, especially “technical” texts, in particular business writing, widely studied mainly by Wright (2001, 2002, 2011), but also legal and clerical texts. However, there are other text-types that show a surprisingly high level of “globalisation” in the ease with which they alternate different codes. The consistency with which certain parts of speech and/or certain structures are allotted to each language denotes a high level of language competence and of reflection on the forms to be used, especially when there is morpho-syntactic adaptation, to a degree that for Wright (2001) cannot but be suggestive of high levels of literacy in both languages. Further proof of this high competence and refinement level can be seen in other typical examples from medieval Britain, apart from the business texts already mentioned, for instance the so-called macaronic sermons (Wenzel 1994), which alternate Latin and Middle English especially (but not exclusively) in noun phrases (1), and poetry (especially love poems; Schendl 2001), which often alternate whole lines or half-lines (generally corresponding to syntactic units) in Latin, Middle English and Anglo-Norman (2).
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Iste est de quo lego in sacra scriptura, Apocalipsis VI.Ibi lego quod sanctus euangelista Iohannes vidit in visione a pale huyd hors, nomen sedentis super istum fuit Mors. Iste habuit potestatem interficere gladio omnes homines habitantes quattour partes terre, et infernus sequebatur eum. Per istum pale huyt hors intelligo nostram mortalem naturam que non est nisi cineres et terra. Iste equus fuit frik sine maledy et bene huyt is color – nec fuit pomely gray duplicitatis et adulacionis, nec colblack odii, uel viciose vite, sed þe pris hu omnium, þe noble bay originalis iusticie. Iste fuit pulcher equus et aliking. “He is the one of whom I read in sacred scripture, Revelation 6. There I read that the holy evangelist John saw in a vision a pale-hued horse, the name of the one sitting on him was Death. He had power to kill with the sword all men inhabiting the four corners of the earth, and hell followed him. By this pale-hued horse is understood our mortal nature which is nothing except ashes and dirt. This horse was vigorous without malady and well hued his colour – it was not the spotted gray of duplicity and flattery, nor the coalblack of hatred or of vicious life, but the prize hue of all, the noble bay of original justice. This was a beautiful and healthy horse.” (Macaronic sermon, 14 c.; Middle English parts in bold. Source: Horner 2006: 28)
(2)
A ele que ayme sur tout rien, Of all that in this world beene, Corde meo dure fixa: Enterement me commaunde de quere As ye that ben to me most chere Intra mundi climate
“To the woman I love above all else, of all that in this world there be, firmly fixed in my heart: I commend myself to you with all my heart as you that are dearest to me in all the regions of the world”
(Armburgh Roll, XIV century; Middle English parts in bold. Source: Putter 2009: 398; translation mine) There are also examples of code-mixing in correspondence (see e.g. Nurmi and Pahta 2012) – a text-type that was already well defined in antiquity (Bruno 2015 and this volume), which is increasingly regulated in style through handbooks and guidebooks, and in which stylistic choices also represent identity statements; finally, and rather importantly, this also concerns medieval drama,3 in which not 3 On the importance of drama in sociopragmatic studies see also Fedriani, Ghezzi, and Talamo (this volume).
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only there are often Latin stage directions (and they will partly remain in Latin in later centuries), and not only we find several lines, phrases, or words in Latin when the Scriptures are quoted or evoked, especially in religious drama, but we also find some fully bilingual texts, with alternate stanzas in Middle English that translate the Latin ones, e.g. in the Shrewsbury Fragments from the beginning of the fourteenth century (3) or in the so-called Cambridge Prologue (end of the thirteenth century), which has two parallel versions (Middle English and AngloNorman), in which the two languages are separated but anyway juxtaposed within the same context (Davis 1970: 114–115). (3)
III. MARIA. Surrexit Christus, spes nostra; Precedet vos in Galileam. Crist is rysen, wittenes we By tokenes þat we haue sen þis morn! Oure hope, oure help, oure hele, is he, And hase bene best, sithe we were born! If we wil seke him for to se, Lettes noght þis lesson be forlorn; But gose euen vnto Galilee“Christ is risen. We have witnessed it this morning. He is our hope, our help, our best health since ever we were born. If we will seek him for to see, our lessons from him will not be forlorn. We will follow him unto Galilee.” (Shrewsbury Fragment B, 14th c.; Latin in bold, Middle English translated, translation mine. Source: Davis 1970: 4)
Some possible sociolinguistic and pragmatic meanings of such mixtures are briefly explored in the next two subsections.
2.1.2 Social positioning through language choice The sociolinguistic values of medieval code-mixing are increasingly often the object of investigation; this line of research is twofold, defining text-type on the one hand and social characterisation on the other. For instance, the use of Latin words and expressions in religious drama seems to point to the fact that such expressions are typical of practices reflecting genre-specific uses, as mentioned above about stage directions, but they are also typical of characters representing political and religious elites, such as Herod. Caesar, or Pilate, as opposed to more “common” characters, and are used precisely to emphasise that power
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(Mazzon 2007; Granger 2009). Similarly, the use of French in Middle English poetry is often connected to aristocratic and courtly characters, or to uses highly marked for politeness, thus adding a pragmatic dimension to this phenomenon (Machan 2011; Putter 2011: 287–297). Apart from code-switching itself, plays also offer a wealth of sociolinguistically relevant metalinguistic comments, interesting elements of culturally and ideologically determined characterization of identities, as well as pragmatically relevant cases of dialogue management, often employing code-mixing. Medieval religious drama, not only from Britain but also from other European countries, is relatively rich in cases of language mixture – on the one hand, this mirrors the social provenance of the writers of such texts, probably including members of the clergy.4 But on the other hand, perhaps specifically because they were not manuscripts that were put to any practical use, but rather well-designed texts (from the metrical and stylistic points of view, as well as in material appearance), we can consider the examples of code-switching that these texts contain as indirect sources on the social and identity values attached to different languages. Elsewhere (Mazzon 2007) I have written, for instance, about the fact that the use of Latin or of a “Latinized English” is typical of high-class and authoritative characters (thereby creating an ambiguity, since this register characterised God on the one hand – for instance in the Norwich Grocers’ Play – but on the other hand also the earthly powerful (Mazzon 2007: 207–9), often with intents of criticism and satire, as seen especially in the character of Satan, whose resonant and sophisticated polysyllables can be counted among the first signals of the opposition to Latin typical of the Lollard and Wycliffite movements, and of a cultural climate that anticipates the eventual detachment from the Church of Rome. Similar sociolinguistic differences were found in Schendl (2001: 326–327), especially when characterising religious quotations or “foreign” characters in medieval English poetry. Also interesting are however those cases in which code-switching is employed as a pragmatic strategy to mark a change in register or to emphasise the speaker’s stance – research on this is in progress on English, but several contributions related to the present project are revealing a wealth of information as concerns the Mediterranean area as well (see Part 2 of this volume for examples and relative bibliographies).
4 We may recall here the fact that most of the late-medieval plays in our possession are highly refined, carefully prepared manuscripts, and not stage copies – we have no witness of the latter for Britain, and very few for France and Germany – which leads us to think that reading copies were made for use in clerical and administrative environments.
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2.1.3 Marking speech acts and stance through code-switching Another possibly productive way to look at mixtilingual texts is with an eye to what they do for the communicative purposes of the texts, for the agents involved (whether real or fictional, e.g. literary characters), and for the dynamics of communicative exchanges (see e.g. the analysis of specific speech acts involving identity statements in drama in Fedriani, Ghezzi, and Talamo’s chapter in this volume). Code-switching and other types of mixture could thus be studied within the framework of sociopragmatics, which, according to one recent definition, “focuses on the way in which speakers exploit [socially conditioned language] norms to generate particular meanings, take up particular social positionings, and so on” (Culpeper 2010: 73). Analyses of early English correspondence, for instance, have revealed a tendency to use code-switching for pre-fabricated formulae and quotations (Nurmi and Pahta 2012: 51). In this sense, we can define some specific loci in which this intersection seem represented by style-shifting, typically e.g. the so-called boasting speech, which refers to cases in which characters like Herod or Pilate, but first and foremost the Devil, boast about their power, and address the audience demanding deference and respect for their status. These monologues are on the one hand characterised by coarse language and even insults addressed at the audience, but on the other hand by a Latinized register or by code-switching to (macaronic) Latin, as in ex. (4) from the Towneley Plays, which are especially rich in this kind of socially-related style-shifting. A rather long excerpt is quoted here to give a precise idea of the kind of language mixture employed. The face-threatening, imposing stance of high-rank characters is also emphasised, for other types of theatre, by Fedriani, Ghezzi and Talamo (this volume), and can thus be hypothesised to be a regular feature of such characterisation, especially with satirical intent. (4)
PILATE Stynt, I say! gyf men place / quia sum dominus dominorum! he that agans me says / rapietur lux oculorum; Therfor gyf ye me space / ne tendam vim brachiorum, And then get ye no grace / contestor Iura polorum, Caueatis; Rewle I the Iure, Maxime pure, Towne quoque rure, Me paueatis. Stemate regali / kyng atus gate me of pila; Tramite legali / Am I ordand to reyn apon Iuda,
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Nomine wlgari / pownce pilate, that may ye well say, Qui bene wlt fari / shuld call me fownder of all lay. “Silence, I say! Give me place, because I am the king of kings! He that speaks against me will have the light of his eyes taken away! Therefore give me space, lest I resort to force, and then you get no grace, Be careful, I rule as the maximum righteous judge – town and countryside: be in awe of me! Of regal origin – King Atus begot me of Pila, and by legal means I am ordained to reign over Jews – by common name Ponce Pilate, you may well say – he who wants to do well, should call me founder of all law” (Towneley Plays, The Talents, 10–22; Macaronic Latin parts in bold, translation mine. Source: Middle English Compendium) Another locus is represented by irony and sarcasm: in almost all late-medieval European plays of the Crucifixion, the Mocking of Christ is a crucial scene, on which the dramatic texts dwell for various sociocultural reasons. These scenes of derision often include instances of mock politeness, in which Christ is ironically shown deference, as part of his punishment for his alleged arrogance in proclaiming himself “king of the Jews”. As the communicative functions of many of these plays included some form of social critique, it is interesting to notice that ironic deference or mock politeness often employs code-switching to increase its efficacy – thus we find Latin vocatives in French plays (5), or a switch to macaronic French when Herod questions a reluctant and unresonding Jesus in the York cycle plays (6). In both cases, this shift to the “high” language seems an integral part of the derision, and it is also in these parodic uses (not so distant from the irony with which, a few decades earlier, Chaucer referred to the “French of Straford-atte-Bowe” of his pretentious Prioress) that useful insight into the use of a repertoire to express identity can be gained. (5)
BRAYART S’il s’en fuit, je vueil qu’on me tonde. Mais regardez cy quel docteur, Quel notable predicateur, Quel excellant roy nous aurons! MARDOCHEE Ave, donc, rex Judeorum Cytoyens Juifz, ca venez Et humblement vous inclinez Devant ce roy plain de vertus
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PHARES Ave rex ABIRON Et ave, rex Cristus Le haul troy des Juifz, Dieu te gart! “Brayart: I may be hanged if he manages to run away But look here what a doctor, What notable preacher, What excellent king we have here” Mardochee: Ave, thus, rex Judeorum, Come here, Jews, And bow down humbly In front of this king full of virtues. Phares: Ave rex Abiron: And ave, rex Cristus Highest king of the Jews, God save you!” (Passion Michel, 26374-84; Latin parts in bold – italics in the edition; translation mine) (6)
REX Nowe gois abakke both and late the boy blowe, For I hope we gete some harre hastely at hande. MILES 1 Jerusalem and the Jewes may haue joie And hele in ther herte for to here hym. REX Saie, beene-venew in bone fay, Ne plesew a parle remoy? MILES 2 Nay my lorde, he can of no bourdyng, this boy. REX No sir? With thi leue we schall lere hym. “KING: Now go on back, both, and let the boy blow. His ear, I’ll have (hopefully) hastily at hand. 1 SOLDIER: Jerusalem and the Jews may have joy, And heal in their hearts for to hear him. KING: Say, bien-veniew in bon fay Ne plaisieur and a parle remoy? 2 SOLDIER: Nay, lord – there’s no playful chat in this boy. KING: No sir? With your leave we shall teach him.” (York Plays 31.141–148; French portions in bold. Source: Middle English Compendium. Translation: Purvis 1957)
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3 Mixed written codes in the contemporary Anglophone world: identity signals and new text-types All the flexibility in code-switching and code-mixing that was noted for the Middle Ages in Britain disappears starting with the Renaissance, when characterisation starts to be exclusively entrusted to stage dialect, which is reduced to mimicry of stereotypical accent features plus a few stigmatised grammatical markers, while mixtilinguism is abandoned for all text-types – the last were the most ritualised texts, e.g. legal texts, which retained portions and formulae in Latin and French until relatively late. The re-emergence on a large scale of mixed codes happens only in post-colonial times, when once again it is not a limited language competence that generates the mixture, but rather a complex interplay of cultural factors, as can be seen clearly in literary texts (Montes-Alcalá 2015). Some of these mixed varieties enjoy a certain degree of institutionalisation,5 besides being successful in everyday negotiations of identity – this happens most often in those communities that are “split” or “compressed” between two or more political entities, where probably there is more difficulty in conveying one’s identity through a homogenous code, so not mainly in the new post-colonial nation states but in isolated and or border communities – the most typical examples are “MIX” in Hong Kong (Gibbons 1987), “mix-mix” in the Philippines (7),6 “Singlish” or “talkingcock” in Singapore (8)7 and “llanito/yanito” in Gibraltar (9), where we also find poetry that alternates Spanish and English in ways similar to those found for medieval poetry, although code-mixing proper is reported for private writing (Kellermann 2001: 239). The best-known (although maybe less linguistically reliable) examples are found in a humoristic newspaper column that has become popular precisely because of the identities portrayed, among other indicators, through this form of Yanito. Although the majority of these are traceable mostly in orality, since they are typical of a mediated and multifaceted identity (both on the micro- and on the macro-levels), thanks to the
5 As proved also by the fact that these varieties receive names – identification of a mixed variety as a variety in its own right through naming is of course an ideologically very significant step. 6 The scholar quoting this example seems to think that this appears at first sight as a case of idiosyncratic or non-rule-governed mixing, but that in fact it shows specific features of a mixed variety (Marasigan 1986: 354–5). 7 It is significant when looking at degrees of institutionalisation that this and other similar examples are included in a brochure produced by the Singaporean government about Singaporean identities.
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spread of the Internet written uses emerge more and more frequently, in online newspapers, blogs, and similar contexts.8 (7)
My barkada’s (friends) are Andrea, Maricris, Lora. They’re minsan pikon and minsan good (sometimes unable to take jokes and sometimes good). We are always together, sometimes nagkakaroon kami ng misunderstanding at madalas kaming mag-away (we sometimes misunderstand each other and we quarrel often). Always tuksuhan (kidding each other), but if we are quarrelling, bati agad (we patch things up quickly). Madalas ang pag-aaway naming (we often quarrel sometimes) because of Lora minsan, Maricris sometimes and minsan ako (sometimes because of me) . . . (“Mix-mix”, the Philippines, 6th grade pupil’s essay. Source and translation: Marasigan 1986; Tagalog parts in bold)
(8)
Singaporean? Aiyah, so easy. . . Go Kopitiam, can see already! See they go cut queue? We Singaporeans, so kiasu! Greedy one, never full! Eat rojak, want yong-tau-foo! Oi, what you laughing about??!! (Singlish, Singapore, poem by student, 14. Source: http://www.mindef.gov.sg/dam/publications/eBooks/More_ eBooks/NDP03book.pdf)
(9)
My dear Cloti, cuando empieza la guerra otra vez, porque esta todo rather quiet on the political front. Verdad, que los political missiles have stopped, Cynthia mia, sera poque el Patasjamon se ha dado cuenta que esta todo el mundo en la playa, panza arriba, y con pocas gana de politiqueo. Or it could be que he and others have gone on holiday themselves, I imaginate.
8 About the study of computer-mediated language, many insist on the fact that several texttypes, contrary to what was maintained earlier, often appear “rhetorical” (to use Gumperz’ term) and reflected enough to be assimilated to other types of written texts (Hinrichs 2006: 21). Halmari and Regetz (2011: 118) explicitly state that code-mixing in modern emails and other computer-mediated messages resembles that of medieval macaronic sermons under several respects. At the same time, Bock (2103: 70) claims that texting and similar text-producing activities in multilingual communities often give rise to “supervernaculars”.
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Es que el que mas tiene mas quiera, y el que no tiene, como our neighbours, ahora quieren meterse hasta en duty free, to compete contra nosotros, how about that?! “My dear Cloti, when the war starts again, because it is all rather quiet on the political front. True, that the political missiles have stopped, my Cynthia, it will be because because the Patasjamon has realised that everybody is at the beach, lying down, and with very little desire to do politics. Or it could be that he and others have gone on holiday themselves, I imaginate. The fact is that who most has most wants, and who does not have, like our neighbours, now want to put themselves even in duty free, to compete against us, how about that?!” (Llanito, Gibraltar. Source: Panorama, August 24, 2015) Studies on postcolonial literature, for instance on Chicano drama and fiction, have highlighted the presence and significance of code-mixing, for “symbolic” purposes (Montes-Alcalá 2015), of the type that Blom and Gumperz (1972) first called metaphorical code-switching. The mediated nature of literary texts leads to think of a predominance of conscious and intentional patterns of mixing in contemporary literature, and the study of this type of mixture can be of high socio-cultural interest. The next section focusses on other text-types, however, as it is considered more productive in this context to explore texts that are more interactive and/ or have a wider range of recipients, as is typical of computer-mediated communication. It is interesting to notice that the portions in different codes are often differentiated graphically, as they also often were in the Middle Ages (Vold Lexander 2011).
3.1 The pragmatics of contemporary mixed texts A relatively well-established function of textual code-switching is to mark portions of the text that belong to, or quote, different subgenres or text-types, or topic and “tone”. This strategy emerges for instance in text messages (Vold Lexander [2011: 436–438] shows some non-English related examples), but note that there are also contrary opinions, since Marasigan (1986: 346) did not notice any correlation between all (Hallidayan) functions and speech acts and different languages in a corpus of Philippine Mix-Mix, if not for the interpersonal/expressive range, thus pointing to a subjective/intersubjective use of the mixed code.
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The tendency to use code-switching for formulae and pre-fabricated chunks, which we already noted for early English correspondence, re-emerges in personal messages, especially texting – although this could be considered a subtype of the quotative function (also studied for Hong Kong MIX by Li [2002: 83]), it is noticeable that these cases involve items and sequences that have high (inter) subjective values, such as greetings, wish formulae, and discourse markers.9 Similar tendencies were found by Hinrichs (2006: 52–54), who investigated the mixture of Creole and English in a corpus of Jamaican emails and other electronic texts, in which topics such as religion tended to trigger a switch to the standard; message writers also tended to switch to the Patois when a “we-code” was emphasised, e.g. in conflictive contexts, as well as in contexts of reporting and quoting an “external entity”, with which the text-composer does not identify, and which therefore is marked by the standard. Particularly in emails where senders are taking on different personae or roles (often involving quite different sets of values), code-switching seem to be instrumental to stance shifts, although in this case it is more intersentential switching corresponding to separate “utterances” within the text, as opposed to mixing proper (Hinrichs 2006: 108–10). On the more strictly pragmatic level, the use of Patois in the corpus also tended to occur in English-dominant messages for mitigation purposes (Hinrichs 2006: 73), as well as in other contexts in which there is a violation of politeness, so indicating a repair action. Equally visible are cases of eliciting solidarity or stressing intimacy, a function for which the vernacular is quite expectedly preferred (10), even when reproach and bantering are involved. Similarly, South African text messages show mixture in the negotiation of interpersonal positions such as stating one’s mood, showing appreciation, passing judgement and in the potentially face-threatening context of closing an exchange (Bock 2013: 80). (10)
FF why are you so wukliss?!? Ok, I realise that you have run off to Paris, but that doesn’t mean se yu fi dash we yu ole time fren dem!! “FF (female friend) why are you so useless and dishonest (etymologically related to worthless)?!? . . . that doesn’t mean that you have to abandon you old friends” (Source and translation Hinrichs [2006: 68]; Patois parts in bold).
9 A high frequency of switches for such items is also recorded in Chicano literature, where authors try to “mimic” speech (Montes-Alcalá 2012: 75) – this strategy is also used in other postcolonial literature where “mixed” or ambiguous identities are conveyed. Formulae and vocatives are also frequent loci of code-switching in South African text messages (Bock 2013: 77).
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4 Conclusions The directions of research outlined above have shown that, in several contexts and in different epochs, language mixture is much less exceptional and rare than generally assumed, but that on the contrary mixed-language texts are often stable and diffuse, indicating not so much variable competences in text producers, but rather communicative conventions and strategies related to different communities of practice (Schendl 2012: 29). It is only to be hoped that such texts find more space in the compilation of corpora (which usually exclude mixtilingual texts altogether [Schendl 2001: 310–11]), both in diachronic and in synchronic research fields, since a more precise assessment of sociolinguistic and sociopragmatic factors in language use is only possible if such texts are systematically integrated in linguistic analyses. In particular, the new field of studies of social media appears to be the new frontier for synchronic textual studies, since we already know that identities tend to be represented through language mixture to a larger extent in text-types such as text messages, chatroom exchanges, instant messaging, etc. (there is already a quite large corpus of websites and blogs that includes about twenty Anglophone areas, the GloWbE).10 In investigations of the past, correspondence remains one of the most interesting text-types, although it involves a limited number of interlocutors – more public text-types, such as inscriptions, notices, leaflets, etc., precisely because they are addressed to a higher number of interlocutors, represent crucial sources of information for the study of mixtilinguism in the text producers, as a sociolinguistically and sociopragmatically relevant element, but also in the receivers, as a signal of a “globalised” and flexible competence in the decoding of texts. In particular, it could be highly interesting to explore what code-switching and language mixtures tell us about “interlocutors” in terms of communities of practice and/or social networks, both research lines that are very vital in the Anglophone field – for that to happen, it will be necessary to finally detach ourselves form the idea that mixed-language texts are somehow “marked”. On the contrary, they appear not only to have been and to be very vital, but also to be a subtle instrument to indicate stable (sociolinguistic) and micro-contextrelated (pragmatic) identity and stance features.
10 Hinrichs (2006: 17) notes that, in computer-mediated communication, “the combination of strongly informal language use with a written medium . . . means that many vernacular language forms are coming to be written much more widely . . . and that written interaction in English is opening up to the whole spectrum of world varieties of English, instead of remaining restricted to standard forms of language”.
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References Adams, James N., Mark Janse & Simon Swain (eds.). 2002. Bilingualism in Ancient Society: Language Contact and the Written Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bennett-Kastor, Tina. 2008. Code-Mixing in Biliterate and Multiliterate Irish Literary Texts. Estudios Irlandeses 3. 29–41. Blom, Jan-Petter & John J. Gumperz. 1972. Social Meaning in Linguistic Structures: Code Switching in Northern Norway. In John J. Gumperz & Dell Hymes (eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics, 407–34. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Bock, Zannie. 2013. Cyber socialising: Emerging genres and registers of intimacy among young South African students. Language Matters 44 (2). 68–91. Bruno, Carla. 2015. Aspetti della variazione nelle lettere papiracee in lingua greca dell’Egitto tolemaico. In Marina Benedetti (ed.), Rappresentazioni linguistiche dell’identità. [Special issue]. Quaderni di AIΩN (n.s.) 3. 33–50. Bruno, Carla. Variations of the First Person: Looking at the Greek Private Letters of Ptolemaic Egypt. This volume. Culpeper, Jonathan. 2010. Historical sociopragmatics. In Andreas H. Jucker & Irma Taavitsainen (eds.), Historical Pragmatics, 69–94. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Davis, Norman (ed.). 1970. Non-cycle Plays and Fragments. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fedriani, Chiara, Chiara Ghezzi & Luigi Talamo. Exploring Linguistic Representations of Identity through the DiSCIS Corpus: Evidence from Directive Acts in Plautus and Goldoni. This volume. Gibbons, John. 1987. Code-mixing and code choice: A Hong Kong case study. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Granger, Penny. 2009. The N-Town Play. Drama and Liturgy in Medieval East Anglia. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Halmari, Helena & Timothy Regetz. 2011. Syntactic aspects of code-switching in Oxford, MS Bodley 649. In Herbert Schendl & Laura C. Wright (eds.), Code-switching in Early English, 115–153. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Hinrichs, Lars. 2006. Codeswitching on the Web. English and Jamaican Creole in e-mail communication. Amsterdam & Philadephia: John Benjamins. Horner, Patrick J. (ed./transl.). 2006. A Macaronic Sermon collection from Late Medieval England. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. Kellermann, Anja. 2001. A New New English. Language, Politics, and Identity in Gibraltar. Norderstedt: Heidelberg. Li, David C.S. 2002. Cantonese-English code-switching research in Hong Kong: A Survey of recent research. In Kingsley Bolton (ed.), Hong Kong English: Autonomy and Creativity, 79–99. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. McColl Millar, Robert. 2012. English Historical Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Machan, Tim William. 2003. English in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Machan, Tim William. 2011. The visual pragmatics of code-switching in late Middle English literature. In Herbert Schendl & Laura C. Wright (eds.), Code-switching in Early English, 303–333. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Marasigan, Elizabeth M. 1986. A Note on Philippine Mix-Mix. Philippine Studies 34 (3). 338– 359.
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Mazzon, Gabriella. 2007. Hic cantent angeli in celo: typology and functions of Latin insertions in Middle English plays in the N-Town cycle. In Ute Smit, Stefan Dollinger, Julia Hüttner, Ursula Lutzky & Gunther Kaltenböck (eds.), Tracing English through time: explorations in language variation, 225–240. Vienna: Braumüller. Middle English Compendium, University of Michigan Digital Library production Service, Accessible at: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mec/. (accessed 12.12.2016). Montes-Alcalá, Cecilia. 2012. Code-switching in US-Latino Novels. In Mark Sebba, Shahrzad Mahootian & Carla Jonsson (eds.), Language Mixing and Code-Switching in Writing. Approaches to Mixed-Language Written Discourse, 68–88. London: Routledge. Montes-Alcalá, Cecilia. 2015. Code-switching in US Latino literature: The role of biculturalism. Language and Literature 24 (3). 264–281. Nurmi, Arja & Päivi Pahta. 2012. Multilingual Practices in Women’ English Correspondence 1400–1800. In Mark Sebba, Shahrzad Mahootian & Carla Jonsson (eds.), Language Mixing and Code-Switching in Writing. Approaches to Mixed-Language Written Discourse, 44–67. London: Routledge. Purvis, John S. (ed.). 1957. The York Cycle of Mystery Plays. London: SPCK. Putter, Ad. 2009. The French of English Letters: Two Trilingual Verse Epistles in Context. In Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (ed.), Language and Culture in Medieval Britain. The French of England c. 1100–c. 1500, 397–408. Rochester: York Medieval Press. Putter, Ad. 2011. Code-switching in Langland, Chaucer and the Gawain poet: Diglossia and footing. In Herbert Schendl & Laura C. Wright (eds.), Code-switching in Early English, 281–302. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Romaine, Suzanne. 2016. The variationist approach. In Merja Kytö & Päivi Pahta (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics, 19–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schendl, Herbert. 2001. Code-switching in medieval English poetry. In Dieter Kastovsky & Arthur Mettinger (eds.), Language Contact in the History of English, 305–336. Bern: Peter Lang. Schendl, Herbert. 2012. Literacy, Multilingualism and Code-switching in Early English Written Texts. In Mark Sebba, Shahrzad Mahootian & Carla Jonsson (eds.), Language Mixing and Code-Switching in Writing. Approaches to Mixed-Language Written Discourse, 27–43. London: Routledge. Schendl, Herbert & Laura C. Wright (eds.). 2011a. Code-switching in Early English. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schendl, Herbert & Laura C. Wright. 2011b. Code-switching in Early English: Historical background and methodological and theoretical issues. In Herbert Schendl & Laura C. Wright (eds.), Code-switching in Early English, 15–45. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Sebba, Mark. 2012. Researching and Theorising Multilingual Texts. In Mark Sebba, Shahrzad Mahootian & Carla Jonsson (eds.), Language Mixing and Code-Switching in Writing. Approaches to Mixed-Language Written Discourse, 1–26. London: Routledge. Trotter, David. 2011. Death, taxes and property: Some code-switching evidence from Dover, Southampton, and York. In Herbert Schendl & Laura C. Wright (eds.), Code-switching in Early English, 155–189. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Turchetta, Barbara. The Writer’s Identity and Identification Markers in Writing Code Mixing and Interference. This volume. Vold Lexander, Kristin. 2011. Texting and African language literacy. New Media and Society 13 (3). 427–443.
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Wenzel, Siegfried. 1994. Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and Preaching in Late-Medieval England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Wright, Laura Charlotte. 2001. Models of language mixing: code-switching versus semicommunication. In Dieter Kastovsky & Arthur Mettinger (eds.), Language Contact in the History of English, 305–336. Bern: Peter Lang. Wright, Laura Charlotte. 2002. Code-intermediate phenomena in medieval mixed-language business texts. Language Sciences 24. 471–489. Wright, Laura Charlotte. 2011. On variation in medieval mixed-language business writing. In Herbert Schendl & Laura C. Wright (eds.), Code-switching in Early English, 191–218. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
II Linguistic Representations of Identity at the Macro-level of the Linguistic Repertoire
Marina Benedetti, Paolo Di Giovine, Flavia Pompeo and Liana Tronci
7 Identity in the Repertoire: A Bottom Line 1 Foreword Within the more general topic of linguistic representations of identity, the issue of “identity in the repertoire” deserves special attention. Closely related to this subject is the study of the manifold chronological/typological aspects of language contact.1 Indeed, language contact over time may affect, sometimes in a profound way, the repertoire of every speech community involved, from phonology to lexicon, according to an increasing level of interference. It follows that this subject matter is undoubtedly extremely vast and involves several issues with many interesting insights achieved in recent studies of this topic. Therefore, the primary aim of this chapter consists of a broad reflection on the most significant and innovative results which have come to light. Obviously, the complexity of the subject and the wealth of the studies available require a preliminary discussion on how our reflections should be organized. Given this premise, the present article is structured as follows: Section 2 is devoted to a brief introduction while Section 3 contains a description of the areas investigated and highlights the most significant results attained in recent studies. Section 4 presents our conclusions and suggestions for further research perspectives.
2 Introductory remarks: Object and method When dealing with an issue such as “identity and differences in the repertoire”, we have at least two choices as to the best method in order to direct our analysis, as far as possible, towards reliable and comprehensive conclusions. 1 From this point of view we cannot ignore Schuchardt’s earlier contributions: see Venier (2015). Note: This paper is the result of close cooperation among the authors. Nevertheless, Flavia Pompeo is more directly responsible for Sects. 1 and 3.1, Paolo Di Giovine for Sects. 2 and 3.6, Marina Benedetti for Sects. 3.2 and 3.3, and Liana Tronci for Sects. 3.4 e 3.5. The last paragraph (Sect. 4) has to be ascribed jointly to Marina Benedetti and Liana Tronci. Marina Benedetti and Liana Tronci, Università per Stranieri di Siena Paolo Di Giovine and Flavia Pompeo, Università di Roma “La Sapienza” DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-007
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A preliminary choice – in principle the simplest – requires the application of a certain theoretical model – selected a priori from those most currently popular in sociolinguistics – for the languages of the Mediterranean basin, from Italy to the countries of the Near East. Certainly, this is a very interesting approach, but unfortunately misleading. As a matter of fact, it would not satisfy our main aims, as we have to consider: – a large number of languages, – which often have completely different structures, – over a long period of time. The specific nature of our subject of study ends up being decisive. Indeed, not only would a single model fit few languages, but there is also a large question mark as to how research requiring field studies should be applied to dead languages, which are increasingly considered in historical sociolinguistics. We must therefore turn to a second option, a diatopic approach, which has clear advantages. As a matter of fact, this approach not only allows for a clear-cut repartition of the areas of linguistic contact, but also suggests different methods of analysis, which are strictly connected to the languages in contact as well as to their socio-historical context. In truth, it cannot be stated that linguistic contact pertaining to the second millennium BCE, which mainly developed along trade routes, was of a similar nature to contact in the Middle Ages. The latter usually implies a whole different set of causes and customs – e.g. a religious environment is often crucial as source of a significant language interference, as monks and priests knew at least Latin or Greek and a spoken (Romance, Germanic, Slavic etc.) dialect.2 From such an approach we must conclude that a geographical partition entails particular issues and methods. In other words, we do not have before us simply an unexciting list of languages in contact; such a list is an essential key to our analysis and it leads us to find different approaches in relation to chronological as well as socio-cultural conditions. Certainly, this method presupposes an acknowledgment of the complexity of the task, but it is also true that what often appears to be simple is in fact an undue simplification imposed by our rationality on the real world, which, unfortunately, is much more complex than we would like. The areas considered range over a considerable period of time, from ancient European civilizations to contemporary contexts, and they span a vast territory that stretches from Italy to the Near East. More precisely, they concern Italian and other Italo-Romance varieties spoken in this area, as well as Graecanic, Albanian and Franco-Provençal varieties, Latin and Celtic, Germanic and Baltic, 2 E.g. see De Angelis (2014a); Martino (1991).
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Balkan languages, Greek (as a contact language from ancient to modern times), Anatolian and Semitic, Armenian and Syriac, as well as Syriac in relation to Greek and Arabic, up to Italian and Turkish, since late Middle Ages.
3 Description and analysis of repertoires 3.1 Vertical bilingualism/plurilingualism from Western Europe to the Balkans A preliminary field of studies pertaining to language contact regards contemporary Italian, the influence of which affects the vitality and the integrity of various linguistic entities, such as dialects – in opposition to standard Italian, see Dal Negro (2015) – minority languages – especially Franco-Provençal and Arbëresh, see below – neighbouring languages – e.g. German and Ladin in Switzerland and Südtirol (Berruto 2014; Dal Negro and Fiorentini 2014) – and languages spoken by immigrants. This type of – mainly vertical (see Berruto 2014) – language contact can also be investigated by means of field studies, and such an analysis has been fruitful as to repertoire changes due to interference, whether these be largely diatopic or diastratic. We can therefore outline clear trends as regards the vitality of minority languages – Franco-Provençal and Arbëresh – in Apulia. As Perta (2012a, 2013, 2015) has shown by means of detailed field studies, a minority language enjoys good health when it plays the role of a single Low Language – e.g. FrancoProvençal in Faeto –, but is recessive when a Romance dialect is used concurrently as Low Language – e.g. in Celle. It is not only the competition of the dialects that puts minority languages at risk: the example of Chieuti is particularly complex (Perta 2012a, 2012b, 2016) and shows that the Arbëresh spoken here is seriously endangered also for socio-cultural reasons, namely the negative associations linked to Albanian speakers who immigrated after 1990, which, by conditioned reflex, spread to Albanian tout court. Essentially, Arbëresh has tended to lose prestige, that quality which is crucial for maintaining the vitality of a minority language or a dialect. Moreover, similar situations, which fully confirm the validity of the analysis, have been found elsewhere, as shown, for example, in Berruto’s paper (2014) pertaining to minority languages in Northern Italy and Switzerland. These varieties are evaluated in the typological frame of different forms of bilingual competence – e.g. in a single community vs. a double one, balanced vs. unbalanced, additional (if a linguistic code is added to the next) vs. subtractive (if a linguistic code takes up the space of another).
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A particular situation pertaining to Italy, but not to Italian stricto sensu, can be found in Sardinia, where local languages have a rich history of contacts with culture languages, such as Latin, Byzantine Greek, Catalan and standard Italian. Scholars in this field have to turn to written documents too, given that the investigation regards medieval stages. This procedure has provided important results, encouraging research founded on a secure understanding of the linguistic and socio-cultural context, before trying to elaborate sophisticated theoretical models. This has been exemplified by Paulis (2013, 2016) in his studies regarding the reciprocal influence of Sardinian, Latin and Byzantine in personal onomastics (cf. the insightful analysis of the PN Torcotorio by Paulis 2013). The relationship between the three languages (Byzantine, Latin and Sardinian) is also discussed in Putzu (2015b), who investigates the socio-historical conditions that led Sardinian to replace Byzantine in its role of high-language (side by side with Latin, which maintained its role as the language of the Church), during the period of the local kingdoms called Giudicati. An in-depth analysis of Sardinian morphology is proposed by Pinto (2015, 2016), who accounts for the productivity/unproductiveness of some word formation rules in Sardinian in terms of sociolinguistic constraints. Because of its non-prestigious language status, Sardinian was precluded from inheriting and borrowing learned words from Latin and, as a consequence of this, the morphemes that occurred in learned words could not become productive in Sardinian. The lexicon is generally considered the domain in which language contact is more evident. Murgia (2015) deals with the contact between Sardinian and Catalan by investigating the occurrences of some Catalanisms and their sociolinguistic correlates in the Carta de Logu of Arborea, a Sardinian legal text dating back to the 14th-15th century. Her paper provides us with a picture of speakers/ writers of Sardinian language in the late Medieval age: their competence in Catalan allowed them to enrich and vary Sardinian through recurrence to the Catalan lexicon. It is well-known that Latin was the culture language for centuries both in the Italian peninsula and in adjacent areas, and that this influenced not only the lexicon of Romance languages but also their structure. A more complex type of contact is that concerning Sabellian languages, which are sometimes identified as the source of some specific developments – mostly phonological, but also morphological – which do not place Italo-Romance in direct continuity with the (written) Latin known to us. This regards some somewhat ill-documented languages (Oscan, Umbrian and South Picene), even though they may be easily identified on the whole. A cautious approach is thus an extremely sound methodological premise (see Seidl 2015), a position that we fully share, as has been repeatedly stated (see, e.g. Di Giovine 2003).
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Analyses of the relationships between the Latin and Celtic worlds must not fail to consider one aspect which appears to be prevalent, namely the fortune of the Latin language in the Celtic area, both continental (Rovai 2015a) and insular (Cuzzolin 2013). In particular, a detailed examination of the evidence in inscriptions and literary texts in Latin and Celtic allows us to describe – with a good degree of accuracy – both the repertoires where contact takes place and the socio-linguistic dynamics that occur in that situation. For example, it is clear that in the contexts studied by Rovai (2015a) – who compares the sociolinguistic scenarios that appear when Latin is in contact with Gallic and Neo-Punic respectively – the most important factor regarding the fate of languages in contact seems to have been the different attitudes of the Celtic and Neo-Punic communities towards their own language or, in other words, the prestige of their vernacular languages. The different configurations of the relationship between Latin and Insular Celtic languages from the fourth to the tenth centuries CE are interpreted by Cuzzolin (2013) as bilingualism in the first stage and then, from the eighth to the tenth centuries, as diglossia, with Latin being the superstrate language. It is important to highlight that the above-mentioned scholars explicitly use all due caution when applying modern descriptive categories to ancient scenarios. Furthermore, de la Villa and Torrego’s paper in this volume offers an interesting example of how contexts of translation may supply useful elements for the analysis of socio-linguistic issues, providing information about both the political and cultural features of a given speech community and its repertoire. Of particular interest in this case are the differences at a syntactic-pragmatic level – especially in the word order – between Latin and Greek versions of Res Gestae Diui Augusti, addressed to the citizens of Rome and to the Greek-speaking populations of some cities in central Anatolia, respectively. Indeed, an analysis of word order disparities reveals the different significance that a given conceptual element had for the addressees each version was intended for, thus reflecting the cultural and political diversity of the speech communities involved. Apart from the interference in Middle Europe – mostly between Germanic and Baltic, but also between Ugro-Finnic and Altaic – any survey of identity and differences in the repertoire caused by language contact should not ignore the Balkans. This provides a sort of case-study where the interference (see, e.g., Di Giovine 2013; Pompeo 2014) has long-lasting consequences. It is for this reason that we speak of a Balkan Sprachbund. Such research needs – to some extent – a fresh look, certainly as regards the Middle Ages, but even more for earlier times, when Ancient Greek was the centre of a constellation of contacts which often produced remarkable structural changes in the identity of surrounding languages, not without some effect on Greek itself. We must therefore deal
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not only with contact between culture languages – e.g. Greek and Latin, Greek and Indo-Iranian languages, Greek and Syriac, Greek and Armenian etc. –, which generally have quite a well known repertoire, but also with a connection between Greek and prevailingly spoken languages, such as Greek or Romance dialects, a few centuries later in Southern Italy and Sicily. The latter has been a sort of sociolinguistic crucible from Late Antiquity to the Modern Age, as De Angelis (2014a, 2014b) shows with various examples. Among these we note the diphthongization in Tortorici (ME), a complex phenomenon which can be best explained as an effect of contact with Gallo-Italian settlements in North-Eastern Sicily. Similarly, De Angelis’ paper in the present volume, which takes into account the complex relationships between Greek, Latin and, later, Romance varieties, shows that an understanding of the dynamics underlying a given change can lead to a new consideration of the influence of a linguistic variety over another, part of the same repertoire.
3.2 Contact phenomena between prestige varieties Contact phenomena between prestige varieties are widely attested in the domains under investigation. Throughout the history of Greek, especially in the earliest times, the Eastern Mediterranean was always more of a bridge than an obstacle to language contact. This wide field of research has yielded many new results from the point of view of the identity of repertoire in contact situations, especially in areas of extensive multilingualism. As far as multilingualism in the ancient Iranian world is concerned, the role of Greek in the Achaemenid Empire has been investigated in various ethnic and cultural contexts subject to Persian domination and influence (Benvenuto 2014; Benvenuto and Pompeo 2017; Pompeo 2015). Particular attention has been paid to the reconstruction of linguistic repertoires of various satrapal capitals (Benvenuto 2016; Benvenuto, Pompeo, and Pozza 2015), adopting a multimodal approach which uses GIS (Geographic Information System) technology in an innovative way in order to represent epigraphic and linguistic data on maps (Benvenuto, Lucidi, and Pompeo 2015). These works show that the reconstruction of the repertoire is an essential step for a correct sociolinguistic interpretation of the texts. Syriac offers a particularly interesting picture. Though it was not – for almost all of its long history – the language of an independent political entity, it became the most important language for eastern Christians who were scattered across vast areas and generally lived as linguistic minorities under Sasanian and
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Byzantine rules where the main spoken languages were Middle Persian and Greek (alongside Latin), respectively. In such a context of domain-specific multilingualism “the choice of the language was largely independent from the speakers’ first language and depended rather on the subject of the discourse than on the level of formality” (Ciancaglini and Alfieri 2013: 112). This makes it extremely difficult to determine, especially in the case of anonymous texts, the linguistic identity of the author and his native language. For example, speakers of Persian wrote their treatises in Syriac, the prestige language not only for religion but also for secular and scientific matters (Ciancaglini 2013). In the multilingual articulation of “high” repertoires, Syriac, as the language for Christian religion and science, coexists with Middle Persian on the one hand and Greek on the other. This type of contact conditions favored a particular diglottic situation, which may be labeled ditaxia, whereby different varieties of the same language are exposed to contact in different ways (Ciancaglini and Alfieri 2013, with references). The integration of linguistic and philological tools offers us a clue to understanding problematic texts and solving much-debated topics. This is the case, e.g., of the genesis of the Syriac translation of the Alexander Romance: the hypothesis of a Pahlavi intermediary version between the Greek original and the Syriac text has been conclusively dismissed by Ciancaglini’s detailed analysis. As the author shows, the graphic variances in the rendering of Greek proper names – far from proving the existence of a Pahlavic intermediary – are the product of the interaction between two interpreters, one of whom translated orally from Greek into Syriac while the other transcribed his oral translation (Ciancaglini 2015). Some centuries later, in a different scenario, the main reference point for Syriac communities is the Arabic world. This topic has been extensively investigated by Margherita Farina, bringing to light how the dynamics of a bilingualism between majority and minority language (Arabic and Syriac respectively) intersect those of a diglossia between the high-register written language and the vernaculars. In this respect, Barhebraeus’ Metrical Grammar deserves particular attention, as it proved to be a fundamental didactic and analytical instrument in the interlinguistic dynamics of Syriac minorities in Arabic-speaking territories, a tool for transferring linguistic codes, lexicon and categories. An integral translation of this work has never been published and its partial editions date to the 19th century. In a forthcoming volume, Margherita Farina offers a complete translation, accompanied both by a careful reconstruction of the Grammar’s philological vicissitudes and a sharp analysis of its linguistic content. Other studies (Farina 2014, 2015, 2016, see also this volume) cast some light on the Grammar’s textual
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formation and transmission, its setting within the linguistic debate of 13th century Syriac scholarship and its subsequent interpretation by the Arabic-speaking Syriac communities of the 14th-16th centuries. The history of this text and its commentators outlines the development of a grammatical reflection, modelled at first on the Greek tradition and gradually opening to the innovating influence of Arabic grammar in the course of the so-called “Syriac Renaissance” (11th–13th centuries). In that period, the flourishing of Syriac literature was closely interconnected with the Arabic (Islamic) world, which represented the everyday interlocutor of the Syriac authors and the main cultural reference for the entire Middle East. The lively and fruitful cultural exchange between Christian and Islamic scholars testifies to the mutual curiosity that has often characterized Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle East, in spite of political or religious controversies. In the domain of grammar and language study, the different understandings and elaborations of Greek linguistic and logical thinking, assimilated by the Syriac and Arabic cultures respectively, and adapted over time through various creative processes, merged in the works of some 13th century Syriac scholars, thus creating a long-lived interlinguistic grammatical model.
3.3 Grammatical models in contact Leaving aside the domain of the Syriac – but not the Greek – grammatical tradition, and moving towards the West, we are faced with another long-standing interlinguistic grammatical model, which resulted from the fruitful encounter and interaction between the Greek and the Latin doctrines, and provided the basis for learning and education in the Western world. Though widely investigated, this domain still offers major opportunities for investigation, both in view of the reconstruction of the historical relationships between the two traditions (and of the metalinguistic perception of identities/diversities between the two systems) and in view of the identification of the roots of modern categories of linguistic analysis. Investigating the process through which Greek-Latin culture developed, a range of grammatical instruments which has gained universal consensus up to the present day is not merely a matter of erudition, but is essential for enhancing a critical awareness of current linguistic notions and methods. The ancient treatment of phenomena relating to voice/diathesis has been extensively studied by Benedetti (2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b) as a means of investigating the spread of prestige models in the Greek-Latin tradition. The issue of terminology and that of categories and models of linguistic analysis are closely related. The terminology itself is clear evidence of the complexity of this subject. Latin authors mentioned the Greek term διάθεσις but did not
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embrace it in their description of Latin, drawing instead upon a variety of Latin expressions (such as genera verborum, significationes, species). This dissociation from the Greek term reflects a classificatory approach which is radically different from the Greek one. As a matter of fact, the Greek tripartite system (with the διαθέσεις active/passive/middle) can hardly be equated to the Latin multiple system of the genera verborum (variable in number and denomination: activum, passivum, neutrum, commune, deponens etc.). Nevertheless, the two approaches intersected over time: the proliferation of διαθέσεις in Byzantine grammarians (including οὐδέτερον and ὑποθετικόν), though referring to the Greek language, very likely reflects Latin models, and, accordingly, a change in the grammatical paradigm. The comparative attitude typical of Latin scholars and grammarians, and the production of Latin grammars addressed (also) to Greek speakers played a decisive role in this process (cf. the references in Benedetti 2015a, 2015b). Nevertheless, a clear-cut distinction between what is originally Greek and then exported into Latin and vice versa would be misleading, as it would overlook the symbiotic nature of the grammatical tradition in Late Antiquity. For example, asserting that the two modern terms voice/diathesis go back to a Latin (vox) and a Greek (διάθεσις) source respectively, is not totally satisfactory. As argued in Benedetti (2014a), the path leading to the use of voice in the sense of “verbal voice” cannot be fully understood without reference to Greek, i.e. without relating the Lat. vox to the Gr. φωνή. Neither vox nor φωνή ever occur as technical terms for “(verbal) voice” (i.e. as “accidents” of the verb), but the φωνή/σημαινόμενον dichotomy often occurred with reference to ‘form’/‘meaning’ discrepancies relating to διάθεσις in the works of influential grammarians (e.g. in Apollonius Dyscolus); the two were rendered in Latin as vox/significatio, and accordingly applied to the genera verborum (e.g. by Priscian, an author deeply indebted to Apollonius). This brought vox for the first time into the semantic domain of verbal voice, thus allowing further developments up to our modern terminology. The approach of the pioneers of the Western grammatical doctrine was anything but a puristic one!
3.4 Greek-Latin contact beyond the grammatical domain The analysis of Greek-Latin contact phenomena has not been restricted to the grammatical domain (see, e.g. Rovai 2015b). Greek and Latin have been in contact for over two millennia and the results of the contact can be seen in vocabulary, phonology and grammar. As Lorenzetti (2014a, 2014b) argues, the diverse results of the contact depend on: the written vs. spoken means of contact, the learned vs. popular nature of the elements involved, the degree of bilingualism, the
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presence of a third intermediate language, the diatopic variation, and the diachronic changes in both languages. Within this perspective, the dynamics of the contact between Ancient Greek and Latin have been investigated through a description of Greek verbs in -ίζειν and Latin loans in ‑izāre/‑issāre/-idiāre on the one hand, and the so-called Latin hybrid formations on the other. The subject of Latin loanwords in ‑izāre/‑issāre/-idiāre has been much debated, especially from the point of view of the recipient language, the donor language having not yet been adequately taken into consideration (cf. Cockburn 2012 and references therein). In order to understand the mechanisms of interference between the two languages, both Greek and Latin verbs have been analysed with regards to their textual and cultural significance, with particular emphasis on the routes followed by Greek verbs in -ίζειν when penetrating Latin. The cultural and textual domains involved in the borrowing process have been, on the one hand, the so-called “technical” languages, which range from that of Christian religion to those of treatises on medicine, architecture, agriculture and grammar, and, on the other hand, the language spoken by the Greeks who inhabited Magna Graecia and, after the Roman occupation, transmitted, as slaves and preceptors, their language and culture to Roman society. In Classical Latin, on the other hand, no occurrence of those verbs has been found, and this fact is given as evidence of the “selective” attitude of the establishment vis-à-vis foreign forms (cf. Tronci 2015a, 2017). In spite of the prestige of Greek culture and language with higher-level Romans, they perceived a Latin identity as a dividing line between the two languages and cultures. An interesting domain in order to understand the relationship between the two languages is that of ethnonymic verbs (that is, verbs derived from ethnonyms), whose distribution in Greek and Latin has been investigated by Tronci (2013, 2015b). Greek ethnonymic verbs are supposed to be either antonomastic or metonymic, the first type meaning the ethnic membership (e.g. λακωνίζειν ‘to behave like a Lacedaemonian’), the second type the social and political membership (e.g. λακωνίζειν ‘to be on Lacedaemonians’ side, on their party’). In Greek both types are productive; in contrast only the antonomastic type is found in Latin, whilst the metonymic type is lacking. This state of affairs can be seen in relation to the different degrees of influence of Greek cultural and linguistic models on Latin. Within the general framework of Latin-Greek bilingualism, Latin “hybrid” formations have been investigated, that is, Latin forms which integrate Greek elements. They are both derived and compounded formations: see for instance Lat. lupatria ‘prostitute’ (from Lat. lupa + Gr. suffix ‑τρια) and Lat. inanilogista, ‘someone who talks in vain’ (from Lat. inanis + Gr. λογιστής). The importance of these forms for both language contact and language change has been investigated by Magni (2016). Her suggestion is that the notion of ‘languages of contact’ or
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‘mixed codes’ (Leiwo 2002) is more appropriate than that of ‘languages in contact’ to describe the Greek-Latin “superior linguistic unit” referred to by Biville (2002) and indeed manifested by hybrids. Within the perspective of language change, there has been profitable investigation of the mechanisms by which Greek borrowed affixes spread to Latin stems, often following paths of language-internal analogical extension. A critical position regarding the view of Greek-Latin contact phenomena in terms of “mixed language” is expressed by Consani (2013). In his opinion, Latin and Greek texts evidence a great variety of contact phenomena (code-mixing, code-switching, multilingual speeches etc.), but these concern only individual speakers, not the systems involved. In order to understand Greek-Latin contact phenomena, it is apposite to revisit the notion of Sprachbund and to apply a bottom-up method of analysis, which takes each contact situation as a starting point and tries to investigate how much the speaker community and the linguistic systems have been involved in the convergence phenomena.
3.5 Sociolinguistic variation in Ancient Greek It goes without saying that linguistic contact regards parole and how its outcome on the langue can reflect the sociolinguistic peculiarities of the contact in terms of diatopic, diachronic, diastratic, diaphasic and diamesic variants, as Consani (2014) points out with reference to sociolinguistic variation in Ancient Greek. The significance of both diatopic and diachronic variants and their interrelationships are illustrated by Consani (2015), who investigates the corpus of tablets found in Kafizin (Cyprus) and explores the sociolinguistic dynamics between Greek koinè and Cypriot dialect within the corpus. The relationship between them is believed to be a diglottic one: koinè is the dominant language, the language of the Ptolemaic court, whilst Cypriot dialect is a regressive variety spoken in unofficial contexts. A sociolinguistic analysis of the Thessalian repertoire in the Hellenistic age is suggested by Consani (forthc.), who investigates the dynamics between dialects of the cities, regional koinaí and Hellenistic koinè in Thessalian documents.
3.6 A further constellation of contacts: Anatolia and its surroundings Anatolian languages are the core of another ancient constellation of contacts – westwards with Greek, eastwards and southwards with Semitic languages –, which in turn interact with each other (e.g. Syriac and Hebraic) or with other
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Indo-European languages, for example with Syriac and Armenian. This is not to ignore the strong influence of Iranian – and, to a lesser extent, of Indo-Aryan – on Armenian. Scholars who have studied these contact situations have had to deal with generally little known repertoires, which require a very careful analysis especially from a philological point of view. This is particularly true when the phenomena to be studied pertain to the second millennium BCE, and involve both Semitic (Akkadian) and Indo-European (Mycenaean and Hittite) languages in the Ancient Near East. Especially in this case, linguistic analysis of contact phenomena offers a valuable contribution to the reconstruction of extra-linguistic scenarios and, consequently, to our understanding of various repertoires, as is shown in many papers analysing lexical borrowings or shared phraseology (Dardano 2014; Gasbarra 2014; Pozza and Gasbarra 2014a, 2014b). However, philological accuracy is also necessary regarding the evidence of the Anatolian languages of the first millennium BCE, above all when dealing with multilingual epigraphic texts, a class of documents essential for diagnosing and understanding the nature of language contact (Gasbarra and Pozza 2015; Dardano 2015). On the other hand, as far as Armenian is concerned, this language still presents many challenges, particularly with regard to the substrate influence on the Armenian lexicon. With critical consideration, the etymology of a series of Armenian words has been appropriately reassessed by Ronzitti (2015). Kölligan’s (2015) philological and linguistic analysis of Aphraat’s 10th Demonstration “On Shepherds” is another step towards the reconstruction of (cultural) elite multilingualism in late antique Armenia, contributing to a better understanding of the role of Syriac – once again the prestige variety used for Christian religion – for at least a considerably large group of the educated elite. Anatolia has never given up its role as a crossroads of various languages. This remains true up to our own times, as Gianguido Manzelli’s analysis (this volume) shows; this is an interesting survey of Italian – in particular, Venetian – loanwords in Turkish that allows us to understand better the various dynamics of linguistic contact between Italian and Turkish from the 15th century on.
4 Concluding remarks and new perspectives As our brief – and at the same time incomplete – survey above shows, the topic “Identity in the repertoire” has been tackled with reference to several linguistic domains and following a variety of approaches. The various contributions outline a composite picture which is, above all, a consistent one.
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A crucial methodological assumption concerns the close interconnection between the perspectives of historical linguistics and a sociolinguistic approach. As Thomason and Kaufman put it, “the history of a language is a function of the history of its speakers, and not an independent phenomenon that can be thoroughly studied without reference to the social context in which it is embedded” (Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 4). Given the focus on identity and otherness, multilingual contexts and societies have been a privileged object of investigation, as they are characterized by multifaceted processes of identity negotiation. Let us indicate some major issues on which the research has focused, pinpointing significant achievements. First of all, one inescapable question must be asked: is it possible – and to what extent is it possible – to apply the principles and tools of sociolinguistics to the study of ancient languages? We must declare from the outset that attention to the socio-historical dimension has been constantly present as in the best tradition of historical linguistics. The question thus concerns the applicability of sociolinguistics in a “hard” sense, as a range of well-defined principles and tools that has developed since the pioneering work of Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968). Scholars dealing with ancient languages are aware of the need to engage critically with the principles and methods of sociolinguistics. Since its beginnings, this discipline has had modern languages as its particular object of research, the emphasis being on data obtained from the spoken language. For a long time, there has been a dividing line between the disciplines of sociolinguistics and historical linguistics. The critical debate on the application of sociolinguistic models to historical data – from the pioneering study by Romaine (1982) to the essays in Hernandez-Campoy and Conde-Silvestre (2012), up to the recent work in Molinelli and Putzu (2015) – has had a great impact on recent works, many of which focus on the analysis of multilingual contexts in the Mediterranean area (cf. Adams, Janse, and Swain 2002; Adams 2003; Cotton et al. 2009; Papaconstantinou 2010). Along the same lines, a wide range of studies has usefully suggested the integration of the theoretical approaches and empirical perspectives of both disciplines, and, in so doing, has contributed to tearing down the divisions between disciplines which, as is well known, generally hinder a full understanding of complex phenomena. Two major problematic issues remain in the background. The first, of a theoretical nature, concerns the validity of the so-called uniformitarian principle, i.e. the claim that the processes which we observe in the present can help us to gain knowledge about processes in the past. The second concerns the different kinds of documentation available in studying the past and the present respectively: this belongs, therefore, to the empirical level but it has consequences on the methodological one.
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Concerning the first issue, the discussion on the uniformitarian principle – which has been revisited from a sociolinguistic perspective by William Labov – has been continued with both its theoretical and historical implications (cf. Putzu 2015a; Cuzzolin and Baldi 2015). Specifically, not only have its limits been highlighted but also its merits as a stimulus for a general reflection on both the role of history in language and linguistics and on the constant tension between the search for the single individual datum on the one hand, and phenomenological constants on the other: “was einmal war” as opposed to “was immer ist”, according to Windelband’s well-known dichotomy between nomothetic and idiographic sciences. It is true, however, that past and contemporary socio-historical situations are different (and for this reason it is necessary to reconstruct the socio-historical and cultural contexts of each specific linguistic area very carefully), but there are also some permanent features in linguistic variation and in linguistic change that can be gauged by applying some sociolinguistic parameters developed for modern languages to ancient ones (Guerini and Molinelli 2013). Concerning the second issue, an awareness of the limits imposed on researchers by the quality and quantity of documentation is a necessary prerequisite for a sociolinguistic approach to ancient languages. As regards quality, the most evident constraint obviously relates to the exclusively written nature of available texts. The quantitative aspect, on the other hand, highly depends on the domain under investigation, which may offer, in the case of widely attested languages, a rich amount of data. The main limitation obviously consists of the fact that there are no speakers to be interviewed: as a consequence, the evidence of data is finite. Historical linguists are very familiar with this limitation, and have developed specific methods to cope with it. Were this not the case, there could not be any kind of historical linguistics at all. A more insidious problem relates to the limited nature of socio-historical information and to the difficulty of establishing correlations between social variables on the one hand, and linguistic or stylistic variables on the other (cf. Mancini 2012). We might say that in historical sociolinguistics the linguistic evidence has priority over evidence regarding the societal configuration of the community, so variations in linguistic behaviour may offer indications for assessing the existence of social differences between speakers/writers, and recognizing them. Within this socio-historical perspective, new reflections have been stirred with regard to models and methods of analysis. These are not to be considered independent from the research object, but strongly dependent on it. Therefore, the investigation of new data has contributed to enriching descriptive and explicative tools on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to revisiting the theoretical value of traditional notions, such as those of Sprachbund, substrate, standard
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languages and standardisation and prestige varieties, as well as verifying the validity of the parameters which apply to the study of multi- and bilingualism, diglossia and code-switching (cf. Berruto 2015 on the latter point). A final remark once again concerns the relationship between sociolinguistics and historical linguistics. Can historical sociolinguistics free itself of the burden imposed by William Labov’s famous judgment, who defined it as “the art of making the best use of bad data” (Labov 1994: 11)? Can this view be transformed into a productive challenge? As suggested by Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2003: 26), emphasis should be put on the “best use”, while “bad” should be replaced with “available” (“making the best use of the data available”). However, we would go further, recommending a reflection on what is meant by “data”. Do “data”, whether they are bad or good, pre-exist their observer? Or are they “created” or “invented” (in the etymological sense of Latin inventio ‘discovering’) by the observer/researcher, who renders them accessible to investigation? In this sense, their being bad or good depends on the validity of the method and on the accuracy of its application. The studies illustrated above have brought forth a large amount of data; these, we would venture, are good in the sense that they have been “discovered” according to a rigorous and correct methodology.
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Alessandro De Angelis
8 Between Greek and Romance: Competing Complementation Systems in Southern Italy 1 The structural compatibility requirement1 According to Jakobson ([1938] 1962: 241), a language accepts foreign structural elements only when they correspond to its own tendencies of development. Jakobson’s claim is still a core issue in the field of language contact,2 although it has been strongly criticized. Thomason and Kaufmann (1988: 17–19), for example, found many counterexamples to Jakobson’s constraint. Among others, they quote the case of Asia Minor Greek, which show influences from Turkish in all aspects of the grammar, although these two languages did not share common features before contact. Far from being a general property of language contact, Jakobson’s ‘structural compatibility requirement’ (Harris and Campbell 1995: 123– 125; Thomason 2014: 202) provides us with some clues to understanding a wellknown case of contact-induced language change, namely the so-called “loss of the infinitive” in the dialects of Extreme Southern Italy, generally ascribed to the linguistic pressure exerted by Greek on the Romance varieties of this area.
2 Greek and Latin in Southern Italy Greek spoken in Southern Italy deeply influenced Latin (and, later, Romance) in all aspects of the grammar, especially a series of novel morpho-syntactic structures, through a process of structural borrowing. Despite Rohlfs’ opinion, according to which Greek was the sole language actually spoken in these territories ab temporibus antiquis, many scholars, after his pioneering work, have reconsidered
1 I am very grateful to Adam Ledgeway for his comments and suggestions. I take full responsibility for my own work. 2 See e.g. the notion of interlingual identification in Weinreich ([1953] 1979: 25). Cf. also Campbell (1996), with further references. Alessandro De Angelis, Università di Messina DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-008
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and re-evaluated the role of Latin, starting from epigraphic evidence.3 In this new perspective, a complex and stratified condition of diglossia (Greek and Latin, later Greek and Romance) has now been widely assumed,4 in which Latin (and Romance) are no longer envisaged just as a tabula rasa, a source of mere phonetic material with which Greek imbued its own grammatical structures, following Rohlfs’ slogan “materia romanza, spirito greco” (‘Romance material, Greek soul’). Rather, grammatical patterns of Greek were shaped into another pre-existing grammatical system, by generating new grammars and new patterns, no longer Romance or Greek (Ledgeway 2013). The most significant processes of interference presumably originated during the period of Byzantine dominion in Sicily (6th–9th centuries CE), when Greek was the high variety in the repertoire. Indeed, the loss of the infinitive fits into a series of phonological and morpho-syntactic calquings which affected the regional Latin (and, later, the Romance varieties) spoken in Extreme Southern Italy, as the result of the prestige acquired here by Greek since ancient times. Among these phenomena, we may mention the change from heptavocalic to pentavocalic stressed vocalism, through which mid-high vowels raised into the respective high vowels, following the Medieval Greek vowel system (Fanciullo 1984 = 1996: 11–29); the partial loss of the phonological length in the consonant system (Fanciullo 1985 = 1996: 31–40); the occurrence of the definite article before (male and female) proper nouns, widespread in Salento and in some localities on the Ionian coast in the province of Reggio Calabria (Ledgeway 2013); the use of the genitive to code the values generally conveyed by the dative (Greek-style dative) (Ledgeway 2013); the use of the Imperfect Indicative in both clauses of a hypothetical sentence, to code a counterfactuality in the present tense (Rohlfs 1980; De Angelis 2008). Most of these phenomena could have been accomplished more or less in the same age; others, like the use of the Imperfect tense, may be more ancient. The massive changes occurring in the core of the Latin/Romance grammatical system in Southern Italy can be explained only by supposing extended linguistic contact in a bilingual community (Fanciullo 1996), in which Greek was perceived – at least until the arrival of Arabic communities in Sicily – as the high variety, and as such functioned as a model to imitate. After the Norman invasion of Sicily in around 1000 CE, the extremes of the sociolinguistic scale begin to change places: Romance acquires
3 On the sociolinguistic relation between Greek and Latin in Christian funerary epigraphy see now especially Korhonen (2012); cf. also De Angelis (2014) for a survey and further references and De Angelis (2015). 4 For an initial sketch, see, among others, Fanciullo (1996); Manolessou (2005); Sornicola (2012); Vàrvaro (1981).
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a novel, prestigious identity, insofar as it represents the language of the new conquerors, Gallo-Romance speakers; a variety of Latin-Romance prevails in administrative language, alongside Greek and Arabic (Martino, this volume). Most of the interference phenomena due to the contact with Greek continue to occur until modern times in the Romance dialects of Extreme Southern Italy. Nevertheless, some linguistic features follow the sociolinguistic drift. Greek documents from Southern Italy in the 11th–14th centuries show, on the one hand, the loss of geminate consonants, in line with most Greek varieties; on the other hand, following the Southern Italo-Romance phonological pattern, they show evidence of “repair strategies”, aimed at retrieving phonological length (Fanciullo 1985 = 1996: 35–36). This attempt, which led to the reintroduction of the feature [+length] in the consonant system of modern Italo-Greek dialects, is a consequence of the novel identity acquired by Romance from the Norman period onwards, which over time assumed a position of leadership in the Graeco-Romance diasystem. All these data suggest that structural borrowings, which deeply affect grammatical structures, can be used as a diagnostic tool to infer sociolinguistic changes, more than the lexicon, as well as to help us to understand the value which speakers in bilingual or multilingual communities implicitly assign to their linguistic identity.
3 The loss of the infinitive in Extreme Southern dialects In most of Salento, Central and Southern Calabria and North-East Sicily, a broad range of subordinate clauses, generally coded by the infinitive in Standard Italian and most Western Romance languages, are replaced by finite clauses introduced by a complementiser, which surfaces as North-Eastern Sic. mi, Central-Southern Cal. ma, mi/i, mu/u, all deriving from Lat. MŎDO ;5 Sal. cu from Lat. QUOD, followed by the present indicative (in Salentino sometimes by the subjunctive),6
5 On the grammaticalization path, which led Lat. MŎDO to a complementiser, see now De Angelis (2016). On the diatopic distribution of these allomorphic forms, see Prantera and Mendicino (2013). 6 Cf. Bertocci and Damonte (2007); Rohlfs ([1949] 1968: 301 [§559], [1954] 1969: 103 [§717]). In the dialects of Taranto and Brindisi provinces, cu does not surface in coreferential structures, by triggering the phonetic doubling, see Ledgeway (2012); Rohlfs (1969: 105 [§717]).
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irrespective of the Romance sequence of tense rule,7 see examples (1a–f) from the province of Reggio Calabria:8 (1) a. [vʊˈlɪːtɪ ʊ vɪˈnɪːtɪ a mɛ ˈkaːsa?] 2PL.PRS.IND COMP 2PL.PRS.IND to my place ‘Do you want to come to my place?’ (Oppido Mamertina) b. [ˈaɪ ̯ ʊ mɪ ˈfaɪ ̯ arradˈʤaːra?] 2SG.PRS.IND COMP me-ACC 2SG.PRS.IND INF ‘Do you want to make me angry?’ (Stilo) c. [ˈɪɭɭʊ ˈsaːpɪ ɪ sˈkrɪːvɪ] he 3SG.PRS.IND COMP 3SG.PRS.IND ‘He can write’ (Bianco) d. [mɪ prɪˈpaːrʊ mɪ nˈnɛʃʃʊ] me-ACC 1SG.PRS.IND COMP 1SG.PRS.IND ‘I’ll get ready to go out’ (San Roberto d’Aspromonte) e. [ˈstattɪ atˈtɛntʊ ˈnɔm=mɪ ti ˈʧʊŋkɪ] NEG=COMP you-ACC 2SG.PRS.IND be careful ‘Be careful not to fall’ (San Roberto d’Aspromonte) f. [nɔn ˈaːjʊ ʊ kʊˈradʤʊ ˈpa=mmɪ tɪ ˈdɪːkʊ] NEG 1SG.PRS.IND COMP courage COMP1=COMP2 you 1SG.PRS.IND ‘I don’t have the courage to tell you’ (Bianco) Insofar as clauses (1a–f) replace the corresponding infinitive ones, they are available in subject-control contexts (henceforth: OblC = obligatory control), differently from Western Romance dependent clauses, which generally do not allow finite structures in such syntactic environments. However, such clauses may also be available in contexts in which the corresponding Western Romance subjunctive dependent clauses occur, namely when the subject of the subordinate clause is different from the subject or from another argument of the main clause (henceforth: NOblC = non obligatory control), see (2a–c): 7 In these areas, infinitive clauses are however available with a class of restructuring predicates (especially with modal and causative auxiliaries). See, among others, Cristofaro (1998); Damonte (2009); De Angelis (2013a, 2013b); Ledgeway (1998, 2007, 2013); Lombardi (1998); Loporcaro (1995); Manzini and Savoia (2005, 1: 650–656); Roberts and Roussou (2003: 88–97); Rohlfs (1922, 1933, 1969: 102–106 [§717], [1958] 1972a); Salminger (2009); Trumper and Rizzi (1985). 8 Unless otherwise specified, data are from my field research, developed in collaboration with the following students: Francesca Carpinelli; Luigi Foti; Rosella Morabito; Daniela Nucara and Martina Strati.
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(2) a. [ˈɪːjʊ vʊˈlɪːva ˈjɛʊ̯ mʊ ˈparlʊ] he 3SG.IMPF.IND me-NOM COMP 1SG.PRS.IND ‘He wanted me to talk’ (Oppido Mamertina) b. [ˈɪːdʊ ˈvɔːla ɛʊ̯ ˈdɔm=mʊ ˈvaːjʊ ɪŋ kamˈpaɲɲa] He 3SG.PRS.IND I NEG=COMP 1SG.PRS.IND to country ‘He doesn’t want me to go to the country’ (Stilo) c. agnu tantu, non=mi si ddurmentinu, unu gridava sometimes NEG=COMP they 3PL.PRS.IND one 3SG.IMPF.IND ‘Sometimes, one shouted so that they didn’t fall asleep’ (Mosòrrofa, Crucitti 1988) In (1a–f) and (2a–c), the dependent clauses are temporally anchored to the matrix clause, that is, they are specified as [–deictic, +anaphoric], insofar as information relating to time and space is expressed by the main clause verb. For the sake of convenience, we will refer to these with the label irrealis clauses. On the other hand, dependent clauses which are specified as [+deictic, –anaphoric] are headed by a different complementiser, ca, which represents the outcome of QUIA . We will refer to these with the label realis clauses.9 Since Rohlfs, scholars have generally agreed on the origin both of the avoidance of the infinitive and the double complementation system from ItaloGreek, as a consequence of long-term linguistic contact between Greek and Latin (later between Greek and Romance) in these areas, as happened in many languages of the Balkan Sprachbund. Nevertheless, deeper investigation into this phenomenon throws new light on the ways in which such contact came about, starting from the fact that the retreat of the infinitive is anything but a uniform phenomenon, but is rather subject to marked diatopic variation. One of the most striking oddities concerns the South Eastern corner of Sicily, where mi-clauses only surface in the case of [‒coreferentiality], by licensing a nominative (covert or overt) Subject.10 According to Rohlfs ([1965] 1972b: 336), this syntactic pattern constitutes an innovative feature, deriving from a previous stage of development, in which both (infinitive) coreferential and (finite) non coreferential embedded clauses were codified by MŎDO -clauses; see the contrast between (3a–b) vs. (3c–d):
9 Cf. Calabrese (1993); Ledgeway (2003, 2005, 2006, 2011); Rohlfs (1969: 190 [§786–a]); Rohlfs (1983). 10 See also Leone (1995: 68). A similar pattern can also be found in some localities of the Extreme Southern corner of Calabria, see Salminger (2009: 127).
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(3) a. iḍḍu vulíssi mi vègnu he 3SG.IMPF.SUBJ COMP 1SG.PRES.IND ‘He’d like me to come’ (Castroreale [Messina], Rohlfs 1972b: 334) b. nom- móli mi ćći vá NEG 3SG.PRS.IND COMP there 3SG.PRS.IND ‘He doesn’t want him to go there’ (Sant’Alfio [Catania], Tropea 1965: 150, fn. 51) c. vògghiu dòrmiri 1SG.PRS.IND INF ‘I want to sleep’ (North-Eastern Sicilian, Rohlfs 1972b: 336, fn. 5) d. vulèmu mangiari 1PL.PRS.IND INF ‘We want to eat’ (North-Eastern Sicilian, Rohlfs 1972b: 336, fn. 5) Contrary to Rohlfs’ assumption, I would argue that the complementation system of North-Eastern Sicilian reflects a more conservative linguistic status than the respective complementation systems of the other Extreme-Southern dialects. In my opinion, this complementation pattern roughly represents a remainder of that attested in Western Romance languages, constrained by the so-called obviation effect: in a subset of subjunctive clauses – including subjunctive complements headed by want-predicates – the embedded subject of a subordinate clause has to be disjoint in reference from the subject or from another argument of the higher clause.11
4 The outcome of QUĬD in Extreme Southern dialects The first evidence in this area of a Romance complementation system prior to the Greek one, and independent of the latter, derives from formal evidence, namely from the occurrence of the Western Romance complementiser che/que (< QUĬD ) in the complementation system of some Extreme Southern dialects. Indeed, in most of the province of Messina, as well as in some localities of Southern Calabria, chi introduces realis complementation clauses instead of ca (Leone 1995: 66, fn. 157, 68 and see AIS VIII, 1596; 1672). Moreover, it can also 11 See Costantini (2009) for a critical survey; Farkas (1992); Landau (2013).
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replace mi in irrealis clauses (Leone 1995: 68 and see AIS VIII, 1604; 1638; 1653– 1654). One could be tempted to compare this state of affairs with the complementation system of Upper South dialects, where chi both alternated with ca in the domain of realis clauses and surfaced as the sole complementiser in irrealis clauses.12 Obviously, the spreading of chi in the North-Eastern Sicilian complementation pattern could also be due to the influence of regional Italian, as Assenza (2008) showed regarding the substitution of mi with chi in some towns of the Messina area. Nevertheless, setting aside the process of the Italianization of the dialect, one could suspect the occurrence of chi in this area to be ancient. First of all, the form is well attested in the Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz (AIS) both in North East Sicily and in Central and Southern Calabria. AIS data from South Italy were collected by Rohlfs during roughly the first 30 years of the twentieth century, so that the influence of an Italian superstrate for this period has to be ruled out. These data document the use of chi both in declarative clauses and in volitional clauses.13 A significant consideration to support the hypothesis concerning the early origin of the chi-type complementiser in the Extreme Southern dialects relates to its belonging to a consistent pattern. In Romance languages, (one of ) the complementiser(s) surfaces mostly in the same form as (one) of the relative pronouns, see e.g. French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese que, It. che. In Extreme Southern Calabria and in North-Eastern Sicily, the relative pronoun surfaces as chi (Nom. and Acc.), both in masculine and feminine gender. This conflation dates back to Late Latin. The original neuter form of the relative pronoun, QUOD, begun to be used as a complementiser, beside QUIA , instead of the Accusative and Infinitive, later also by spreading in volitional contexts, instead of UT (Salvi 2011: 372–73). Later, the form QUOD merged with QUID in complementation sentences, the latter being etymologically the neuter form of the interrogative pronoun QUIS (m. and f.), QUID (n.). Therefore, the occurrence of the complementiser chi both in North-Eastern Sicily and in Extreme Southern Calabria, that is in dialectal areas where chi is also the form for the relative pronoun, is absolutely consistent with the pattern shared by other Romance languages. The hypothesis of an influence of regional Italian can be assumed in this case only at the cost of a petitio principii.
12 In the realis clauses of Upper South dialects coded by the indicative – as documented in the early texts – che prevailed over ca, with a free variation between these two complementisers. Nevertheless, when the left periphery is activated, only che is licensed, cf. Ledgeway (2003; 2009). 13 See AIS VIII, 1596 and 1672, with ki attested in declarative clauses. As far as the use of chi with volitional clauses is concerned, see AIS VIII, 1604; 1638 and 1653–1654.
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5 The origin of mi and the forms chimma, chimmi, chimmu Another piece of evidence speaking in favour of the presence of chi in these speaking-Greek areas is represented by the etymology of mi, the sole result of MŎDO in North-East Sicily. According to Sorrento (1951: 370) and Rohlfs (1969: 192–193 [§789]), the regular outcome of MŎDO is mu. The allomorphic outcome mi is explained as a result of a crossing of MŎDO x chi. Such a form should be ancient, because it is attested in a North-Eastern sicilian text dating back to the late 400’s, the Leggenda della Beata Eustochia da Messina, where mi occurs three times in sentences with a telic value (Sornicola 1992). Moreover, chi is also attested through forms such as chimma, chimmi, chimmu and so on, formed by the agglutination of QUĬD to the irrealis complementiser originated from Lat. MŎDO. In Modern Central and Southern Calabrian varieties, chimmu (and its allomorphs) can take an overt dependent clause, see (4a–b): (4) a. vógghiu chimma vena ‘I want him to come’ (Catanzaro, NDC) b. nci dissi chimmi faci ‘I asked him what he was doing’ (Reggio Calabria, NDC) Furthermore, forms such as chimma, chimmi, chimmu and so on are very often used in complementiser-headed main clauses with a “volitional” meaning, alongside simple (that is, non-compound) complementisers. Such clauses, attested both in the Balkanic Sprachbund (Ammann and van der Auwera 2004) and in ExtremeSouthern dialects (Ledgeway 1998; Rohlfs 1972b: 335–336; Sorrento 1951: 378–379), are characterized by a conservative status, frequently expressing maxims, proverbial sentences, formulaic wishes or curses, as in the following examples: (5) a. [malaˈnɔːva ˈkɪmmɪ ˈaɪ ̯] ‘May you have misfortune!’ (Messina) b. [ˈkɪmmɪ ˈaɪ ̯ ˈbɛːnɪ] ‘May you be well!’ (with euphemistic value) (Messina) c. Chi mi ihai trupicia! ‘May you have dropsy!’ (Messina, Costa 1993: 25) d. Chimm’avi squágghju! ‘May you have bad luck!’ (Reggio Calabria, NDC) e. Chinnommu pigghjavi latta ‘May you not swallow milk!’ (Gasperina [Vibo Valentia], Celìa 2001)
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The conservative status of chi in such clauses is also inferable from its present occurrence in these volitional main sentences in some Upper Southern dialects, in which the complementation system was originally split between a realis complementiser ca (< QUIA ) and an irrealis complementiser che/chi (< QUĬD ). Today, most of these dialects have neutralized such an opposition, generally in favour of ca (Rohlfs 1983; Ledgeway 2006, 2009, 2011). Nevertheless, chi still surfaces in the Northern Calabrian variety of Cosenza, just in these volitional clauses (6a– b), despite the fact that the distribution ca versus chi is generally no longer preserved in this variety, except in the older speakers and in some rural areas, where chi can surface in some contexts (Ledgeway 2009: 9): (6) a. Chi tti vija mpisu a nu chiacchu! ‘May I see you hang from a rope!’ b. Chi ti vò piglià ‘a cacareddra! ‘May you have the runs!’ A partially comparable situation can be found in Salentino. Next to the irrealis complementiser cu, some varieties of Salento show another irrealis complementiser ci, probably derived from QUI , rather than QUID, see (7a–b): (7) a. mangiatu ci ebbe, se sentìu fiaccu ‘After he ate, he felt unwell’ (Lecce, Garrisi 1990) b. saputu ci l’amicu l’ìa mbrugghiatu, nu llu salutàu cchiùi ‘Once he knew that his friend had swindled him, he never spoke to him again’ (Lecce, Garrisi 1990) As the Northern Calabrian complementiser chi, Sal. ci frequently surfaces just in volitional main clauses, alongside cu (generally omitted):14 (8) a. ci cu tte vègna nnu sunfiòne! ‘May a whirlwind strike you!’ (Squinzano [Lecce], F. Fanciullo p.c.) b. ci tte vègna nna sajètta ‘May lightning strike you!’ (Rohlfs 1969: 189 [§785]) The residual status of both Cosentino chi and Salentino ci confirm our hypothesis about the early occurrence of chi in the North-Eastern Sicilian (and, more generally, in some Extreme Southern varieties) complementation system. 14 In (8b), the occurrence of the underlying complementiser cu is inferable from the phonosyntactic doubling of the following consonant, which cannot be triggered by ci.
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6 Temporal clauses A less strong evidence in favour of the early occurrence of chi in these dialects is represented by the dependent temporal clauses, which are distinguished between realis clauses, headed by ca, versus irrealis clauses, headed by mu/cu. Although such a pattern has been obscured in some varieties, this complementary distribution is still well preserved in Salentino, see (9a) versus (9b): (9) a. toppu ka manʤau, se kurkau ‘After he ate, he slept’ (Campi Salentina [Lecce], Calabrese 1993: 48) b. prima ku se kurka, manʤau ‘Before sleeping, he ate’ (Campi Salentina [Lecce], Calabrese 1993: 48) The opposition between ‘before-clauses’ headed by ku versus ‘after-clauses’ headed by ka matches the difference coded by the distinction between declarative and epistemic clauses headed by ca, versus volitional clauses headed by ku (see Sect. 1): [. . .] in the case of the ‘after that’ clause, the tense of that temporal clause is deictic. It individuates the point of time after which the event described in the main clause occurs. In contrast, the tense of the ‘before that’ clause is not deictic, but anaphoric, in the sense that the time of the temporal clause must refer to the time of the main clause in order to be interpreted (Calabrese 1993: 48).
In some Southern Calabrian varieties, a further difference occurs in such dependent clauses: ‘before that’-temporal clauses are headed by prima ma/(m)i/(m)u, whereas ‘after-that’-temporal clauses can be introduced by dop(p)u chi, instead of dop(p)u ca. Presumably, we are dealing with a tripartite complementation pattern15 (ca / ma-(m)i-(m)u / chi); see the following examples from Bianco (province of Reggio Calabria): (10) a. [ˈpɛnʦʊ ka ˈvaːjʊ aː ˈmɪssa ccʊtˈtʰardʊ] 1SG.PRS.IND COMP 1SG.PRS.IND to the mass later ‘I think that I’ll go to mass later’ b. [ˈvɔɟɟʊ ɪ ˈsatʧʊ kɪ=fˈfaɪ ̯] 1SG.PRS.IND COMP 1SG.PRS.IND what=2SG.PRS.IND ‘I want to know what you do’ 15 Cf. Manzini and Savoia (2005, 1: 462–464); Chillà and Citraro (2012: 132–133) for a similar pattern in some Calabrian varieties.
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c. [avˈvɛrtɪ=mɪ ˈprɪːma ɪ ˈvɛːnɪ] 2SG.PRS.IND=me-ACC before COMP 2SG.PRS.IND ‘Let me know before you come’ d. [nɪʃˈʃɪːa ˈdɔːpʊ ki vvɪˈnɪstɪ tʊ] 1SG.PRF.IND after COMP 2SG.PRF.IND you ‘I went out after you arrived’ As examples (10a–d) reveal, in some Extreme Southern varieties ‘after that’clauses are frequently headed by dopo chi, also when complementation realis clauses are headed by ca. Nevertheless, it is no easy task to determine whether the occurrence of chi in those dialects in which the complementation system is still split between ca and the outcomes of MŎDO represents an early feature or, on the contrary, it is a new element, due to the influence of (regional) It. dopo che. However, if the latter solution was correct, the reason why the temporal subordinator prima mi did not undergo a similar influence, by changing into prima chi, is anything but clear. That being the case, one could hypothesize the occurrence of the subordinator dop(p)u chi to be ancient.
7 Functional status of Sic. mi The conservative nature of the complementation system of North-Eastern Sicily is furthermore proved by the functional status of Sic. mi. Ledgeway (1998, 2007, 2013), among others,16 has shown that MŎDO -forms changed their complementation status in some Central and Southern dialects of Calabria, through a grammaticalization process leading these to preverbal infinitival markers. Among the evidence revealing such a change, we should note the restriction on inserting both an overt embedded subject and the negator between the complementiser and the subordinate verbal form.17 In the first case, the overt subject is licensed only before the complementiser or after the embedded verb, at the end of the dependent clause (exx. 11a–b). In the latter case, the negator follows the complementiser, giving rise to the cluster nommu/dommu (11c–d):
16 See also Bertocci and Damonte (2007); Manzini and Savoia (2005, 1: 650–666); Roberts and Roussou (2003: 88–93); Strumbo (1996). 17 Only pronominal clitic forms can stand between ma/(m)i/(m)u (Sal. cu) and the embedded verb.
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(11) a. [lɪˈvaɪ ̯ ɪ kʊˈtraːrɪ ɪ ˈjɔːkanʊ n=ʊ ˈparkʊ 1SG.PRF.IND the children COMP 3PL.PRS.IND in=the park ‘I brought the children to play in the park’ (San Luca [Reggio Calabria]) b. chi=mmu ti mangianu i cani COMP1=COMP2 you-DAT 3PL.PRS.IND the dogs ‘May the dogs eat you!’ (Roccella Jonica [Reggio Calabria]), Alvaro 1979) c. [tɪ ˈðiːkʊ ˈðɔm=mʊ ˈvaɪ ̯] you-DAT 1SG.PRS.IND NEG=COMP 2SG.PRS.IND ‘I tell you not to go’ (Stilo [Reggio Calabria]) d. [pɪ nˈnɔm=mʊ ˈvjadʤanʊ mʊ ˈvannʊ ɛ mmʊ to NEG=COMP 3PL.PRS.IND COMP 3PL.PRS.IND and COMP ˈvɛːnʊnʊ dɪ la fabˈbrɪtʦja sɪ sɪstɛˈmaːrʊ kˈka] 3PL.PRS.IND from the Fabrizia REFL 3PL.PRF.IND here ‘They settled down here, in order to avoid going backwards and forwards from Fabrizia’ (Piminoro [Reggio Calabria]) In (11a–d), the adjacency of the complementiser to the finite verbal form shows the strong bond established between the latter and the subordinator, by then developed as modal marker. Unlike these examples, Southern Eastern Sicilian shows a partially different order. As far as the position of the complementiser compared to the embedded subject is concerned, Damonte (2005) claims that in the urban dialect of Messina the latter follows it. However, my field research has shown that this alignement is available only when the dependent clause is headed by chi. On the contrary, if the complementiser is mi, the most commonly recurring pattern is the same as in (11a–b); see the following examples: (12) a. [ˈvɔɟɟʊ ˈpaʊ̯ la mɪ sɪ nˈnɪ va] 1SG.PRS.IND Paula COMP REFL from here 3SG.PRS.IND ‘I want Paula to go’ b. [maˈrɪːa ˈvɔːlɪ ʤʊˈannɪ mɪ si fa tˈʦɪːtʊ Mary 3SG.PRS.IND John COMP REFL 3SG.PRS.IND hitched up ‘Mary wants John to get hitched up’ c. vuliti mi vaju iò? 2PL.PRS.IND COMP 1SG.PRS.IND me-NOM ‘Do you want me to go?’ (Assenza 2008: 107)
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As regards the position of the complementiser compared to that of the negator, the latter follows it.18 Indeed, it requires the same order in which it surfaces in dependent finite clauses in Western Romance languages; see the following examples: (13) a. [bbasˈtjaːnʊ ˈvɔːlɪ maˈrɪːa mɪ nɔn sɪ maˈrɪːta] Sebastian 3SG.PRS.IND Mary COMP NEG REFL 3SG.PRS.IND ‘Sebastian doesn’t want Mary to get married’ b. [ˈvɔɟɟʊ ˈmakkʊ mɪ nɔn sɪ rrɪˈkɔɟɟɪ ˈtaddʊ staˈsɪːra] 1SG.PRS.IND Mark COMP NEG REFL 3SG.PRS.IND late this night ‘I don’t want Mark to come back home too late’ c. [ˈvɔːli ʤʊˈannɪ mɪ nɔ=nˈnɪ ˈdɪːʧɪ a vɪrɪˈta 3SG.PRS.IND John COMP NEG=us-DAT 3SG.PRS.IND the truth ‘He doesn’t want John to tell us the truth’ As far as the placement of the negator is concerned, a similar order occurs both in some Calabrian varieties in the province of Catanzaro (Manzini and Savoia 2005, 1: 660), and in some Salentino dialects (Strumbo 1996: 151; Bertocci and Damonte 2007: 8). In the first case, we are dealing with a transitional area between Northern and Southern Calabria, in which mu behaves like the North. Cal. complementiser chi (Roberts and Roussou 2003: 92, fn. 7). In the latter case, the behaviour of cu reflects a Latin pattern of complementation, retained for longer in this area because of the later spread of Greek, if compared with its early diffusion both in Central-Southern Calabria and in North-Eastern Sicily (Fanciullo 1996: 147–151; Parlangèli 1953). Evidently, sentences (13a–c) display a conservative pattern, where the syntactic change from complementiser to an infinitival clitic marker has still not definitively occurred. As far as North-Eastern Sicilian is concerned, it should be noted that the order mi + non has been attested since the 15th c., as documented by the Leggenda della beata Eustochia da Messina (cf. Sect. 2); see the following example:
18 Outside Messina, the scenario is all but uniform. As far as the syntactic placement of the negator is concerned, the order non + mi is attested at Mandanici (AIS VI, 1143–1144); at Melìa and Forza d’Agrò (Rohlfs 1972b: 335). On the contrary, the order mi + non is documented in the Gallo-Italic locality of Fantina di Sicilia (AIS VI, 1143–1144); at S. Marco d’Alunzio (Manzini and Savoia 2005, 1: 660); at Francavilla di Sicilia and Sant’Alfio, at least in most of the evidence available (Tropea 1965: 149–150).
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(14) Diceti a la Madonna mi non veni [. . .] 2PL.PRS.IMP to the my wife COMP NEG 3SG.PRS.IND ‘Tell my wife not to come (here) [. . .]’ (p. 178 ed. Catalano, ll. 7–8) To sum up: in examples (13a–c), the interference process with Italo-Greek seems to have been restricted to the formal change from QUID - to MŎDO -forms, only partially affecting the grammatical status of the complementiser; in a different way, in Central and Southern Calabria (11a–d), the grammaticalization process went further, as the completed change complementiser > infinitival marker shows. This difference is iconically coded by the different form that the NorthEastern Sicilian complementiser takes compared with the Calabrian one: indeed, whereas mi never loses its syllabic onset in North-Eastern Sicily, mi/mu can surface as i, u in many dialects of Central and Southern Calabrian. This follows from the different degree of grammaticalization which mi has achieved compared to Cal. mi/mu: the final cliticization of the latter to the embedded verb leads to a process of phonetic attrition, with the resultant loss of the initial consonant, while Messinese mi has partially retained its complementation status and consequently its phonetic integrity. It should be noted that the order COMPLEMENTISER + NEGATOR is tendentially exhibited by mi-clauses headed by want-predicates, which in North-Eastern Sicilian are still constrained by the obviation effect (see Sect. 3). Otherwise, all the other subordinate clauses, as well as complementiser-headed main clauses, can display the same alignment observed in (11c–d): (15) a. ’ccumpagnàtimi stanotti/ no’-mmi moru ’i mala motti ‘Accompany me tonight so that I don’t meet with a nasty end’ (Messina, Cavarra 1985: 59) b. Matri di lu Rusariu, dàtimi cunzìgghiu no’ mi ’finnèmu lu vostru duci f ìgghu ‘Mother of the Rosary, give me advice, so that we don’t offend your beloved son’ (Messina, Cavarra 1985: 61) c. no’ mi va scàusu cu sìmmina spini [. . .]ca si l’azzicca a la dimenticata ‘He who sows thorns should not walk barefoot / because he will tread on one when he least expects it’ (Messina, Cavarra 1985: 61)
8 NOblC and OblC complementation structures If the historical sketch proposed here is correct, we can finally ask the question concerning the way in which Romance finite chi-clauses have replaced by “Greek-style”-MŎDO clauses. Differently from the Romance complementation
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pattern, Greek complementation clauses are not constrained by the obviation effect: indeed, the null embedded subject of a finite clause can either be coreferent with the matrix subject or it can be disjointed in reference, see e.g. Calabrian Greek θéli na míni, which can mean both ‘he wants to stay’ (unmarked meaning) and ‘he wants him to stay’. Therefore, as the result of a calquing from Italo-Greek, complementation Romance clauses too became no more constrained by the disjoint reference effect, as the exx. (1a–f) show. When Romance varieties of South Italy came into contact with Italo-Greek, Romance finite complementation clauses overlapped with formally similar ItaloGreek finite structures, matching through the feature [+finiteness]. A deeper similarity became increasingly available in those Romance obviative want-sentences coded by the third person (singular or plural), both in the matrix and in the embedded clause. Indeed, third person sentences such as st. It. Carlo vuole che legga un libro (3rd sg.), vogliono che leggano (3rd pl.) are the only ones in which NOblC finite structures – with a null subject in the embedded clause and a formal identity in the number of the grammatical person between matrix and embedded verb (vuole 3rd pers. sing. = legga 3rd pers. sing./vogliono 3rd pers. pl. = leggano 3rd pers. pl.) – are available (compare the ungrammaticality of sentences such as: *voglio che leggo, *vuoi che leggi, *vogliamo che leggiamo and so on). In the Greek-Latin diasystem, such a preliminary condition makes these sentences the only ones where a reanalysis as obligatory control sentences was possible (Mario vuole che PRO19 [= Mario] legga un libro), due to the occurrence of an Italo-Greek pattern in which such a coreferential option represents the unmarked reading. In such a way, bilingual speakers could carry out a morpho-syntactic calquing, having two available matching pairs: on the one hand, the formal similarity between Romance finite complementation clauses and the corresponding Greek ones; on the other, the twofold reading of Romance 3rd person NOblC want-sentences, with disjoint reference, possibly licensed by bilingual speakers also as OblC structures, with the covert subject referred to the matrix one (‘he wants him (= PRO) to read’ = ‘he wants to read’): « Inasmuch as a language is a system of oppositions – Weinreich (1979: 8) noticed – a partial identification of the systems is to the bilingual a reduction of his linguistic burden ». It should be noted that in these areas, due to the so-called “Sicilian” vowel system, both present indicative 2nd and 3rd sg. person end in -i (except for the first conjugation), whence conflation can arise in many forms, see e.g. leggi ‘you/he read’, veni ‘you/he come’ etc. This could have increased the cases of misunderstanding, in which also 2nd person NOblC structures got involved; see 19 In the generative framework, the label pro indicates a null subject (phonetically unrealized pronoun) of the embedded clause.
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the following examples from Southern Calabrian – (16a+a1) before the interference, (16b) after the interference: (16) a. [ˈkarrʊ ˈvɔːlɪ kɪ/mɪ ˈlɛdʤɪ ʊ ˈlɪbbrʊ] Carl want-3SG.PRS.IND COMP read-2SG.PRS.IND the book ‘Carl wants you to read the book’ a.1. [ˈkarrʊ ˈvɔːlɪ kɪ/mɪ ˈlɛdʤɪ ʊ ˈlɪbbrʊ] Carl want-3SG.PRS.IND COMP pro read-3SG.PRS.IND the book ‘Carl wants him to read the book’ b.
[ˈkarrʊ ˈvɔːlɪ mɪ ˈlɛdʤɪ ʊ ˈlɪbbrʊ] ‘Carl wants to read the book/you to read the book/him to read the book’
Through this interference process, the Romance pattern Carlo vuole che legga ‘he wants pro to read’ could be reanalyzed also as a control structure, with the covert subject referred to the matrix one (‘he wants PRO to read’ = ‘he wants to read’).
9 The diachronic path for the replacement of the infinitive Finally, we can go back to Jakobson’s claim. Formal identity is not a necessary condition for borrowing, but it can trigger the interference process especially in cases of “replica grammaticalization”’, « [. . .] a process whereby speakers create a new grammatical meaning or structure in language R on the model of language M by using the linguistic resources available in R » (Heine and Kuteva 2010: 86). Such processes are obviously facilitated when formal identity between two structurally different patterns occurs. It is exactly such a formal identity which triggers the process through which, « [. . .] as a result of language contact, clusters of discourse pieces turn into new use patterns, or [. . .] existing minor use patterns turn into major ones » (Heine and Kuteva 2010: 89). Just such a formal identity allowed a contact-induced innovation in the syntactic field of the Extreme Southern dialect here analyzed, namely the reinterpretation of NOblC finite structures as OblC structures. If the historical reconstruction proposed thus far is correct, we are dealing with a surprising paradox. We observed that the early stage of the loss of the infinitive is still preserved in North-Eastern Sicilian want-sentences. In the
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retreat of the infinitive to the advantage of finite complementation, Salentino and Calabrian want-predicates are at the top of a scale which tracks the gradual replacement of infinitive dependent clauses, by placing themselves immediately after ‘come’ and ‘go’ (Ledgeway 2013: 17). In other words, want-predicates were presumably among the verbal forms which would have first driven the drift. Therefore, although the phenomenon at issue is known as “avoidance or loss of the infinitive” (unpopularity of the infinitive in Rohlfs’ terms), the retreat of infinitive clauses – at least with those Romance predicates which legitimate NOblC structures – originated in finite structures, as North-Eastern Sicilian evidence seems to indicate. Such a paradox is still more striking if we follow Ledgeway (1998, 2007, 2013) by assuming that MŎDO / QUOD -clauses are structurally closer to the inflected infinitive than to subjunctive finite clauses. Indeed, just like the inflected infinitive, they code just features of [+agreement], without any encoding of [+tense] feature (present indicative is generally the only form available in the embedded clause, see Sect. 2). Therefore, far from a loss of the infinitive structures, the whole process started with a replacement of noncoreferential finite clauses with (a form of) inflected infinitive, by retaining infinitive dependent clauses unchanged, at least in the initial stage of development.
References AIS = Jaberg, Karl & Jakob Jud. 1928–1940. Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz, 8 voll., Zofingen: Ringier. Alvaro, Ettore. 1979. Imprecazioni dialettali calabresi. Cosenza: Brenner. Ammann, Andreas & Johan van der Auwera. 2004. Complementiser-headed main clauses for volitional moods in the languages of South-Eastern Europe: A balkanism? In Olga Mišeska Tomić (ed.), Balkan syntax and semantics, 293–314. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. Assenza, Elvira. 2008. Usi dichiarati e usi effettivi della particella “mi” in area messinese. In Alessandro De Angelis (ed.), I dialetti meridionali tra arcaismo e interferenza. Atti del Convegno internazionale di dialettologia (Messina, 4–6 giugno 2008), 103–120. Palermo: Centro di Studi filologici e linguistici siciliani. Bertocci, Davide & Federico Damonte. 2007. Distribuzione e morfologia dei congiuntivi in alcune varietà salentine. Quaderni di lavoro dell’Atlante Sintattico d’Italia 7. 1–22. Calabrese, Andrea. 1993. The sentential complementation of Salentino: A study of a language without infinitival clauses. In Adriana Belletti (ed.), Syntactic theory and the dialects of Italy, 28–98. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier. Campbell, Lyle. 1996. Phonetics and phonology. In Hans Goebl, Peter H. Nelde, Zdeněk Starý & Wolfang Wölck, Kontaktlinguistik. Contact linguistics. Linquistique de contact. Ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung. An international handbook of contemporary research. Manuel international des recherches contemporaines, vol. 1, 98–103. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter.
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Margherita Farina
9 The Syro-Arabic Glosses to Barhebraeus’ Metrical Grammar 1 Introduction1 The widespread multilingualism of Late Antique, Medieval and Early Modern Near East, extensively documented by first-hand multilingual texts, is wellknown through historiographical accounts, as well as anthropological and sociological studies.2 As regards Syriac Christian communities, in the course of their history they were scattered through vast areas characterized by linguistic variation, most of the time living as linguistic minorities under a foreign rule.3 The Syriac sources contain clear traces of a Syriac-Arabic bilingualism, the understanding of which poses, however, a number of problems connected with the quality of the data at our disposal. Only partial information can be extracted from the written sources, which for the most part reproduce literary registers of the language, rather than spontaneous speech.4 The sources testify to a contact between prestige varieties (literary Syriac and Arabic), as has been defined in the introductory chapter of this section.5 At the same time, the dynamics of a bilingualism between minority and majority language intersect with those of a diglossia between the high-register written language and the vernaculars.6 Such a diglossia characterizes both the majority and the minority language, in this case Arabic and Syriac, respectively. In this picture, assessing the respective roles of Arabic and Syriac in the linguistic and literary education of the Syriac minorities, even in their higher literary varieties, is not an easy task. Identity, 1 The work presented in this paper was realized within the PRIN 2010–2011 Rappresentazioni linguistiche dell’identità. Modelli sociolinguistici e linguistica storica (protocol 2010HXPFF2), supervisor Marina Benedetti. Relevant textual and philological data were collected thanks to the Dietrich Reinhart Fellowship for Eastern Christian Manuscript Studies of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Collegeville, MN. The author is grateful to the HMML director, father Columba Stuart (OSB) and to the staff. 2 Adams et al. (2002), Cotton et al. (2009). 3 Kawerau (1955). On Syriac bilingualism see e.g. Taylor (2002), Julien (2012), esp. IV. “Bilingualism as a Milieu”. 4 Cf., in this respect, the remarks in the Introduction to Adams et al. (2002). 5 Cf. Benedetti, Di Giovine, Pompeo, and Tronci, this volume. 6 On the distinction between bilingualism and diglossia see Langslow (2002: 26–28). Margherita Farina, Università per stranieri di Siena DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-009
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as well as language proficiency, can determine different alignments of the writers, according to the linguistic and cultural context in which a document was produced. Consider, for example, the following considerations by Weltecke (2008: 324–325), relating to 11th–13th century Syriac-orthodox communities: Syriac-Orthodox scholars and professionals were open to books by East Syrians and Muslims. That it to say, they were part of the trans-cultural scientific world of the High Middle Ages, where scientific exchange between languages, religions or confessions was widespread. The chronicles suggest that language training, manuals, and often even the names of secular Syriac-Orthodox scholars and professionals were Arabic, not Syriac (. . .). While the Syriac-Orthodox scientific community had been familiar with the latest scientific world, they perhaps had not been very interested nor proficient in a Syriac apt for scientific use.
The present contribution will analyse the linguistic horizon of the Syriac-Orthodox community in the area o Tūr ‛Abdīn, in present-day south-eastern Turkey and northern Iraq, as it emerges from the exam of Syro-Arabic bilingual glosses. We will analyse the reception of the Metrical Grammar in this area from the 14th cent., when Syriac-Orthodox were divided between the Timurid, Ottoman and Mamluk empires, up to the 16th cent., when the influence of Turkish progressively spread, with the expansion of the Ottoman rule, while the linguistic mosaic in their territories remained complex and variegated. If the spread of Arabic within the Tur‘abdinian Syriac community is a well-documented phenomenon, its cultural and identity relevance in linguistic education still needs to be properly assessed. The aim of our enquiry will be to outline the roles of classical Syriac and Arabic, respectively, in the perception of linguistic identity of the SyriacOrthodox communities in the Tur‘abdinian and upper Mesopotamian areas between the 14th and the 16th centuries, as it emerges from the literary dimension that a grammatical text allows us to approach.
1.1 Barhebraeus and the Metrical Grammar The Metrical Grammar, composed by the Syriac-Orthodox Grigorios Barhebraeus (1225/26–1286)7 around 1270, is a concise grammar of Syriac. The text achieved great popularity and, together with Barhebraeus’ longer grammar Ktābā d-Ṣemḥē (Liber Splendorum), represented a reference point for Syriac native linguistic tradition.8 In Barhebraeus’ time, Syriac Christians were living under different rules, 7 For quick reference on this author, see Takahashi (2011), for more detailed information, see Takahashi (2005). 8 On the position of Barhebraeus within the Syriac tradition see Merx (1889: 229–231) and Bohas (2008).
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being in contact with languages such as Greek, Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Mongol.9 During his life Barhebraeus travelled through the Middle East and his writings were conceived at the crossroads of different languages and cultures. According to the preface to the Metrical Grammar, it was on the occasion of a pastoral visit in the region of Baghdad that Barhebraeus came to the idea of composing a grammar of Syriac. The Metrical Grammar consists of a text in verses accompanied, since the original composition, by annotations by Barhebraeus himself explaining in greater detail the rules enounced in the poem. Besides grammatical technicalities, these glosses contain information about the Eastern and Western dialects of Syriac,10 the relation between the Syriac and the Greek language and grammar and other extra-linguistic topics. Syriac grammar developed around the 6th cent., in a Syro-Hellenistic cultural milieu, greatly inspired by Greek grammatical, rhetorical and logic works. With the rise of Islam and the development of Arabic linguistics, from the 11th cent., some Syriac authors started to apply Arabic theories to the description of the Syriac language.11 Barhebraeus’ Metrical Grammar was composed towards the end of the so-called Syriac Renaissance (11th–13th cent.), an epoch of revival of the Syriac sciences and literature, stimulated also by the flourishing of the surrounding Islamic culture, but resisting excessive arabization. In the domain of grammar, the progressive application to Syriac of terminology, categories and methods proper of Arabic linguistics provoked the reaction of some scholars, defending the traditional Syriac grammar of Greek origin. The most authoritative supporters of the Syriac tradition were members of the Church of the East, like Yoḥannan Bar Zo‘bi (12th/13th cent., author of important grammatical treatises, among which also a short metrical grammar), or were educated in an Estern-Syriac environment, like his pupil Severus Bar Šakko (d. 1241, wrote a Book of Dialogues, one chapter of which treats grammatical matters).12 In this context, the actual extension of the roles of Syriac and Arabic in the literary and grammatical education and scholarship of Syriac people is unclear to us, due to the strong bias of our sources. 9 Farina (2015) and Farina (2016) focused on the analysis of the linguistic content of the Metrical Grammar and on its socio-linguistic interpretation. 10 Syriac Christianity is characterized by a major linguistic subdivision between a Western and an Eastern dialectal variety. This differentiation is mirrored by the theological distinction between the Syriac-Orthodox Church and the Church of the East. 11 On the history of Syriac grammatical tradition see the classical work by Merx (1889). For a more recent and concise account, see Talmon (2000), Contini (2000) and Contini (2015). 12 On these scholars see Brock (2011b and 2011c).
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As was shown in Farina (2015), Barhebraeus’ Metrical Grammar has to be evaluated within the framework of the debate between the East Syriac supporters of the Syriac tradition and the authors open to Arabic linguistic theory. It was conceived as an implicit dialogue between different perspectives on language. The work was composed within a very traditional framework, after the model of Greek grammatical and logic theories, with particular reference to the works of Bar Zo‘bi and Bar Šakko. This model was combined with some relevant incursions in the new Arabic linguistic perspectives over morpho-syntax and syntax. The Metrical Grammar’s structure and contents confirm on linguistic and epistemological grounds Teule’s suggestion (2009: 183) that the acceptance of Arabic as an ecclesiastical and theological language, by which it became a marker of identity of the Suryōyē, started with Barhebraeus and some of his successors and contemporaries.
As compared to this picture, 14th, 15th and 16th cent. commentators of the Metrical Grammar seem to identify more and more with an Arabic-speaking culture, in which Arabic linguistics and scholarship represent a reference point for the understanding of the traditional Syriac grammar. In what follows, we will try to show that, although the Syriac language and writing still powerfully identifies the Syriac-Orthodox communities, as opposed to the surroundings nonChristian or non-Syriac neighbouring cultures, Arabic represents to them de facto the language of scientific learning.
2 Daniel of Mardin and the Arabic glosses to the Metrical Grammar The oldest extant witness of the Metrical Grammar is manuscript Or. 29813 from the Laurentian Library in Florence, copied in 1360 in Egypt by Daniel of Mardin, a Syriac from the region of Tūr ‛Abdīn, who moved to Egypt to improve his knowledge of the Greek language.14 Daniel did not simply reproduce Barhebraeus’ text:
13 For codicological information see Farina (2016) and the description by P.G. Borbone in Fani and Farina (2012: 138–139). For a chronological list of the known copies of the Metrical Grammar see Takahashi (2005: 359–372). The manuscript has been digitized and can be viewed online on the website of the Biblioteca Laurenziana: http://teca.bmlonline.it/ImageViewer/servlet/ ImageViewer?idr=TECA0001493277&keyworks=Or.298#page/1/mode/1up (accessed 10/12/2016). 14 On Daniel of Mardin see Brock (2011a) and Nau (1905).
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He also added Arabic and Greek annotations. The Arabic glosses contain comparisons between the Syriac and the Arabic language and grammatical theories. The Greek glosses are transcriptions of Syriac words of Greek origin, which the scribe tries to trace back to their sources. Around 1488 the Laurentian ms. was probably brought from Egypt back to Tūr ‛Abdīn, where, according to an annotation found in the ms. itself (f. 142r), in 1488 it was restored and began to be systematically collated and copied. By the end of the 16th cent. tens of copies of the Metrical Grammar were realized, reproducing also Daniel’s glosses and sometimes commenting upon them.15 The text of the glosses to the Metrical Grammar has never been the object of analysis by modern scholarship16 and the present study is based on the inedited text of ms. Or. 298 and of other mss. from Tūr ‛Abdīn. The study of the annotations by Daniel and his later followers revealed the traces of a linguistic debate over the comparison of Syriac and Arabic, in morpho-syntax and the syntaxsemantic interface. The debate intertwines with the evolution of the sociolinguistic setting of the Middle Eastern Syriac-Orthodox communities of the 14th– 6th cent., showing a progressive shift in the linguistic self-identification of the Syriac commentators from a Syriac-centred towards an Arabic-centred context.
2.1 The glosses by Daniel of Mardin and later commentators Daniel’s glosses can be organized into the following categories: Arabic translations or paraphrases from the Syriac text; transcriptions in Greek characters of Syriac terms of Greek origin, with the corresponding literal Arabic translation; Arabic translations of the titles of the Syriac paragraphs in the metrical text; comparisons between the Syriac and the Arabic language; references to Arabic grammatical rules relating to phenomena treated in the Metrical Grammar, sometimes with quotations from Arabic grammarians (such as Ibn Ǧinnī and al-‛Anbarī). The Arabic glosses to the section on syntax have been reproduced in a number of later copies of the Metrical Grammar from the region of Tūr ‛Abdīn, 15 Ms. 500 of the Church of the Forty Martyrs of Mardin (CFMM 500) was copied in 1480 and subsequently collated with the Laurentian ms. Or. 298. A later hand added almost all of Daniel’s Arabic glosses, in garšūnī script. Or. 298 was probably not available to the scribe when he or she first copied CFMM 500, and that, on its arrival in 1488, Or. 298 was considered so valuable that its additional glosses were added to the recently produced copy. Cf. also Farina (2016) and, for a list of 15th–16th cent. Tur‘abdinian mss. of the Metrical Grammar, cf. Takahashi (2005: 360–363). 16 Preliminary surveys are described in Farina (2015) and Farina (2016).
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all depending on Or. 298, at different levels and to variable extent.17 This is also the section on which later scribes have produced new commentaries, proving a certain familiarity with Arabic syntactical analysis, which they use to better understand the Syriac text and to develop new inter-linguistic (or, rather, intertheoretical) comparisons. In what follows, we will introduce a few examples from each category.
2.1.1 Syriac-Greek-Arabic transcriptions and translations F. 40r of Or. 298 contains a paragraph entitled “On the fact that some verbs that have their etymology (Syr. eṭūmōlōgīsē hāwyān) from nouns the [letter] wāw remains and in some others it does not”.18 Here Barhebraeus is examining the morphological behaviour of verbs that are co-radical to nouns displaying a double wāw19 in their spelling, such as ezdawag “he married” and zūwāgā “marriage” or etnawag “he was wrecked” and nūwāgā “shipwreck”. The noun that has a double wāw, when it becomes a verb, one of the two [wāw] remains in order to show its origin. As in ezdawag [he married], zūwāgā [marriage] and in etnawag [he was wrecked] from nūwāgā [shipwreck] [. . .]. And in the noun that has only one wāw, this falls from its verb.
The following Syro-Arabic paraphrase was added, along the margins: The noun in which there is a couple of wāw, when a verb is formed from it, through etymological derivation [Ar. al-ištiqāq], a wāw remains in it, showing that in the noun from which it is derived there is a double wāw. When there is only one wāw in the noun, it does not remain, like when you say etgarag [Syr. he was stimulated] from gūrāgā [Syr. encouragement].
The Greek loanword eṭūmōlōgīsē, in the Syriac title, is clarified through the native term ištiqāq, currently designating the etymology or derivation of a word, in Arabic linguistics. Moreover, Daniel added a number of Greek and Arabic annotations, aimed at investigating the precise meaning of Syriac eṭūmōlōgīsē. In terms of Syriac 17 Among which the above-mentioned CFMM 500 and DIYR 370, CFMM 505, CNMO 65, CCM 24. 18 The Syriac text corresponds to Martin (1872: 60*). All the translation of the Syriac and Arabic passages are by the present writer. 19 This name designates, both in Syriac and Arabic, a letter that can be used to note the [w], [u] or [u:] sound.
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morphology, the word displays the ending of plural nouns,20 but its relation with the co-radical eṭūmōlōgiya is not transparent. Daniel did not simply translate it as Arabic ištiqāq, but also searched for a possible Greek source, its Arabic literal translation, its corresponding Arabic grammatical term and a literal translation of the latter into Syriac. In fact, on f. 40r the following Greek, Syriac and Arabic annotations are found: 1. ετυμολογισαι (etymōlogisai) 2. ετυμολογια (etymologia) ( ﺍﺷﺘﻘﺎﻕ ﺍﻟﻜﻼﻡištiqāq al-kalām) [lit. the origin of the language], an Arabic rendering of the two lexical components of the Greek term etymologia. (nsībūt šmāhē) [the deriving of the nouns] 3. ( ﺍﺷﺘﻘﺎﻕ ﺍﻻﺳﻤﺎﺀištiqāq al-asmā’i) [the derivation of the nouns] Etymōlogisai seems to be a Greek retroversion of Syriac eṭūmōlōgīsē, while the term ištiqāq belongs to Arabic technical grammatical lexicon, used to gloss and explain Syriac nsībūtā (Moberg, 1907: 62*). Other instances of Greek transcription of Syriac terms of Greek origins, with their corresponding Arabic rendering are found all over ms. Or. 298. On f. 7r, in (paṭryarkā), re-transcribed one of Barhebraeus’ glosses, we find Syriac by Daniel as πατριαρχης (patriarchēs) and translated into Arabic ( ﺭﻳﻴﺲ ﺍﻻﺑﺎrayys21 al-abā) “head of the fathers”. On f. 12r the Syriac metrical text he mentions the (plaṭōn), glossed with Greek πλατων (platōn) and Arabic personal name ﺍﻟﻤﺘﺴﻊal-muttasi ‛ “expanding”. From all the examples analysed, it appears that, for Daniel and his readers, Arabic, rather than Syriac, is the language of translation and comprehension. It is in Arabic that the Greek terms are glossed and the derived Syriac ones are explained, with etymologizing intent.
2.1.2 Arabic translations of the titles of the Syriac paragraphs Although not systematic, the juxtaposition of an Arabic version to the paragraph titles in ms. Or. 298 is quite frequent. Daniel of Mardin does not simply translate the Syriac titles but, in a number of instances, he introduces specific Arabic grammatical terminology, in order to set a Syriac phenomenon within the corresponding framework of Arabic linguistics. Daniel’s aim seems to be to associate 20 Nöldeke ([1898] 1966: §89). For other interpretations see Moberg (1907: 10*). 21 Middle Arabic form, corresponding to Classical Arabic ra’īs. Middle-Arabic forms are frequent in Daniel’s glosses, as it is often the case for Arabic writing in Syriac context, both in Arabic and garšūnī script. On Middle Arabic see (Zack and Schippers 2012).
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a Syriac phenomenon described in the Metrical Grammar with known Arabic analytical categories. A confirmation of the usefulness, if not necessity, of that procedure comes from the copies of the Metrical Grammar produced in Tūr ‛Abdīn in the 15th–17th cent. reproducing faithfully Daniel’s translations of the titles.22 An interesting examples of title translation can be found in Or. 298 f. 1. 18v:23 Syriac title meṭṭul šmāhē d-zabnā wa-’trā [On the nouns of time and place]
Arabic title bāb al-ẓurūf [Chapter on the circumstances]
From the paragraph content, we understand that the analytical and descriptive Syriac title refers to prepositions and locutions that introduce temporal and spatial information. The paragraph is matched with the Arabic technical term ẓurūf, plural of ẓarf, literally meaning “container, envelop”, designating the circumstances, both in juridical and grammatical lexicon. In grammar, it covers temporal and spatial adverbial locutions.
2.1.3 Comparisons between Syriac and Arabic Some of Daniel’s glosses establish an explicit comparison between Syriac and Arabic, which are presented as extremely close languages sometimes differing in subtleties that need to be elucidated. The parallels are often formulated by means of the expression ahl al-luġa al-suryānīyya wa-l-‛arabīyya, “the people speaking the Syriac and the Arabic language”, introducing phenomena shared by the two languages, that nevertheless display minor or major differences. In these cases, the Syriac examples are presented through the formula naḥw qawlhum “as in their expression. . .”. Hence, Daniel does not seem to identify himself (and his ideal reader) with a Syriac speaker, although no explicit selfdesignation as Arabic speaker can be found. His position can be described as equidistant from the two languages, identifying to a certain extent with both. As we will see in Section 2.2, the situation evolves with later commentators of the Metrical Grammar. As an example of comparison, let us consider the following
22 In ms. CFMM 500 (v. supra) Daniel’s Arabic titles have been added secondarily, in garšūnī script, together with other Arabic glosses. Another mss. displaying Daniel’s titles is, for example, Diyarbakir 370, Maryam Ana Syriac Orthodox Church n. 203. 23 Text corresponding to Martin (1872: 29*).
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Arabic gloss to the Syriac paragraph on the gdāmā “cutting”, hence “apocope” of the nouns, on f. 15r:24 The Arabic-speaking and the Syriac-speaking people25 use apocope (al-tarḫam), but the Arabic language does so only in the vocative (nadā’) . . . , while the Syriac people use the apocope for three situations: in the invocation, in the predicate and in the construct state. In invocation in their expression ḥbary lā ma‘ūl ’nā bāk, Syr. ‘my friend I am not unfair to you’ and in the predicate in their expression kul bar’naš dagāl, Syr. ‘all man is a liar’ and in the construct in their expressions mdînat šemšā, Syr. ‘city of the sun’, i.e. Heliopolis, and bayt dawīd, Syr. ‘house of David’ and so forth.
The Arabic term tarḫam designates a particular form of invocation, used mostly with proper names, in which the non-monosyllabic nouns are reduced to a disyllabic form, e.g. from the name Manṣūr, the apocopate form ya Manṣū “oh Mansur”.26 The corresponding paragraph of the Metrical Grammar uses here the Syriac term gdāmā 27 to designate a variegated series of syntactic constructions, in which the noun does not feature in its morphologically heavier (and in Barhebraeus’ eyes fuller) form, endowed of the nominal ending -ā, but rather in various lighter forms with no ending. Syriac nouns assume three different forms, usually called states, according to the syntactic function. The emphatic state, with -ā ending, was originally the determinate form of the noun that in Syriac progressively lost its specific function and also spread to indeterminate contexts. The absolute state, constituted by the simple nominal theme, without the -ā ending, is the indeterminate predicative form of the noun. The construct state, is an abbreviated form that a noun takes when it is the first member of a genitive relation. Absolute and construct state are similar in form in many cases, but they do not coincide from the morphological and syntactic point of view.28 Although Daniel’s examples appropriately describe the functional distribution of the non-emphatic forms, the parallel that he establishes with Arabic tarḫam reveals a loose connection with the inner structure of Syriac nominal system. Daniel is trying to individuate an Arabic phenomenon known to him that can offer a parallel and a clue to interpret the Syriac one. It is also interesting to observe that Daniel does not mention the systematic dropping of nominal case endings that is customary in most vernaculars varieties of Arabic and that had to be familiar to him. This shows how the reference for his 24 Syriac text corresponding to Martin (1872: 23*–24*). 25 Literally “the people of Arabic and Syriac language”, no reference to spoken language is made in the text. 26 Cf. Kouloughli (2007 cap. 19: 57–59). 27 On which see Moberg (1907: 23*). 28 Cf. Nöldeke (1966: §§ 202–205).
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linguistic speculation had to be exclusively the classical literary Arabic described in the grammars to which he had access, in an extremely formalized context. 2.1.4 References to Arabic grammatical theory The references to Arabic linguistics and the quotations from Arab grammarians are also set in the context of the comparison between Syriac and Arabic. This class of annotations concentrates mostly in the last section of the Metrical Grammar, devoted to syntax,29 where Barhebraeus’ recourse to an Arabic model is also more intense and explicit. This section was analysed in detail in Farina (2015) and I will shortly summarize its most relevant features. The first paragraph has an evident Arabic imprint and is entitled: “On what in every discourse by necessity is beginning (šūrāyā) and information (šūwdā‛ā), namely on theme (sīm) and predicate (metqaṭrag).” Under the unusual Syriac terminology beginning and information lie the fundamental Arabic syntactical notions of mubtada’ ‘inchoative’ and ḫabar ‘predicate’, which Barhebraeus has introduced in his text in a Syriac translation. Arabic theory of syntax distinguishes, on a positional basis, between a sentence beginning with a noun (ǧumla ismīyya, ‘nominal sentence’) and a sentence beginning with a verb (ǧumla fi‘līyya, ‘verbal sentence’). The first one is considered to be composed by mubtada’ and ḫabar, the second one by fi‘l (verb) and fā‛il (agent). From this primary distinction descends the interpretation of all of the constituents of a sentence. In this perspective, the notion of agent is positional and syntactical, rather than morpho-semantic. Daniel of Mardin makes Barhebraeus’ reference more explicit and, on f. 50r, adds: the inchoative (mubtada’), for the people speaking the Syriac and also the Arabic language, is every noun with which you begin which you place before the second, whereas the second is . . . the predicate (ḫabar), what you predicate about the inchoative . . . [Syriac examples follow].
Here Daniel recalls the theory behind Barhebraeus’ concise reference, making explicit a connection that the 13th cent. text rather disguised under native lexicon. A later commentator, common source of CNMO 65, CMM 24 and CFMM 50530 completes the information with the following Arabic annotation: “[You should distinguish] between the sentence composed by inchoative and predicate and the sentence composed by verb and agent.” 29 Cf. Martin (1872: 72*). 30 CNMO 65, f. 63v; CCM 24, f. 61r; CFMM 505, f. 50r.
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The subsequent paragraph of the Metrical Grammar deceives the Arabic reader’s expectations over a description of the constituents of the ǧumla fi‘līyya and moves directly to the features distinguishing the agent from the patient. The agent is then treated essentially as a semantic role, closely following the traditional Syriac account, as it appears, for example, in Bar Šakko.31 Daniel reacts by quoting a passage from al-‘Anbarī’s Arabic grammar, followed by a comparison with Syriac: For the Arabic speakers the agent is every noun that occurs after the action and to which the action is attributed, positively or negatively, whether or not the agent accomplished the action.32 And for the Syriac people the agent is the one who accomplishes the action and the patient is the one who is acted upon by the agent.
Daniel underlines the syntactical nature of the notion of agent according to Arabic grammar, as opposed to the semantic notion that emerges from Barhebraeus’ exposal. Once again, the later Tur‘abdinian commentator takes upon Daniel’s observations and inserts a long remark over the different strategies of Arabic and Syriac for differentiating the agent from the patient, in case of semantic ambiguity: The patient can either be similar to the agent or not similar. Similar is like in our expression ‘Zayd hit ‘Umar’, in which ‘Umar is similar to Zayd, as both are human . . . And when it is not similar it is like in our expression ‘God created the world’. . . And because the Syriac people see that . . . the patient cannot be confused with the agent, unless it is not similar to it, they inserted the particle lam before it . . . The Arabs, instead, vocalize with -u the agent and with -a the patient, in order to distinguish between them. . . . [The Syriac lam particle] is better than the -u and -a vocalization because it distinguishes between all patients and agents, unlike the -u and -a vowels, like when we say ‘I hit (ḍarabtu) the mountain (al-ǧabala)’, where -u and -a do not distinguish the agent, but the verb and its object.33
The commentator compares the Arabic system of nominal declensions (ir‘āb), distinguishing between the different syntactic roles of nouns, with the Syriac particle lam, a preposition used as a direct object marker. Here Arabic examples are introduced by the formula “like in our expression” (naḥw qawlnā), that, if compared to Daniel’s formula introducing Syriac examples (naḥw qawlhum “as in their expression. . .”), shows a clear self-identification of the writer as an Arabic-writer. Moreover, in describing the ambiguities of the Arabic ir‘āb system, the scribe curiously does not mention the fact that Arabic case-endings are not
31 Cf. Farina (2015: 120–122). 32 al-‘Anbarī’, ch. 20. 33 CNMO 65, f. 63r; CCM 24, f. 60v; CFMM 505, f. 49r.
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consistently marked in writing and systematically dropped in most vernacular speeches (cf. 2,14 above). This circumstance seems to suggest that once again the context of the gloss is strictly literary and scholastic, rather than the result of a spontaneous reflection of a speaker.
3 Conclusions With the present case-study, we tried to show how the grammatical documents reveal us a progressive shift, from Barhebraeus’ time, throughout the late Middle Ages and Early Modern time, in the linguistic identity of the Syriac-Orthodox copyists and commentators of the Metrical Grammar, who seem to identify more and more with an Arabic-speaking culture, in which Arabic linguistics and scholarship represent a reference point for the understanding of the traditional Syriac grammar. The very fact that Daniel of Mardin choses the Arabic language for his commentaries clearly indicates a shift in the linguistic training and scholarly habits of the Syriac-Orthodox. Not only Arabic is the language of learning, even in the domain of Syriac grammar, but Arabic linguistic theories are used as a basis for the understanding of complex or obscure Syriac passages. Later annotations from the 15th and 16th cent. follow along the same lines, revealing an Arabicwriting cultural environment, who uses Arabic linguistic as a key for representing features of Syriac morpho-syntax. Although Syriac language and writing still remain an essential identity mark for Syriac-Orthodox communities34 as against non-Christian (Islamic) and nonSyriac (e.g. Greek-Orthodox, Armenian) communities, Arabic towards Early Modern times represents de facto for Syriac-Orthodox people the language of scientific learning. An overall picture emerges, in which linguistic identity appears most of all as the outcome of a system of mutual relations.
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Talmon, Rafi. 2000. The Syriac Grammatical Tradition, Foreign Influence in the Syriac Grammatical Tradition. In Sylvain Auroux, E. F. K. Koerner, Hans-Josef Niederehe & Kees Versteegh (eds.), History of the Language Sciences, Vol. I, 337–341. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Taylor, David G.K. 2002. Bilingualism and Diglossia in Late Antique Syria and Mesopotamia. In Adams, James N., Mark Janse & Simon Swain (eds.), Bilingualism in ancient society: language- contact and the written text, 298–476. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Teule, Hermann G. B. 2009. Reflections on Identity. The Suryoye of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Bar Salibi, Bar Shakko, and Barhebraeus. Church History and Religious Culture 89. 179–189. Weltecke, Dorothea. 2008. 60 Years after Peter Kawerau. Remarks on the Social and Cultural History of Syriac-Orthodox Christians from the XIth to the XIIIth Century. Museon 121. 311–335. Zack, Liesbeth & Arie Schippers (eds.). 2012. Middle Arabic and Mixed Arabic. Diachrony and Synchrony. Leiden: Brill.
Gianguido Manzelli
10 The Lexical Influence of Italian on Turkish 1 Introduction Italian and other Romance languages of Italy have been in contact with Turkish for more than seven centuries. Not surprisingly, in the cross-cultural context produced by this prolonged contact, language interference has had remarkable consequences on the vocabularies of both Italy and Turkey, even though clearly in favour of Italian (Tuscan, Florentine), Venetian and Genoese as donor languages.1 I have been working on the Italian-Turkish linguistic relationships since my university days. In this occasion I can resume and update my research as far as the state of the art is concerned. Obviously, due to lack of space, the illustration of Italian loanwords in Turkish will be necessarily limited to a very few exemplary cases.
2 The recipient language Turkish is the most spoken Turkic language in Asia and Europe. Together with Gagauz, Azeri (Azerbaijani), Turkmen and some minor languages, Turkish is a member of the Oghuz or South-Western Turkic branch. It was one of the languages of the Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) and, afterwards, the official language of the Republic of Turkey.2 Turkish also has an official status in Cyprus, Kosovo (since 2006) and Macedonia.
1 Turkish has had a very weak impact on the Romance languages of Italy in respect of Arabic, see Schweickard (2011). 2 See, at least, the chapters “Ottoman Turkish” by Celia Kerslake, “Turkish” by Éva Á. Csató and Lars Johanson, “Turkish Dialects” by Bernt Brendemoen, and “The Turkish Language Reform” by Bernt Brendemoen in Johanson and Csató (1998: 179–247). Gianguido Manzelli, Università di Pavia DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-010
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3 Historical background and the donor languages Turkey’s history of the second millenium CE is a complex and intriguing series of events.3 When, in 1071, Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantine army in the battle of Manzinkert (today’s Malazgirt, Turkey), they opened Anatolia to Oghuz and Turkoman colonies. It took a short time for those Turkic-speaking tribes to reach the Black, Aegean and Mediterranean seas. The most important maritime republics of Italy, Venice and Genoa, rival in trade and politics, soon came into contact with the Anatolian principalities. Thus, in 1220 there was a first treaty (written in Latin) between the Seljuk sultan Keykubat I and the Venetian podestà Jacopo Tiepolo (Theunissen 1998: 56, 61, 62). Nevertheless, as far as a linguistic influence on Turkish is concerned, there are no attested traces before the 15th century (Kahane and Tietze 1958: 9), when the Ottoman dynasty had already destroyed the millenarian Byzantine Empire. Even though Venice had tried a weak defence of Constantinople in its last Byzantine year (1453), the Serenissima signed a treaty with sultan Mehmed the Conqueror next year. Genoa already had a settlement beyond the Golden Horn, Galata (Pera, now Karaköy, core of the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul), bound to become a neighbourhood hosting merchants, dragomans (interpreters and translators) and foreign embassies. The attitude of Venice to the Ottoman Empire was very variable, alternating peaceful periods with long wars against the Sublime Porte. Eight wars were fought by Venice against the Turks between 1433 and 1718, but, nevertheless, it was Venetian which played a major role in influencing the language of Ottomans, while Genoese gave only a small contribution to the Turkish lexicon. Florence, however, had already a presence in Istanbul soon after the Ottoman conquest, therefore Tuscan (Italian), too, could become a donor language for Turkish, especially after the unification of Italy (1861), but also in the preceding centuries.4
4 Previous studies and sources The best essays about Italian borrowings in Turkish are somewhat outdated: Meyer (1893), Bonelli (1894), Tagliavini (1940) and Barbera (1940). Interesting 3 The amount of bibliography about Turkish history is huge, just consider the 21,000 pages (in Turkish) of Türkler, i.e. Güzel, Çiçek and Koca (2002), but see also, e.g., Bozarslan (2013), Öztuna (2015) and, about Turkish historiography, Pedani (2015). 4 For lack of space a lot of aspects about the role of Italian, Venetian and Genoese outside of Italy cannot be developed here and most of the references must be omitted, but see, at least, Bruni (2013), Banfi (2014), Ortega (2014), and Christ et al. (2015).
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but limited material can be found in one volume (Banfi and Iannàccaro 2006) with the contributions by Castagneto and D’Amora (2006), Minervini (2006), and Tomasin (2006). The best study about Italian and Greek loanwords in Turkish ever published is Lingua Franca by Kahane and Tietze (1958).5 Henry (Heinrich) Kahane (1902‒1992), was an accomplished Romanicist born in Berlin, his wife, Renée Toole Kahane (1907‒2002), also a Romanicist, born in Cephalonia (Greece), had an Irish father and a Greek mother with Italian ancestors. The Kahanes worked together in Italy until when the fascist racial laws (1938) compelled them to migrate to USA. Andreas Tietze (1914‒2003) was a Turkologist who left Vienna for Istanbul in 1938, escaping the Nazi persecution. The cooperation between two Romanicists, both of them proficient in Italian and (Modern) Greek, and a Turkologist, not ignorant of Italian and Greek, produced a basic tool and a substantial masterpiece of 752 pages, i.e. Lingua Franca which contains 723 Italian and 155 Greek loanwords of Turkish concerning the nautical terminology in a broad sense. Every entry in Lingua Franca is equipped with dated Turkish records (collected by Tietze), often with a comparison with other Mediterranean languages (especially Arabic). As for other semantic areas, the state of the art is far from being satisfactory. Some etymological dictionaries published in Turkey are insufficient or unreliable. The first real etymological dictionary of Ottoman Turkish, i.e. Kerestidjian ([1912] 1971), was published posthumously in London. Bedros Keresteciyan (according to the modern spelling of his surname) was an Ottoman polyglot, journalist, translator and writer of Armenian descent, born in Istanbul in 1840 (he died in 1907). It goes without saying that his work has now only a historical interest, even though some of his intuitions are still worthy of attention. The best etymological Turkish dictionary, in my opinion, is Eren (1999)6 but it is restricted in scope. Tietze conceived the ambitious project of producing a 7-volume etymological dictionary but at the moment only the first (A–E) and the second, posthumous, volume (G–J) have been published (Tietze 2002, 2009). Two dictionaries of foreign words in Turkish by Püsküllüoğlu ([1997] 2004), 500 pages, and Dinçoğlu (2003), 508 pages, are useful and interesting but very sketchy. Both authors mix old loanwords with recent foreign words (no dating is given) and their etymologies are limited to an abbreviation such as İt. = İtalyan ‘Italian’. Moreover, there is no doubt that Püsküllüoğlu (2004) and Dinçoğlu (2003) contain several erroneous etymologies. A classic example of false etymology, repeated in a lot of works, 5 Cited from the original edition, but it was reprinted in 1988 in Turkey (İstanbul-Ankara-İzmir: ABS Kitabevi). 6 Hasan Eren (born in Vidin, Bulgaria, 1919 ‒ died in Ankara, 2007) was not only an excellent Turkologist but also a Hungarologist.
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is the attribution of Turkish masa ‘table’ to Italian, i.e. mensa ‘cafeteria, dining hall; canteen; mess hall; soup kitchen’, as does Püsküllüoğlu (2004: 300), or, even worse, to Latin, i.e. mēnsa ‘table’, as does Dinçoğlu (2003: 282).7 The correct etymology was already in Meyer (1893: 46), i.e. Romanian masă ‘table’ (probably via Bulgarian mása ‘table’, in my opinion, see Eren 1999: 289). Leaving aside the nautical terms fully analyzed by Kahane and Tietze (1958), in order to collect a wider gamut of data I have scrutinized the Turkish-English Dictionary published by H. C. Hony with the advice of Fahir İz, who had studied at the Italian high school in Istanbul. Hony ([1957] 1976), originally published in 1947, is now outdated but it is still very readable and informative because it provides the Turkish pronunciation as regards prosody (stress and vowel length). Prosodic information is rarely found in normal Turkish dictionaries even though it is of a paramount importance for individuating loanwords: native Turkish nouns are normally oxytone (stressed on the last syllable) while Italian borrowings are rarely oxytone. In order to extend the survey of the Turkish lexicon, along with the data drawn from Lingua Franca and Hony (1976), I have examined the TurkishEnglish dictionaries based on the masterpiece by Sir James William Redhouse (1811‒1892), i.e. his original Ottoman Turkish dictionary (Redhouse [1890] 1987), and the updated versions, Alkım et al. ([1968] 2000) for Ottoman Turkish,8 and Bezmez, Blakney, and Brown ([1994] 2003) for Modern Turkish. Moreover, I consulted two on-line dictionaries hosted by the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dili Kurumu, TDK), established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: Büyük Türkçe Sözlük (The Larger Turkish Dictionary, gathering together entries from different dictionaries) and Güncel Türkçe Sözlük (Today’s Turkish Dictionary) which also include etymologies. After collecting the data from the written sources, I tested them with a native speaker, Can Yaylalı, born in Ankara, resident in Istanbul and Milan, competent in Turkish, Italian, Swedish and English. About half of the terms collected by Kahane and Tietze (1958) happened to be unknown to the native speaker. The fact is easily explicable: a lot of words of Lingua Franca belong to a very specialized terminology and many of them are now obsolete because connected with an outdated technology (especially the one based on oar-sail navigation, e.g. galleys were propelled mainly by rowing). Consequently, my database is limited to less than 700 lexical
7 Kerestedjian (1971: 321) has Latin mensa with the addition of Old French (vieux français) mense (a religious term pronounced [mɑ̃s]!). Unfortunately, the Güncel Türkçe Sözlük (http:// www.tdk.org.tr) considers Turkish masa a Modern Greek (rumca) word, but Modern Greek mása means ‘food’, from masṓ ‘to chew’, according to Babiniotis ([2009] 2010: 825). 8 As Hony (1976), Alkım et al. (2000) diplays prosodic information for every entry, not rarely different in respect of Hony (1976).
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items, starting from Ottoman Turkish abaşo, Modern Turkish altbaşo ‘foot of sail’, from Italian abbasso ‘below’, combined with Turkish alt ‘lower’ (Kahane and Tietze 1958: 49–50]). Eventually, as far as I know, Rocchi (2013) is the last significant contribution in this field of research with 153 Italian loanwords found in 32 Turkish texts written in Latin script, ranging from the 16th to the 18th century.
5 Problematic issues Italian loanwords in Turkish can present significant phonetic changes. For instance, the easily recognizable (Ottoman) Turkish avukat ‘lawyer, solicitor, advocate, barrister; fluent talker, loquacious; able to convince and defend’ (Alkım et al. 2000: 98), from Italian avvocato (Tietze 2002, 1: 231), in colloquial Turkish and in some dialects appears as abokat, abuḫat, abukat (Anatolia), afkat (western Anatolia, Küthaya), akobat, apokat and apukat (Tietze 1952: 249–250), cf. also abıgat, ablakat, abugat, abukat, apukat, apukot in Vardarlı and Dilçin (1993: 18–19). Turkish avogato (written awogato-) is attested in 1586 from Venetian avocato (Rocchi 2013: 892). Some semantic problems can be solved with a good documentation. For instance, the meaning of Turkish karyola ‘bed, bedstead (especially one that has a headboard and footboard)’ (Bezmez, Blakney, and Brown 2003: 436) sounds very strange for an Italian speaker because Italian carriola means ‘hand-cart, push cart, wheelbarrow, barrow’. However, Italian carriola also had a meaning which is now obsolete: ‘letto piccolo e basso, a cassone, con rotelle, che si poneva sotto il letto normale (e ne veniva tirato fuori la notte: per farvi dormire i bambini) [a small and low bed, chest-like, wheeled, usually put under a normal bed (to be pulled out by night to have children to sleep)]’, attested as carriuola in Andrea da Barberino (1371 ca.–1432 ca.), Matteo Bandello (1485–1561), Alessandro Allegri (1560–1629), Lorenzo Panciatichi (1635–1676), Lorenzo Magalotti (1637– 1712), and Angelo Paolo Francesco Carena (1740–1769), carriuolo in Giovan Battista Marino (1569–1625) and, eventually, carriola in Giovanni Rajberti (1805– 1861), see Battaglia (1962, 2: 802). More likely, the Turkish loanword depends on Venetian cariola, meaning ‘bed’ in a 16th century inventory record: “Un par de linzuoli de lin de cariola usadi” [A pair of used sheets made of linen for cariola] (Cortelazzo 2007: 296–297). Arabic correspondences, e.g. Baghdad Arabic qaryōla ‘steel cot’, ‘folding camp cot’, are found in Behnstedt and Woidich (2012, 2: 111).
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6 Reconstructed words Kahane and Tietze (1958) have reconstructed many Italo-Romance (Venetian, Italian) words for Turkish loanwords without an attested source. This procedure was strongly criticized by Vidos (1961), but looking back it seems that his criticisms were too severe. I shall take into account an exemplary case such as Turkish tornavida (tornavída) ‘screwdriver, turn-screw’ (Hony 1976: 370; Alkım et al. 2000: 1183; Bezmez, Blakney and Brown 2003: 757). In Lingua Franca for Turkish tornavida, turnavida, tornavid, turnavid (Redhouse 1987: 1254) Kahane and Tietze (1958: 440) reconstruct a Venetian form *tornavida on the basis of Turkish vida ‘screw’,9 adopted from Venetian vida ‘screw’ (also vide, Boerio [1856: 793]), attested in 1527 (Cortelazzo [2007: 1482, s.v. vida 2]). The Kahanes compared the Turkish compound with Catalan tornavis, Provençal tournovis, French tournevis (18th c.) and Piedmontese (Novara province) tornavís. I can add Campidanese Sardinian turnavia ‘cacciavite’ (Casciu [1999] 2006: 440) and, more interesting, Maltese tornavit (also turnavit) ‘screwdriver’, a local form made up of Italian torna ‘turn’ + vite ‘screw’ according to Aquilina (1990, 2: 1497). For ‘screwdriver’ Italian has cacciavite, made up of caccia ‘expel, send away’ and vite ‘screw’, cf. Venetian cazzavìde (Boerio 1856: 156), or, less frequently, giravite from gira ‘turn’. However, in the 18th century Italian tornavite was used in technical handbooks, e.g. Torna vite in Griselini (1759: 55), published in Italian in Venice, and tornavite glossed ‘chiavetta da aprire e serrar le viti [small key to open and close the screws]’ in Dandolo (1796, 2: 197), a chemistry handbook translated from French into Italian in Venice. Thus, I believe that French tournevis, attested already in 1676 according to Dauzat, Dubois and Mitterand ([1964] 1993: 773), is the starting point for the diffusion of the compound word thanks to the high level technology of France in the 18th century. If the Italian translation tornavite circulated in Venice in the second half of the eighteenth century, as it was, it is a logical consequence that a Venetian form *tornavida (Venetian vida = Italian vite ‘screw’) could also be used in some workshops in Venice, but also in Istanbul.10 In an unpublished paper of mine, written in 2007, I too reconstructed two Italo-Romance words I considered the source of Turkish pónza ‘pumice’ and várdul ‘welt’.
9 Cf. also Turkish vida tarağı ‘screw chaser’ (Hony 1976: 346, s.v. tarak), literally ‘screw (vida) ‒ comb (tarak)’. The correct etymology of Turkish vida ‘Schraube’ is already in Meyer (1893: 49). 10 Cf. also Kurdish (Kurmanji) tornawîde ‘screwdriver’ (Rizgar 1993: 341), from Italian via Turkish (Manzelli 2008: 315 and 320).
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I hypothesized a Venetian form *ponza [ˈponza] ‘pumice stone’ in order to explain Turkish pónza ‘pounce, pumice; rotten-stone’ (Hony 1976: 290). Actually, Venetian has pómega ‘pomice o pietra pomice’ (Boerio 1856: 519), but since pumice has a spongy texture (indeed in Turkish pumice is also called sünger taşı ‘stone of sponge’) it is not implausible to regard it as a blend between Venetian pómega and spónza [ˈsponza] ‘spugna’ (Boerio 1856: 69]),11 which is the origin of Turkish uskúnca ‘the sponge of a cannon’ (Kahane and Tietze 1958: 414). What is a curious fact is that the Italo-Romance form closer to Turkish pónza (I observed in 2007) is Bolognese påmmśa ‘pomice’ (Vitali and Lepri 1999: 420), i.e. [ˈpɒmːza] ‘pumice’. But Luciano Rocchi preceded me in hypothesizing a Northern Italian borrowing: “L’accatto turco può dipendere da una forma dialettale proveniente dall’Alta Italia, cf. p. es. ferr[arese] pòmsa” (Rocchi 2013: 912). In fact Ferrarese12 has pómśa ‘pomice’ (Vincenzi, Ridolfi and Guidetti Bacilieri 2007: 74), i.e. [ˈpomza] ‘pumice’. However, from a semantic viewpoint, of special interest is a Sicilian hapax, namely sponcza petra = Latin Pumex, cis [‘pumice’], beside sponcza non perta [recte: petra ‘stone’] = Latin spongia, e [‘sponge’]: this term was recorded by Lucio Cristofaro Scobar (original Spanish name: Lucio Cristóbal Escobar, 1460–1525), in his Sicilian-Latin version of Elio Antonio de Nebrija’s Castilian-Latin dictionary (Scobar 1519: 98v). With regard to Scobar’s entry (Sicilian sponcza ‘pumice’) Vàrvaro (2014, 2: 1003) was puzzled. I reconstructed Venetian *vàrdolo to account for Turkish vardúla and vardolos ‘welt of a shoe’ (Hony 1976: 384), even though Boerio (1856: 320) has Venetian guàrdolo ‘guardione’, which is identical to Italian guàrdolo. Since welt is a strip of leather put in between the outer sole and the inner sole and upper to reinforce the edges of a shoe, it is logical to think about the Turkish compound words of Venetian origin with varda- “a nautical prefix with the meaning ‘device to protect, or to protect against, the thing expressed in the following element” (the compounds are listed in Kahane and Tietze 1958: 452–457, see Tomasin 2006: 87). Turkish vardolos is clearly a Greek adaptation but Modern Greek has bárdoulo [ˈvarðulɔ] in Babiniotis ([1998] 2002: 346). Babiniotis preceded me in supposing the existence of a Venetian word *vardolo from vardar = Italian guardare (‘to watch’).13 But to settle things once and for all, now we have the precious dictionary of the sixteenth century Venetian language by Manlio Cortelazzo: Venetian
11 Cf. Venetian spongia in 1543, sponge e pomice in 1547, sponza in 1550 (Cortelazzo 2007: 1301). 12 Ferrara is a town in the Emilia‒Romagna region, situated near the Adriatic Sea, 50 km from Bologna, the regional capital. During the 13th‒16th centuries Ferrara hosted the Este dynasty which governed a small but very prestigious duchy, rival of Venice on the Po River border. 13 Babiniotis’ brilliant etymology is not taken into account in his etymological dictionary of Modern Greek (Babiniotis 2010) where that word is missing.
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vàrdolo “‘guardolo’, rinforzo di cuoio fra la suola e la tomaia della calzatura” [‘welt’, leather reinforcement between the sole and the shoe upper] is attested in 1547 (Cortelazzo 2007: 1541).
7 Italian Levantines: their identity and language If we consider other etymological critical points, the main problem is the relationship between Italian (Venetian, Genoese) and Greek. This issue was already envisaged by the Kahanes (Kahane and Tietze 1958: 15–16), but it is still a critical side of the matter. On the one hand we know that Venetians exploited a great quantity of Greek manpower on their fleet and in their ports, on the other hand the sociolinguistic situation of the multilingual Ottoman Empire was exceedingly complex as far as the linguistic repertoire is concerned. We also know, for instance, that the Italian residents in the Ottoman Empire (the Levantines or Italo-Levantines) married Greek women very frequently (at least in the 19th century)14 and their children talked Greek but (later, and not always) studied Italian at school in Turkey. Bilingualism or, better, multilingualism (Italian/ Venetian/Genoese, Greek, French and Turkish) was widespread even at a low social level, at least in Istanbul and in some big towns such as Smyrna (İzmir). Edmondo De Amicis,15 who visited Istanbul in 1875, in his travel book Costantinopoli, translated into Turkish as İstanbul (1974), describes quite ironically the linguistic mixture (called by him lingua franca) and the frequent code-switching utilized by Italian Levantines in everyday occasions (see De Amicis [1877–1878] 2007: 78). Nevertheless, the Italian community in Turkey has preserved its ethnic identity for centuries up to the present day when it is rapidly dissolving. The Italian Levantines’ sense of identity and national self-perception is dealt with in detail by Pannuti (2008), in his valuable 679-page printed PhD dissertation published in Istanbul.16 Eventually, the lingua franca term used by De Amicis – in a sense different from both Hugo Schuchardt’s and Kahanes’ meaning – cannot be considered appropriate for the kind of language spoken by Italian 14 “[F]or unclear reasons, the most frequent lower class interbreeding was with Greeks, and only concerned Orthodox brides, not husbands.” (Pannuti 2009: 153). 15 Edmondo De Amicis (1846–1908) was a novelist and journalist. His best-known book is Cuore (1886), a children’s novel translated into English as Cuore (Heart): An Italian Schoolboy’s Journal in 1887, and into Turkish as Çocuk kalbi (Child heart), published in Turkey 15 times between 1980 and 2013. 16 See also the book edited by De Gasperis and Ferrazza (2007), a 447-page volume collecting papers written by both Italian (including Pannuti) and Turkish authors.
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Levantines and it is more advisable to use the transparent definition of italiano levantino (Levant Italian), as proposed by Bruni (1999).
8 Conclusions According to Sezgin (1999: 502), on the subject of the western loanwords in Ottoman Turkish, the percentage of Italian borrowings is 22%, less than Greek (45%), but more than French (16%), Armenian (8%) and English (4%) loanwords. As for my data regarding Italian borrowings in modern Turkish the percentage of distribution in different semantic domains is as follows: the 49% are nautical terms (mainly from Venetian, as recorded by Kahane and Tietze [1958]), the 10% are musical terms, the 9% of loanwords belong to the economical area (commerce, finance, economy), the 6% concern clothing, the 5% regard cooking (7%, if we take into account also some botanical terms), the 5% involve parlour games and gambling, the 3% are medical terms and the 2–3% belong to the military terminology. Other semantic fields concern art, painting, architecture, law, politics, mechanics, printing, press, comics, mail, tobacco, geography, place names, personal names, signboards and trademarks.17 As for the periodization of Italian borrowings in Turkish the golden age was the time span between the 15th and the 17th centuries. A new wave of Italian loanwords arrived during the period of reformation (Tanzimât), between 1839 and 1876, and afterwards up to the Italo-Turkish war of 1911–1912 in Libya. In more recent times typical well known Italianisms in the semantic domain of gastronomy have reached also Turkish. Serianni (2011: 230) mentions pizza, spaghetti and cappuccino as the more frequently incorporated Italian loanwords in a sample of 66 languages of the world, but also tiramisù, pesto and carpaccio have had a remarkable success. As for Turkish pizza and spagetti these terms are already present in Bezmez, Blakney, and Brown (2003: 612 and 681), kapuçino appears in Güncel Türkçe Sözlük, glossed ‘kremalı, sütlü Italyan kahvesi [Italian coffee with cream and milk]’ (also krema in krema-lı ‘cream-filled’ is Italian!). Turkish tiramisu ‘a coffee-flavoured Italian dessert’ and pesto ‘a kind of Genoese sauce’ appear in Vikipedi (httpsː//tr.wikipedia.org), the Turkish Wikipedia, karpaçyo ‘a dish of raw meat or fish invented by Giuseppe Cipriani in 1963’ can be found, e.g., in two Turkish websites, Lezzetler.com (cf. Turkish lezzet ‘taste, flavour’) and
17 In 2007 a new Turkish trademark appeared in fashion advertisments: Arancia, name of a firm producing scarves (actually: hijabs!), scented with orange flavour, undoubtly from Italian arancia ‘orange’ (see Arancia Eşarp in the Webliography)
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Yemek.com (cf. Turkish yemek ‘food’), the latter being rich in explanations as regards the orthography and right pronunciation of many Italian borrowings which can be still considered, at least partially, foreign words and not adapted, integrated loanwords.
References Alkım, U. Bahadır, Nazime Antel, Robert Avery, Janos Eckmann, Sofi Huri, Fahir İz, Mecdut Mansuroğlu & Andreas Tietze. 2000 [1968]. Redhouse türkçe / osmanlıca ‒ ingilizce sözlük. Redhouse Turkish / Ottoman-English Dictionary. 18th edn. İstanbul: SEV Matbaacılık ve Yayıncılık. Aquilina, Joseph. 1990. Maltese ‒ English Dictionary, 2nd vol., M–Z and Addenda. Malta: Midsea Books. Babiniotis, Georgios D. [Mpampiniṓtēs, Geṓrgios D.]. 2002 [1998]. Leksikó tēs Néas Ellēnikḗs glṓssas me skhólia gia tē sṓstē khrḗsē tōn lékseōn [A dictionary of the Modern Greek language with explanations of the correct usage of words]. 2nd edn. Athḗna, Kéntro Leksikologías. Babiniotis, Georgios D. [Mpampiniṓtēs, Geṓrgios D.] 2010 [2009]. Etumologikó Leksikó tēs Néas Ellēnikḗs Glṓssas. Istōría tōn lékseōn me skhólia kai énthetous pínakes [An etymological dictionary of the Modern Greek language. History of words with explanations and nested tables], 2nd reprint. Athḗna: Kéntro Leksikologías. Banfi, Emanuele. 2014. Lingue d’Italia fuori d’Italia. Europa, Mediterraneo e Levante dal Medioevo all’età moderna. Bologna: il Mulino. Banfi, Emanuele & Gabriele Iannàccaro (eds.). 2006. Lo spazio linguistico italiano e le “lingue esotiche”. Rapporti e reciproci influssi. Atti del XXXIX Congresso Internazionale di Studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana (SLI) (Milano, 22–24 settembre 2005). Roma: Bulzoni. Barbera, D. Giuseppe. 1940. Elementi italo-siculo-veneziano-genovesi nei linguaggi arabo e turco, con una prefazione storico-filologica. Beyrouth (Liban): Imprimerie Catholique. Battaglia, Salvatore. 1962. Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana, 2nd vol., Balc ‒ Cerr. Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese. Behnstedt, Peter & Manfred Woidich. 2012. Wortatlas der arabischen Dialekte. 2nd vol. Materielle Kultur. Leiden ‒ Boston: Brill. Bezmez, Serap, Richard Blakney & C. H. Brown ([1994] 2003). Redhouse büyük elsözlüğü. İngilizce‒Türkçe, Türkçe‒İngilizce. The Larger Redhouse Portable Dictionary. English‒Turkish, Turkish‒English. 18th edn. İstanbul: SEV Matbaacılık ve Yayıncılık Eğitim Ticaret. Boerio, Giuseppe. 1856. Dizionario del dialetto veneziano, 2nd edn. Venezia: Premiata Tipografia di Giovanni Cecchini Edit. Bonelli, Luigi. 1894. Elementi italiani nel turco ed elementi turchi nell’italiano. L’Oriente 1. 178‒ 196. Bozarslan, Hamit. 2013. Histoire de la Turquie. De l’empire à nos jours. Paris: Tallandier. Bruni, Francesco. 1999. Lingua d’oltremare. Sulle tracce del ‘Levant Italian’ in età preunitaria. Lingua Nostra 60. 65–79. Bruni, Francesco. 2013. L’italiano fuori d’Italia. Firenze: Franco Cesati Editore.
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Casciu, Giovanni. 2006 [1999]. Vocabulariu sardu campidanesu‒italianu, prefazione di Antonio Romagnino. Cagliari: Edizioni Grafica del Parteolla. Castagneto, Marina & Rosita D’Amora. 2006. Contatti linguistici e culturali tra l’italiano ed il turco: la storia continua? In Emanuele Banfi & Gabriele Iannàccaro (eds.). 2006. Lo spazio linguistico italiano e le “lingue esotiche”. Rapporti e reciproci influssi. Atti del XXXIX Congresso Internazionale di Studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana (SLI) (Milano, 22– 24 settembre 2005), 27–48. Roma: Bulzoni. Christ, Georg, Franz‒Julius Morche, Robert Zaugg, Wolfgang Kaiser, Stefan Burkhadt & Alexander D. Beihammer (eds.). 2015. Union in Separation. Diasporic Groups and Identities in the Eastern Mediterranean (1100‒1800). Roma: Viella Libreria Editrice. Cortelazzo, Manlio. 2007. Dizionario veneziano della lingua e della cultura popolare del XVI secolo. Limena, Padova: La Linea Editrice. Dandolo, Vincenzo (transl. & ed.). 1796. Trattato elementare di chimica presentato in un ordine nuovo dietro le scoperte moderne con figure del Sig. Lavoiser [. . .]. 2nd vol., 3rd edn. Venezia: Dalla Tipografia Pepoliana: presso Antonio Curti q. Giacomo. Dauzat, Albert, Jean Dubois & Henri Mitterand. 1993 [1964]. Dictionnaire étymologique et historique du français. Paris: Larousse. De Amicis, Edmondo. 2007 [1877–1878]. Costantinopoli. Introduzione di Umberto Eco. A cura di Luca Scarlini. Torino: Einaudi. De Gasperis, Attilio & Roberta Ferrazza (eds.). 2007. Gli italiani di Istanbul. Figure, comunità e istituzioni dalle riforme alla repubblica 1839–1923. Prefazione di Ferzan Özpetek. Torino: Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli. Dinçoğlu, Onur. 2003. Türkçe’de yabancı terimler sözlüğü [Dictionary of foreign terms in Turkish]. İstanbul: İnkilâp. Eren, Hasan. 1999. Türk Dilinin Etimolojik Sözlüğü [An etymological dictionary of the Turkish language]. Ankara: Bizim Büro Basım Evi. Griselini, Francesco. 1759. Dizionario delle arti e de’ mestieri, 5th vol. Cer-Dra. in Venezia: Appresso Modesto Fenzo. Güzel, Hasan Celâl, Kemal Çiçek & Salim Koca (eds.). 2002. Türkler [The Turks]. 21 vols. Ankara: Yeni Türkiye Yayınları. Hony, H.C. 1976 [1957]. A Turkish-English Dictionary, with the advice of Fahir İz. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Johanson, Lars & Éva Á. Csató (eds.). 1998. The Turkic Languages. London & New York: Routledge. Kahane, Henry, Renée Kahane & Andreas Tietze. 1958. The Lingua Franca in the Levant. Turkish Nautical Terms of Italian and Greek Origin. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kerestedjian, Bedros. 1971 [1912], Matériaux pour un dictionnaire étymologique de la langue turque contenant l’étymologie des mots de la langue turque ottomane et orientale [. . .]. Amsterdam: Philo Press (original edn. Londres: Son Neveu Haig). Manzelli, Gianguido. 2008. Gli italianismi di mediazione turca nel curdo della Turchia e dell’Iraq. In Romano Lazzeroni, Emanuele Banfi, Giuliano Bernini, Marina Chini & Giovanna Marotta (eds.). Diachronica et Synchronica. Studi in onore di Anna Giacalone Ramat, 301‒326. Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Meyer, Gustav. 1893. Türkische Studien I. Die griechische und romanischen Bestandtheile im Wortschatze des Osmanisch-Türkischen. Wien: In Commission bei F. Tempsky Buchhändler der Kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften.
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Minervini, Laura. 2006. L’italiano nell’Impero Ottomano. In Emanuele Banfi & Gabriele Iannàccaro (eds). 2006. Lo spazio linguistico italiano e le “lingue esotiche”. Rapporti e reciproci influssi. Atti del XXXIX Congresso Internazionale di Studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana (SLI) (Milano, 22–24 settembre 2005), 49–66. Roma: Bulzoni. Ortega, Stephen. 2014. Negotiating Transcultural Relations in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Ottoman-Venetian Encounters. Burlington, VT, USA: Ashgate. Öztuna, Yılmaz. 2015. Kısa Osmanlı Tarihi [A short Ottoman history]. İstanbul: Derin Tarih Kültür Yayınları. Pannuti, Alessandro. 2008. Les italiens d’Istanbul au XXe siècle: entre préservation identitaire et affacement. Istanbul: Isis. Pannuti, Alessandro. 2009. Istanbul Italian Levantines among the other non-Muslims: A community’s fortune and dissolution despite identity preservation. ISIG Journal 18 (3–4). 141–156. Pedani, Maria Pia. 2015. Note di storiografia sull’Impero Ottomano. Mediterraneo‒ricerche storiche 34. 445–458. Püsküllüoğlu, Ali. 2004 [1997]. Türkçedeki yabancı sözcükler sözlüğü [Dictionary of foreign words in Turkish]. 5th edn. Ankara: Arkadaş. Redhouse, Sir James W. 1987 [1890]. A Turkish and English Lexicon. Shewing in English the signification of the Turkish terms. Beirut: Librairie du Liban (original edn. Costantinople: Printed for the American Mission by A. H. Boyajian). Rizgar, Baran. 1993. Kurdish-English, English-Kurdish (Kurmancî) Dictionary, Ferheng KurdîÎngîlîzî, Îngîlîzî-Kurdî. Illustrated by Nevin Yavuz. London: M.F. Onen. Rocchi, Luciano. 2013. Gli italianismi nei testi turchi in trascrizione. Un’indagine storicolessicografica. Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 129 (4). 888–931. Scobar, L. Chriſtophorus. 1519. Uocabularium Nebriſſenſe Ex Sicilienſi ſermone In Latinũ [. . .] traductum. Venetiis: Impreſſum per Bernardinũ Benalium, Expenſis Domini Dñici de Neſi Florẽtini, & ſocioɌ. Schweickard, Wolfgang. 2011. La stratificazione cronologica dei turchismi in italiano. La Lingua Italiana. Storia, Strutture, Testi 7. 9–16. Serianni, Luca. 2011. L’italiano nel mondo. In Lucilla Pizzoli (ed.). La lingua italiana negli anni dell’Unità d’Italia, 227–231. Cinisello Balsamo, Milano: Silvana Editoriale. Sezgin, Fatin. 1999. Türkçe’de batı kaynaklı kelimelerin tarih içindeki seyri [A looking inside the history of the words of western origin in Turkish]. In Güler Eren, Kemal Çiçek & Cen Oğuz (eds.). Osmanlı. 9. Kültür ve Sanat [Ottoman. 9. Culture and art], 494–503. Ankara: Yeni Türkiye Yayınları. Tagliavini, Carlo. 1940. Osservazioni sugli elementi italiani in turco. Annali. Pubblicazioni dell’Istituto Orientale di Napoli. Nuova Serie 1. 191–204. Theunissen, H. P. A. 1998. Ottoman-Venetian Diplomatics: The ‘Ahd-names. The Historical Background and the Development of a Category of Political‒Commercial Instruments together with an Annotated Edition of a Corpus of Relevant Documents. Electronic Journal of Oriental Studies 1 (2): 1–698, http://www2.let.uu.nl/solis/anpt/EJOS/EJOS-I.2.html (accessed 23 February 2007). Tietze, Andreas. 1952. Die formalen Veränderungen an neueren europäischen Lehnwörter im Türkischen. Oriens 5 (2). 230–268. Tietze, Andreas. 2002. Tarihi ve Etimolojik Türkiye Türkçesi Luğatı. Sprachgeschichtliches und etymologisches Wörterbuch des Türkei-türkischen. 1st vol., A–E. İstanbul & Wien: Simurg Kitapçılık, Yayıncılık ve Dağıtım & Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.
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Tietze, Andreas 2009. Tarihi ve Etimolojik Türkiye Türkçesi Luğatı. Sprachgeschichtliches und etymologisches Wörterbuch des Türkei-türkischen. 2nd vol., F–J. Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Tomasin, Lorenzo. 2006. Gli italianismi nelle “lingue esotiche”: problemi ricostruttivi e fonti documentarie. In Emanuele Banfi & Gabriele Iannàccaro (eds). 2006. Lo spazio linguistico italiano e le “lingue esotiche”. Rapporti e reciproci influssi. Atti del XXXIX Congresso Internazionale di Studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana (SLI) (Milano, 22–24 settembre 2005), 85–96. Roma: Bulzoni. Vardarlı, Emel & Cem Dilçin (eds.). 1993. Türkiye’den Halk Ağzından Derleme Sözlüğü [A dictionary collected from the people’s language from Turkey], 2nd edn. Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Basımevi. Vàrvaro, Alberto. 2014. Vocabolario Storico-Etimologico del Siciliano (VSES). Volume 2: N–Z. Strasbourg: Éditions de Linguistique et de Philologie & Centro di Studi Filologici e Linguistici Siciliani. Vidos, Benedek Elemér. 1961. Osservazioni metodologiche sui termini nautici turchi provenienti dall’Italia. Romanische Forschungen 73. 85–131. Vincenzi, Luigi, Alberto Ridolfi & Floriana Guidetti Bacilieri. 2007. Vocabolario Italiano‒Ferrarese. In appendice: Proverbi tipici del dialetto ferrarese per ogni mese dell’anno. Ferrara: Edizioni Cartografica. Vitali, Daniele & Luigi Lepri. 1999. Dizionario Bolognese. Italiano‒Bolognese. Bolognese‒Italiano, Milano: A. Vallardi.
Webliography Arancia Eşarp [Arancia Scarf] http://www.arancia.com.tr (accessed 15.11.2015) Büyük Türkçe Sözlük [The Larger Turkish Dictionary] http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option= com_bts (accessed many times during 2015). Electronic Journal of Oriental Studies 1 (2): 1‒698 http://www2.let.uu.nl/solis/anpt/EJOS/EJOSI.2.html (accessed 23 February 2007). Güncel Türkçe Sözlük [Today’s Turkish Dictionary] http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option= com_gts (accessed many times during 2015). Lezzetler.com http://lezzetler.com (accessed 21 November 2015). Vikipedi httpsː//tr.wikipedia.org (accessed 21 November 2015). Yemek.com http://yemek.com/yemeklerin.okunuslari/#.VmLvnnYveM8 (accessed 21 November 2015).
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11 Political Background, Pragmatics and Word Order in the Text of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti 1 Introduction1 Translation contexts are an extraordinary source for recognizing not only grammatical differences between the source language and the target language, but also differences in the pragmatic interpretation of the same facts, which ultimately respond to cultural or political differences between societies: the same facts have different relevance in different contexts. In this paper we will try to show how alterations in the order of words in a given translation process that took place in antiquity may reflect this kind of pragmatic-cultural difference. The data have been obtained from the comparison between the Latin and the Greek texts of an exceptional document, the Res Gestae Diui Augusti, considered the political testament of Emperor Augustus. This paper offers an example, within the general aim of exploring the linguistic representation of identity, of how the pragmatic organization of the information within the sentence can also be affected by the awareness of the existence of social and political differences among the addressees of the same message. The structure of this article is as follows: in Section 2, we offer a basic presentation of the text, including the most relevant data about the similarities and differences between the Latin and the Greek versions. In Section 3, the main patterns of word order in Latin and Greek are summarized. In Section 4, some cases will be considered in which divergences in word order between the Latin and the Greek texts correspond to different ways of evaluating the information, based on the cultural and political differences between the two groups of addressees of the text: the citizens of Rome, in the Latin case, and the Greekspeaking populations of some cities in the province of Cappadocia, in the Greek case. Finally, we present our conclusions in Section 5. 1 This research had the financial support of the projects 2010HXPFF2-004 (Trasferimento e applicazione di modelli sociolinguistici nella linguistica storica: identità e alterità nei testi orali e scritti), funded by the Italian Government, and FFI2013-47357-C4-1-P (Problemas de rección en griego y latín), funded by the Spanish Government. Jesús de la Villa and María Esperanza Torrego, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-011
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2 Presentation: the Res Gestae Diui Augusti and its two versions 2.1 Date and transmission of the text The text of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti is dated in the year 13 CE, that is, one year before the Emperor’s death. It is presented as a list of military and political achievements, and also contains the Augustus’ expenditures throughout his career. The original Latin version, as indicated in the first paragraph of the text, was recorded on two bronze steles at the entrance of Augustus’ mausoleum in Rome. Nevertheless, no traces of this inscription have been found in Rome. Our most complete version comes from Ankara, Turkey, ancient Ancyra, and, as a result the text has been called Monumentum Ancyranum. There, on the walls of a very well preserved temple dedicated to Augustus and to Rome, most of the Latin text and its Greek translation has been preserved. Additionally, smaller pieces of the Latin text have been found in Antioch of Pisidia, and fragments of the Greek text in Apollonia, in Cappadocia, not far away from Antioch. From the beginning there has been a long debate on the aims of both the Latin text itself and of the Greek translation.2 Apart from other political or social questions, it seems clear that, while the Latin text was directed towards Latinspeaking populations, the Greek translation was directed towards the Greek population of the interior provinces of Anatolia. Thus, it is not strange that in Rome and in Antioch, a city re-founded by Augustus as a Roman colony with the settlement of Latin-speaking veterans, Latin was the chosen language. By contrast, Apollonia was basically a Greekspeaking city; with a small Latin-speaking population, the language of the inscription was, therefore, Greek. Finally, Ancyra was the provincial capital of Galatia. Without doubt, there were important Latin- and Greek-speaking communities; in consequence, both the Latin and the Greek versions of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti were placed on one of the most prominent public buildings. As a final remark, it is interesting to note that the Greek texts from Ancyra and from Apollonia are almost identical. This means that there was an official translation of the text into Greek. It was made by a Greek-speaking translator
2 An up-to-date review of the studies on this document can be found in Cooley (2009). Wigtil (1982a and 1982b) discusses some linguistic facts of the Greek translation that reflect the particular political aims of this text.
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and, probably, has some characteristics of the Greek spoken in Asia.3 Nevertheless, given the importance of the text, we can assume that it is written in a correct Greek.4
2.2 Basic data of the comparison between the Latin and the Greek versions The Latin and Greek texts run very much in parallel: they have exactly the same division into sections and, within the sections, the sentences are divided in almost exactly the same way. In only one case does one Latin sentence become two in the Greek text.5 And in only two occasions two Latin sentences are integrated into a single Greek sentence.6 As a whole, the Latin text has 235 clauses, of which 143 are main clauses or independent clauses and 92 subordinate clauses.7 Of the 235 clauses, 146 present exactly the same order in the Latin and the Greek versions, whereas 69 clauses have some change in the order of the constituents.8 The structure of the clauses is particularly parallel at the beginning: every single period (main clause + subordinate clauses) starts in both versions by the same word, as exemplified in (1), with only two exceptions (2)–(3). (1) Curiam et continens ei Chalcidicum, templumque Apollinis . . . Βουλευτήριον καὶ τὸ πλησίον αὐτῷ Χαλκιδικόν, ναόν τε Ἀπόλλωνος (19.1) ‘The senate house and next to it the chalcidicon, and the temple of Apollo . . .’ (2) et apellatus sum uiciens et semel imperator εἰκοσάκις καὶ ἅπαξ προσηγορεύθην αὐτοκράτωρ (4.1) ‘I was hailed as victorious general twenty one times’ (3) protulique fines Illyrici ad rimpam fluminis Danuui τά τε ὅρια μέχρι Ἴστρου ποταμοῦ προήγαγον (30.1) ‘and I advanced the boundaries of Illyricum as far as the river Ister’
3 See Wigtil (1982b). 4 Wigtil (1982a: 637): “The language of the version is not excessively Latinistic and is clearly written in an attempt to attain a good Greek style”. 5 Paragraph 1.4. 6 26.5; 34.2. 7 Isolated dependent infinitives and predicative participial constructions have not been counted as clauses, but as constituents of the main clause. 8 Details in Wigtil (1982a: 639), Torrego (Forthc.), Villa (Forthc.).
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Cases like these, together with the other 67 instances where the Latin order has not been preserved in the Greek text, are the basis for the research on the syntactic or pragmatic factors that caused these divergences.
3 Pragmatics and word order in Ancient Greek and Latin Historically, many attempts have been made to determine the apparently rather obscure principles governing word order in Latin and Greek.9 These studies have identified a series of phonetic and syntactic patterns to explain the placement of some terms such as, for example, the second position in the clause for enclitics, fixed positions for conjunctions and relative connectors, etc. However, these studies were not able to explain the basic organization of the sentence in either language. In recent decades, however, various proposals based on the pragmatic approach have allowed the formulation of a general outline of word order within the sentence. In Greek, thanks to studies like those of Dik (1995, 2007), Matić (2003), Bakker (2009), Allan (2012, 2014) and others, it has been possible, on a pragmatic basis, to propose a basic word order. A simplified form of this basic scheme is set out in (4):10 (4) Theme – Settings – Topic – Focus – Verb – remainder information – Tail This is not the only scheme that has been proposed for Greek, but it is the most important one.11 9 An updated bibliography of the studies on Ancient Greek word order can be found in Dik (2007) and Scheppers (2011). For Latin see Devine and Stephens (2006), Bauer (2009), Spevak (2010, 2014). 10 A definition of these elements can be found in Dik (2007: 31–39) and Allan (2012: 7–9). The two central notions are Topic (the foundation information for constructing a message, generally with a known content) and Focus (the generally new, most salient information provided in the clause). Before the Topic we can find a Theme (a separate intonation unit which introduces the discourse topic) and Settings (circumstantial information useful to frame the content of the core of the clause). After the verb, any kind of remainder information, either known or new, can be placed, although with some preferences as for its internal order (Matic 2003, Allan 2012, 2014). Finally, at the end of the clause, there can be a Tail (an extra-clausal, separate intonation unit which completes or corrects that of the clause). 11 Matic (2003), for instance, has identified secondary templates for particular informative cases.
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In the case of Latin, a similar, although less elaborated, proposal had already been presented by Panhuis (1982). Although adopted by later researchers,12 there is no unanimous agreement that a scheme such as seen in (4) can be considered the basic template for Latin word order. Nevertheless, in both the Latin and the Greek versions of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti, it is the scheme of (4) that prevails. Example (5), among many others, presents this scheme in both texts. (5) Annos undeuiginti natus exercitum priuato consilio et priuata impensa comparaui, per quem rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam in libertatem uindicaui. Ἐτῶν δεκαεν[ν]έα ὢν τὸ στράτευμα ἐμῇ γνώμῃ καὶ ἐμοῖς ἀναλώμασιν ἡτοί [μασα], δι’ οὗ τὰ κοινὰ πράγματα [ἐκ τῆ]ς τ[ῶ]ν συνο[μoσα]μένων δουλήας [ἠλευ]θέ[ρωσα.] (1.1) ‘Aged nineteen years old, by my personal decision and at my personal expense, I mustered an army by means of which I liberated the state which had been oppressed by a despotic faction’ The pragmatic structure of the sentence is as follows: (5’) Settings (annos undeuiginti natus ‘aged nineteen years old’) – New Topic (exercitum ‘an army’) – Focus (priuato . . . impensa ‘at my personal . . . expense) – Verb (comparaui ‘I mustered’) – Remainder information (per quem . . . uindicaui ‘by means of which . . . faction’). However, as has been said, there are 69 phrases where the word order of the Latin and the Greek texts do not match. These cases form the basis of comparative research to discover differences between the systems of word order of Greek and Latin. We do not intend here to make a complete inventory of these differences.13 There are cases, which can be attributed to syntactic factors and others, which probably reflect differences in the pragmatic template for word order between the two languages. Here, we will discuss some cases where the divergence between the Latin and the Greek texts of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti can be attributed to a different pragmatic analysis of the same reality.
12 E.g. Devine & Stephens (2006), Spevak (2010, 2014). 13 Cf. Villa (2015).
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4 Different interpretations of the pragmatic relevance of facts How the Greek translation of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti introduces changes to adapt the political message of the text has already been studied.14 It is known how the Greek version reflected a world with different perceptions of power and of the status of the ruled population. The Greek translator tried to transmit as much as possible of the information, but was aware of the social and political particularities of the Greek-speaking addressees to whom the message was directed in its new form. In other words, the translator identified differences in the identities of the potential recipients of the message of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti15 and, in consequence, adapted certain linguistic aspects of his translation to make the message contained in the text more comprehensible and more relevant. This effort is reflected, in particular, in lexical aspects,16 but also in the organization of the information. Some changes in the word order of the Greek translation have been studied from this point of view.17 However, no theoretical explanation has been offered to justify the changes. Additionally, we think that the phenomenon is much more extensive within this text than what has been proposed in earlier studies. In consequence, we want to explore new cases of divergences in word order between the Latin and the Greek texts, which, in our view, also reflect differences in the political message of the Greek text with respect to the Latin version. Second, we want to show that these differences can be explained on a theoretical basis, by means of modifying the way that the pragmatic notions of Topic and Focus are assigned within the clause. One of the clearest cases is example (6). (6) aram [Fortunae] Red[ucis a]nte aedes Honoris et Virtutis ad portam Cap[enam pro] red[itu meo] senatus consacrauit βωμὸν Τύχης Σωτηρίου ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐμῆς ἐπανόδου πρὸς τῇ Καπήνῃ πύλῃ ἡ σύνκλητος ἀφιέρωσεν (11) ‘The senate consecrated an altar of Fortune the Saviour near the Capena Gate on account of my return’
14 Cf. Vanotti (1975), Wigtil (1982a). 15 In the sense discussed by Benedetti et al. (this volume). 16 E.g. Vanotti (1997). 17 Wigtil (1982a: 634–636) studies instances in the paragraphs 10, 12 and 34 of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti.
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In the Latin text, all the information in Aram Fortunae . . . ad portam Capenam ‘the altar of Fortune . . . near the Capena Gate’ can be considered the New Topic. Its regular position is, then, the first position in the sentence. Next come the two reports which are the Focus and indicate, respectively, the reason for the honor received (pro meo reditu ‘on account of my return’) and who ordered that honor (senatus ‘Senate’). The Greek text diverges from the Latin version, first, in eliminating the reference to the temple of Honor and Virtue and, second, in changing the position of the reference to the place where the altar of Fortuna Redux was, πρὸς τῇ Καπήνῃ πύλῃ ‘near the Capena Gate’. Both changes seem to have the same cause: for people who did not know the geography of Rome well, these references were not very important. The interesting thing for the second change is that the translator situated the mention of the Porta Capena between the two focal new data, the altar and the Senate, and, therefore, it can be considered that the translator has also considered it as part of the new information offered in the sentence. In fact, for an inhabitant of Rome, the location of the altar was known; the information of its placement is only mentioned as a way to identify the monument more easily, or, perhaps, also with the intention of mentioning the politically relevant place where the altar was placed.18 In contrast, for an inhabitant of the distant Greek-speaking provinces of Cappadocia, with all probability, the location of the monument and the significance of the place were unknown. Therefore, among the new or focal information in a prominent preverbal position, a simplified indication of the place where that altar was erected is included. A second case is example (7): (7) me pro praetore simul cum consulibus pro[uidere iussit] ἐμοὶ με[τὰ] τῶ[ν] ὑ[π]άτων προνοεῖν ἐπέτρεψεν ἀντὶ στρατηγοῦ ὄντ[ι] (1.3) ‘The Senate entrusted to me as propraetor together with the consuls the task of taking precautions’ In this sentence, the Latin version presents, after topical me ‘to me’, two important data: the condition under which Augustus received the commitment of the Senate, which is the elliptical subject of the sentence, and the extraordinary fact that such a request was made on an equal level with respect to the consuls, usually considered the highest state magistrates. The two reports are relevant, therefore, for people who knew the system of magistrates and other offices in Rome. By contrast, in the case of the Greek text, the main focal position is occupied by the reference to the consuls. The fact that Augustus was charged 18 See Cooley (2009: 151–152).
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with achieving an important commitment together with the consuls was certainly extraordinary and could also be interpreted as such by people who did not know the Rome political administration in great detail. In contrast, the conditions under which such a request was made, naming Augustus propraetor, were probably secondary in this context and, therefore, moved to the post-verbal position. A third instance is (8): (8) tum iterum consulari cum imperio lustrum solus feci Caio Censorino et Caio Asinio consulibus εἶτα δεύτερον ὑπατικῇ ἐξουσίᾳ μόνος Γαίῳ Κηνσορίνῳ καὶ Γαίῳ Ἀσινίῳ ὑπάτοις τὴν ἀποτείμησιν ἔλαβον (8.3) ‘Then for a second time with consular power on my own, in the consulship of Gaius Censorinus and Gaius Asinius, I conducted the census’ Probably the example (8) may receive a similar explanation to that of (7). In the case of the Latin text, after the Settings (tum iterum consulari cum imperio ‘Then for a second time with consular power’), the new Topic (lustrum ‘the census’) is introduced and immediately afterwards, in the position of Focus, some important information, that he acted alone (solus ‘on my own’), despite the existence of two chosen consuls, whose names are given in a secondary position, after the verb. Of course the most relevant information was that he acted alone, because it was something extraordinary in Rome.19 The particular names of the consuls were secondary or irrelevant in this context. By contrast, for the inhabitants of the Greek East, the particularities of the government of Rome were probably less known or less relevant. The fact that he acted alone and the mention of the two consuls receive the same value. In all probability, the authority of Augustus to act as sole leader was seen as natural. One might even think that this information is presented at the beginning of the clause as a part of the Settings. Thus, the only new information is the reference to the census, which, as expected, appears in the immediate pre-verbal position.20
19 Cf. Cooley (2009: 142). 20 In this example, as in the rest of the text, the grammatical difference between Latin and Greek concerning the use of the article in the Greek language (lustrum / τὴν ἀποτείμησιν) does not seem to play any role in the maintenance or change of the Latin word order in the Greek text.
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Another case is (9): (9) [uen]ation[es] best[ia]rum Africanarum meo nomine aut filio[ru]m meorum et nepotum in ci[r]co aut in foro aut in amphitheatris popul[o d]edi sexiens et uiciens θηρομαχίας τῷ δήμῳ τῶν ἐκ Λυβύης θηρίων ἐμῷ ὀνόματι ἢ υἱῶν ἢ υἱωνῶν ἐν τῷ ἱπποδρόμῳ ἢ ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ ἢ ἐν τοῖς ἀμφιθεάτροις ἔδωκα ἑξάκις καὶ εἰκοσάκις (22.3) ‘I gave beast hunts to the people of wild animals from Africa in my name or that of my sons and grandsons in the racecourse or in the forum or in the amphitheatre twenty-six times’ In this sentence, the Latin text begins with what appears to be a new Topic (uenationes bestiarum Africanarum ‘hunts of wild animals from Africa’). This is followed by two new reports: he acted in his own name and the kind of places where the shows were offered. Then, in the most significant position of the Focus, the recipient of such expenses, the Roman people, is mentioned. Certainly, it was very important for Augustus that the people of Rome, the direct addressees of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti, appear as the recipient of their expenses. After the verb, additional information is added: how often he organized that kind of spectacle. The order of the constituents of the sentence thus presents a gradation, probably well calibrated, among all the information given: first, how he acted; most important, for whom he acted; finally, and with less emphasis, how often he acted. In the Greek text the order of constituents is different, and it is surprising that the reference to the people (τῷ δήμῳ) becomes subsumed within the new Topic. Clearly, this reference was not as important from the point of view of the Greek translator as it was in the original text. Probably, once more, we can understand that for a citizen or resident in the cities of the East, accustomed to autocratic governments, it had no great importance if the games were organized for the people or for any other recipient, since the people did not have a very relevant political role. Hence, no special importance is given to this information. As such, it remains, as most important new information, the reference of the persons on whose behalf he acted, himself or his beloved relatives, and the list of the varied places where he organized the games. The frequency is presented, as in the Latin version, in post-verbal position. A final case of divergence in the pragmatic evaluation of the facts, very interesting and more complex than the previous one, is that of example (10).
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(10) [Ianum] Quirin[um, quem] clasussum ess[e maiores nostri uolue]runt, cum [p]er totum i[mperium po]puli Roma[ni terra marique es]set parta uictoriis pax, cum, pr[iusquam] nascerer, [a condita] u[rb]e bis omnino clausum [f] uisse prodatur m[emori]ae, ter me princi[pe senat]us claudendum esse censui[t] Πύλην Ἐνυάλιον, ἣν κεκλῖσθαι οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν ἠθέλησαν εἰρηνευομένης τῆς ὑπὸ Ῥωμαίοις πάσης γῆς τε καὶ θαλάσσης, πρὸ μὲν ἐμοῦ, ἐξ οὗ ἡ πόλις ἐκτίσθη, τῷ πάντὶ αἰῶνι δὶς μόνον κεκλεῖσθαι ὁμολεγεῖται, ἐπὶ δὲ ἐμοῦ ἡγεμόνος τρὶς ἡ σύνκλητος ἐψηφίσατο κλεισθῆναι. (13) ‘Janus Quirinus, which our ancestors wanted to be closed when peace had been achieved by victories on land and sea throughout the whole empire of the Roman people, whereas, before I was born, it is recorded as having been closed twice in all from the foundation of the city, the senate decreed it should be closed three times when I was leader.’ This paragraph is very relevant in political and ideological terms,21 and complex in its construction.22 It is notable, for example, and does not seem a mere coincidence, that the word pax ‘peace’ is in the center of the whole period, preceded by nineteen words and followed exactly by nineteen others. The Pax Augusta is the crucial notion of this point and Augustus wanted to present it as one of his most relevant achievements.23 The structure of the information is presented as follows: new Topic (Ianum Quirinum ‘Janus Quirinus’) – Settings (quem claussum . . . prodatur memoriae ‘which our ancestors . . . it is recorded’) – Focus (ter me principe Senatus claudendum esse ‘the senate . . . it should be closed three times when I was leader’) – Verb (censuit ‘decreed’) All the information on Focus is relevant, and some of it is in clear contrast with the preceding clause: ter ‘three times’ is in sharp contraposition to the previous bis ‘twice’; me principe ‘when I was leader’ clearly contrasts with priusquam nascerer ‘before I was born’. Finally, the indication that everything was done by decision of the Senate is important: Augustus, throughout the text of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti, strives to indicate how everything he did was done within the law and in the republican tradition. The Greek text shows some interesting differences from the Latin version. First, it appears that the Greek translator did not grasp the singular importance
21 See Cooley (2009: 157–160). 22 Cf. Torrego (2016). 23 Cf. Rich (2003).
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of the word pax [peace]; in fact all the phrase cum [p]er totum [i]mperium po]puli Roma[ni . . . pax ‘when peace . . . the empire of the Roman people’ is rendered almost word by word in the Greek translation, but the extraordinarily relevant placement of the notion of “peace” has disappeared. This change can be understood, perhaps, from a different assessment of the notion of Pax Augusta in Rome and in the eastern provinces. The concept of pax, unlike a temporary truce, was of capital importance in Rome and was associated with the traditional and almost sacred liturgy of the closing of the doors of the temple of Janus Quirinus. However, it is quite possible that it had less relevance in the Hellenistic East. In any case, the translator was unable to grasp its importance in this text. A second interesting change occurs at the end of the period: there is an inversion of the terms ter me principe / ἐπὶ δὲ ἐμοῦ ἡγεμόνος τρὶς ‘three times when I was leader’. To try to understand why this change occurs it is important, first, to analyze the entire final part of the Latin period. It is composed of two parts: a subordinate clause introduced by cum and a main clause largely built in parallel to the subordinate. The subordinate clause can be analyzed internally as follows: Settings (pr[iusquam] nascerer, [a Condit]a u[rb]e ‘before I was born from the foundations of the city’) / Focus (bis omnino clausum b[ f ]uisse ‘having been closed twice in all’) / Verbal phrase (prodatur memoriae ‘it is recorded’). The internal constitution of the main clause (ter me principe senatus claudendum esse censuit ‘the senate decreed it should be closed three times when I was leader’) is composed of the same elements as the previous subordinate, but organized in a different way. Among the three elements that have a focal character, the reference to the Senate, a concrete authority, offers a strong contrast with the vague reference to the memory, recorded in the subordinate clause. The reference to the Senate is clearly in the typically focal position, immediately before the verb. What is interesting in the comparison between the precedent subordinate clause and the main clause is the fact, already mentioned, that there is a variatio in the order of the other two constituents of the Focus: in the subordinate clause, we have priusquam nascerer bis ‘before I was born twice’, in the main clause ter me principe ‘three times when I was leader’; in other words, temporal reference + frequency in the subordinate versus frequency + temporal reference in the main clause. Might this variatio have any meaning? In our view, yes: while in the subordinate clause the temporal reference can be considered Settings, in the main clause me principe ‘when I was leader’, located between the two focal elements ter ‘three times’ and senatus ‘Senate’ also acquires a focal character. The reason for this change, if our argument is accepted, is that, in the main clause, Augustus did not only want to highlight a time reference, as in the previous priusquam nascerer ‘before I was born’, but his personal responsibility
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in the fact that Rome could finally close the doors of the temple of Janus. Moreover, it is not of minor importance that the title he assumes for this responsibility is that of princeps, very much charged with political and ideological connotations.24 The information recorded by me principe ‘when I was leader’, therefore is very relevant in this context and, as a consequence, receives the consideration of Focus and is located in a focal position and not at the beginning of the sentence, as if it were merely circumstantial information. In sum, once again, thanks to word order, the political message that Augustus wanted to convey is highlighted. So much for the Latin text, but the Greek text changes this organization. The Greek translator has been able to capture the contrast between time and frequency elements, but has not given them the same importance as in the Latin text. What he did was to reinforce the parallel between the subordinate and the main phrases. First, he undoes the subordination and makes the two clauses coordinate ones by means of a μέν . . . δέ . . . contraposition. Moreover, the contrast is established precisely through the temporal references of both phrases. πρὸ μὲν ἐμοῦ . . . ἐπὶ ἐμοῦ δὲ ἡγεμόνος ‘before me . . . when I was leader’. This means that he places the temporal expression of the second clause in the first position of it. Thus the text is beautifully balanced, but the political force of the focused me principe is lost. It is not evident that there is any ideological issue behind this change in the pragmatic analysis of this element. However, it cannot be excluded that the notion of princeps, historically innovative in Rome, at least with the content and powers assumed by Augustus, did not have the same importance in distant lands where the monarch was unquestionably the central figure of the political initiative. Actually, the title of ἡγεμών ‘leader’ was not charged with such a precise and transcendental meaning in the Roman East.25 Perhaps the fact that Augustus acted as a “leader” was not so new and relevant for people used to having autocratic monarchs as their rulers. The consequence is that the Greek translator assigned to ἐπὶ ἐμοῦ δὲ ἡγεμόνος ‘when I was leader’ the simple character of a setting. Summarizing, we have seen five cases where the disparities in word order between the Latin and Greek versions of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti can be rooted in the cultural and political differences of the diverse addressees to whom each version was directed. Several of the references in the Latin text were either unknown to or of a different importance for the Greek-speaking populations of the Eastern Roman provinces. Thus, it can be proved once more that the linguistic comparison between the two versions of the Res Gestae Diui 24 Cf. Cooley (2009: 160–161). 25 Cf. Vanotti (1997).
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Augusti can serve as an interesting tool for reconstructing some aspects of the ideological configuration of the Augustan Principate and of the presentation of the figure of Augustus himself in the territories under the control of Rome.
5 Conclusions The discussion carried out in this study can be summarized as follows: 1) Word order patterns are rather similar in the Latin and the Greek versions of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti. There is a similar basic pattern underneath most of the clauses of both texts. 2) The two versions run very much in parallel both in the general structure of the texts and in the internal word order of each clause. Nevertheless, there are some differences in the word order in more than a quarter of the sentences. 3) Some of these divergences can be explained as the result of a different interpretation of certain elements in terms of their relevancy as information units. This divergence in the process of evaluation of information is probably associated with the cultural and political differences between the people of Rome, original addressees of the Latin text of the Res Gestae Diui Augusti, and the Greek-speaking populations of Cappadocia, to whom the Greek version was addressed. 4) The comparison of the word order of the two versions of the same text, with the Greek version representing a careful translation, offers evidence, by means of its linguistic representation in the organization of the information within certain sentences, of the fact that the translator was aware of the existence of differences among the potential addressees of the message contained in the Res Gestae Diui Augusti.
References Allan, Rutger J. 2012. Clause Intertwining and Word Order in Ancient Greek, Journal of Greek Linguistics 12. 5–28. Allan, Rutger J. 2014 Changing the Topic. Topic Position in Ancient Greek Word Order. Mnemosyne 67. 181–213. Bakker, Stephanie J. 2009. The Noun Phrase in Ancient Greek: A Functional Analysis of the Order and Articulation of NP Constituents in Herodotus. Leiden & Boston: Brill. Bauer, Brigitte L. M. 2009. Word order. In Philip Baldi & Pierluigi Cuzzolin (eds.), New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax, 241–316. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
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Benedetti, Marina, Paolo Di Giovine, Flavia Pompeo & Liana Tronci. Identity in the Repertoire: A Bottom Line. This volume. Cooley, Alison E. 2009. Res Gestae Divi Augusti. Text, Translation, and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Devine, Andrew M. & Laurence D. Stephens. 2006. Latin word order. Structured meaning & information. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dik, Helma. 1995. Word Order in Ancient Greek. A Pragmatic Account of Word Order Variation in Herodotus. Amsterdam: Gieben. Dik, Helma. 2007. Word Order in Greek Tragic Dialogue. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Matić, Dejan. 2003. Topic, Focus, and Discourse Structure. Ancient Greek Word Order. Studies in Language 27. 573–633. Panhuis, Dirk G.J. 1982. The communicative perspective in the sentence. A study of Latin word order. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. Rich Joseph W. 2003. Augustus, war and peace. In Lukas de Blois, Paul Erdkamp, Olivier Hekster, Gerda de Kleijn & Stephan Mols (eds.), The Representation and Perception of Roman Imperial Power, 329–57. Amsterdam: Gieben. Scheppers, Frank. 2011. The Colon Hypothesis. Word Order, Discourse Segmentantion and Discourse Coherence in Ancient Greek. Brussels: VUB Press. Spevak, Olga. 2010. Constituent Order in Classical Latin Prose. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Spevak, Olga. 2014. The Noun Phrase in Classical Latin Prose. Leiden & Boston: Brill. Torrego, María Esperanza. 2016. La lengua de Augusto. In Emma Falque & Jesús de la Villa (eds.), Augusto en la literatura, la historia y arte., 193–205. Madrid: Estudios Clásicos (Anejo 3. Torrego, María Esperanza. Forthc. Res Gestae Diui Augusti. Pragmatics and Word Order of the Latin Original. In Camille Denizot & Olga Spevak (eds.), Pragmatic Approaches to Latin and Ancient Greek. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Vanotti, Gabriella. 1975. Il testo Greco dell ‘Res Gestae Divi Augusti’: Appunti per una interpretazione politica. Giornale Italiano di Filologia 27. 306–325. Vanotti, Gabriella. 1997. Hegemon nel testo greco delle res gestae. Klio 79. 362–371. Villa, Jesús de la. Forthc. Pragmatics and word order in the Greek text of Res Gestae Diui Augusti. In Camille Denizot & Olga Spevak (eds.), Pragmatic Approaches to Latin and Ancient Greek. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Wigtil, David N. 1982a. The ideology of the Greek ‘Res Gestae’. Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II 30 (1). 624–638. Wigtil, David N. 1982b. The Translator of the Greek Res Gestae of Augustus. American Journal of Philology 103 (2). 189–194.
III Relations between Sociolinguistic Setting and Linguistic Data
Giovanna Marotta, Ignazio Putzu and Margherita Donati
12 Data from Ancient Languages and Sociolinguistic Analysis 1 Preliminaries on historical sociolinguistics This chapter will deal with some crucial methodological aspects that regard the relationship between the linguistic data of the languages of the past and the models of linguistic variation that have been developed for contemporary societies. This relationship is at the basis of the so-called uniformitarian paradox (Labov 1994: 21–27). As a matter of fact, the relation between data and sociolinguistic setting is not a simple one; it is a theoretical problem, which has to be studied according to each case analysed (see for example, the discussion by Consani and Cuzzolin in this volume). In particular, we shall try to summarize some lines of research that have recently been developed as regards the limits and possibilities of applying historical sociolinguistics in the Labovian sense. Nevertheless, a ‘holistic’ vision of these studies can be useful as an experimental basis for two different orders of reasons. In fact, on the one hand (at a strictly methodological level), it is possible to proceed to a preliminary, cautious evaluation of the very applicability of the sociolinguistic models to historical-linguistic data. On the other hand (at a more overtly epistemological level), it can be reasonably assumed that the uniformitarian paradox becomes more and more striking, as cultural differences increase (in time, space, social structure, systems of values which condition the different status etc.). At the same time, this paradox grows more and more evident as our knowledge of the past decreases. However, since the cognitive structures of human beings have not changed in the last millennia, we could reasonably suppose that at least some general constraints are operative in every language, whatever age is being considered. In this context, any scholar undertaking a historical socio-linguistic study has to deal with the difficulties in ‘collecting’ linguistic data and also in assessing its position along the continuum that goes from mere ‘ideographicity’ (à la Note: The present work is the result of a joint effort by the authors; however, Giovanna Marotta was the main author for paragraph 1; Margherita Donati for paragraph 2; Ignazio Putzu for paragraphs 3 and 4; the conclusion is common. Giovanna Marotta and Margherita Donati, Università di Pisa Ignazio Putzu, Università di Cagliari DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-012
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Windelband 1894) to representativeness of class (cf. Section 2). However, the most problematic aspect for historical socio-linguistic methodology is how to ascertain the connection between a specific linguistic datum and extra-linguistic variables in an implicational relationship. Most of the studies discussed here have addressed this problem, either directly or indirectly, with reference to both micro- and macro-sociolinguistic traits (see, in particular, Section 3). In general, we believe that the analysis of the data relative to different kinds of texts might help define essential sociolinguistic features, by identifying and classifying those aspects of linguistic variation which were definitely present within the repertoire of ancient languages. Like every natural language, corpusclosed languages also had different levels of synchronic variation. And variationist research applied to a dead language may be considered “the single most thriving area of linguistic inquiry” in a dead language, as Peter Kruschwitz (2015: 726) has recently claimed with reference to Latin. An essential aspect that must be immediately pointed out concerns the focus on some preliminary and still relevant theoretical and methodological questions. In particular, we shall see how all the different levels of linguistic analysis are touched by variation, from graphemics to phonology, from syntax to pragmatics, from bilingualism to code-switching. Moreover, a naive transposition of the methods used by contemporary sociolinguistics to ancient languages is obviously senseless. The fact that the analysis is indeed based on written sources is sufficient enough to prevent any strong application of modern notions and methods sic et simpliciter. Furthermore, the available data are often inadequate and not quantitatively substantial for the projection of a reliable repertoire (cf. Brixhe 1979; Mancini 2008; Mancini 2012; Consani 2014; Fedriani and Ramat 2015). The implication of such strong constraints is that our search for spoken language with all its varieties is undermined from the outset. As partly came to light hitherto, a crucial point concerns the complex relationship between spelling and pronunciation. In particular, this aspect is related to the evaluation of epigraphic data in linguistic analysis (cf. Section 2.1) and their relevance in reconstructing the phonological diasystem of a dead language. Indeed, writing inevitably filters the linguistic data which we acquire from antiquity, often by implying real limitations on our comprehension of the phoneticphonological reality of an ancient language. As Consani (2014: 118) has correctly pointed out, with reference to the Greek dialects: “the spontaneity of speech is dimmed by the process of writing, particularly in the case of official documents”. It is also worth noting that the alphabetic systems used to graphically represent some languages are not always perfectly adequate for that specific phonological system (Consani 2014), since writing systems have often been defined for one language and then adopted by different languages. For instance, the Latin
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alphabet has been the basis for the writing systems used in most of the European languages for centuries. Scholars interested in investigating the sociolinguistic dynamics of ancient languages pinpoint the relevance of non-literary texts as a primary source for the study of variation. Within this framework, inscriptions, papyri, private epistulae, ostraca, writing tablets, defixiones represent suitable materials for reconstructing the repertoire of variants (De Angelis 2016; Donati et al. forthc.; Fedriani and Ramat 2015; Marotta 2015; 2016). Moreover, all the non-literary texts mentioned make up direct linguistic evidence, as they are free from the filter of the manuscript tradition. By contrast, literary texts suffer the mediation of the copyists, thereby rendering it difficult to discriminate between competing variants. On the other hand, scholars must also be aware of the intrinsic limitations connected with the analysis of non-literary texts: In ancient societies, people who could write did in any case have some education; therefore, their grammatical competence could not have been too low. Writing is itself a cumbersome filter. Notwithstanding this constraint, non-literary texts are good candidates for reflecting the language use of speakers of the classical languages from different social classes, as Adams (2013: 18) recognizes. In particular, spellings that are not congruent with the standard (i.e. the grammatical norm as well as the literary texts) may become relevant cues for the composition of a plausible sociolinguistic picture of closed-corpus languages. In general, the frequency of graphematic alternations may be considered important: The more frequent an alternation is, the more probable it is that rather than being a mere spelling error, it is a phonological clue (Consani 2016; Cotugno 2015; De Angelis 2016; Marotta 2015, 2016; Rovai 2015b). Nevertheless, scholars must be aware that non-standard spellings may also be archaisms. The tendency to archaism and the eventual phonological interpretation of non-standard spelling are interacting dimensions that must both be considered within this methodological perspective (cf. Section 2.1). Such a methodological perspective does not obscure a further dimension, traditionally recalled in the analysis of the graphic variation occuring in ancient languages, namely, the tendency to archaism (cf. below). As this chapter shows in deeper detail as regards non-literary texts, the importance of the concept of ‘environment’ emerges in a striking way. This concept is made up of the whole set of extra-linguistic information pertaining to the context (historical, geographical, etc.) where texts come to light, and also of that information which is more strictly linked, so to speak, with metalinguistic aspects, such as the socio-pragmatic position of these texts (Clackson 2011; Mancini 2012; Consani 2016). As it is connected with our socio-historical knowledge, it refers to the repeatedly cited uniformitarian paradox.
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Keeping in mind the caveat discussed so far, a critical review of the results recently obtained within the general framework of historical sociolinguistics will be presented in the next sections of the Chapter. The first section focuses on classical languages, i.e. Latin and Greek considered in different periods of their history as well as with reference to different kinds of texts. The second section concerns the analysis of other linguistic repertoires, with further methodological remarks.
2 Classical languages Classical languages appear to be a special training ground for applying new theories and methods to closed-corpus languages. As a matter of fact, both Latin and Ancient Greek are languages that provide a large amount of data from different sources which is available for linguistic analysis. The literature of both these languages is not only highly ranked in quality and very huge in quantity, but also covers a wide time span. Therefore, looking at classical languages as true languages, and not only as repositories of literary masterpieces, seems to be more than a utopic target. Research focused on the sociolinguistic analysis of classical languages along the canonical axes of variation allows a clearer connection of sociolinguistic features with connotations of the speakers’ identity, especially in bilingual and diglossic contexts. The notion of identity thus becomes crucial, inasmuch as the social roles of oneself and of the other refer to a series of sociocultural phenomena which are conveyed above all by the linguistic interaction between individuals. In multi-lingual and multi-cultural societies, such as the Latin or Greek ones, the picture becomes multifaceted. Studies conducted in this direction have so far especially dealt with the epigraphy of Hellenistic Cyprus, as regards contact phenomena between Ptolemaic koiné and the Cypriot dialect (Consani 2016), and with the Delos epigraphs, for contact phenomena between Greek and Latin (Rovai 2015b). Dramatic texts, especially comedy, also allow the connotation of characters in terms of the relationship between identity and use of linguistic traits, which can be characterised diatopically or diaphasically or even by the switching from one language to another (Fedriani and Ghezzi 2016; Romagno 2015).
2.1 Epigraphic texts In the perspective of historical sociolinguistics, inscriptions deserve a special role, as they are a primary and direct source of data. Nevertheless, some caveats
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should be stated in this case too. Firstly, the scribes’ behaviour is variable, not only because the degree of education of the scribes was often different, but also because the checks carried out by the customer could be more or less careful. Secondly, the origin of both the scribe and the customer might have influenced the final written product; in particular, the widespread bilingualism in the ancient world could have had a variable influence on the writer’s performance. Thirdly, inscriptions belong to a special register of the language, where the trend towards archaism is very strong. Therefore, some non-standard spellings may in principle have a double interpretation: They may be considered either as archaic forms, which only survive in epigraphic texts, or as forms representing a virtual variant. For instance, words like Cornelio or dede (instead of Cornelius, dedit) might be connected with a desired preservation of archaic forms; on the other hand, they could also be spellings attesting the alternation between socially marked competing phonological variables (Donati et al. forthc.; Marotta 2015). As a matter of fact, different points of view exist on the value of inscriptions in the sociolinguistic reconstruction of classical languages. In particular, as far as Latin in particular is concerned, Herman (1978, 1985) and Gaeng (1977, 1987) have often remarked that epigraphic data are relevant in the study of variation, not only because they are the only directly usable source, but also because of their large availability. More prudently, Adams (2007, 2013) believes that the variation occurring in inscriptions may be considered as sociolinguistic only if it is corroborated by other kinds of evidence (e.g. literary sources, grammarians’ statements, etc.). In other terms, spoken language is not automatically reflected in abnormal spellings. We are aware that we have entered a labyrinth. However, in order to try to shed some light on such a complex situation, a good tool could be an interactive corpus of inscriptions, which could allow a fine-grained analysis of the alternating forms. The research group working at the University of Pisa has therefore decided to collect a corpus of epigraphic data which could permit a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the non-classical forms attested in the CIL in the archaic and classical periods of the Latin language (Donati et al. forthc.; Marotta 2015, 2016). Epigraphic texts from this period provide massive evidence of graphemic variation and also, presumably, of phonetic-phonological variation attested in Latin. An accurate analysis of aberrant spellings, i.e. inconsistent with classical Latin, has allowed us to shed light on some interesting and relatively innovative aspects. Firstly, in archaic Latin, vocalism has proven to be more prone to variation than consonantism (Donati 2015; Donati et al. forthc.; Marotta 2015, 2016). Secondly, some vowel alternations which were widely attested in the epigraphic corpus can be interpreted not only as archaisms,
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but also as clues of sociolinguistically-conditioned phonetic variations (Marotta 2015, 2016). Crucially, these variations find an interesting côté in Delos’ bilingual Latin-Greek inscriptions (Rovai 2015b), thus confirming again how epigraphic data is of great interest for studies which aim at investigating the sociolinguistic variability of classical languages. As far as Greek is concerned, epigraphic texts are a valuable source for defining some traits of the complex sociolinguistic framework, where, for instance, the diaphasic and diatopic dimensions interact in the language of the Hellenistic votive inscriptions from Kafizin in Cyprus (Consani 2014, 2016). These epigraphs display the characteristic of being written both in Ptolemaic koiné and in the Cypriot dialect, and even alternate spelling in the Greek alphabet with Cypriot spelling. Their analysis has allowed the use of dialect to emerge as an identifying feature of the potter and artisan speakers of the Island, who were authors of dedications in a bilingual context. There are also some phenomena of interference between the higher diaphasic variety, represented by the koiné, and the lower diaphasic variety, represented by the dialect. In particular, the graphic-phonological level shows the most interesting phenomena in this case too. Among these phenomena are the frequent graphic omissions of pre-consonant and final nasals, interpreted as an interference of the phonological system of the Ptolemaic koiné, which is characterised by the weak nature of nasals. In Sicily, epigraphic documents in the Greek alphabet provide comparable interesting evidence of the possible palatal phonetic development of the cluster -STJ - in Sicilian Latin of the 4th–5th centuries A.D.: Indeed, in some Christian epigraphs, omission of the grapheme which represents the dental in the variants of the χριστιανός form is frequently found (De Angelis 2016).
2.2 Other non-literary texts Besides epigraphic texts, other non-literary texts are precious sources for the definition of the relationship between observable linguistic data and the sociolinguistic framework in which they can be placed. In particular, with reference to Latin, the contributions by Cotugno and Marotta (this volume), Cotugno (2015), and Fedriani and Ramat (2015) highlight the absolute relevance of writing tablets and private letters as a data source which allows the dynamics related to the diaphasic language dimension to be identified. The Vindolanda tablets provide clear evidence of how some spellings can be interpreted as indicators of phonetic phenomena, in particular, the occurrences of I longa (long I) in a context of vowel hiatus (Cotugno 2015) or ‘spurious’ gemination (Cotugno and Marotta (this volume).
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On the syntactic-pragmatic side, Vindolanda’s corpus and other collections of private letters offer the opportunity to investigate variation phenomena which preclude the Romance results and which can be framed within diastratic and diaphasic dynamics (Fedriani and Ramat 2015). The controversial issue of the basic order of Latin constituents can gain new material from study of these non-literary texts, allowing for a sociolinguistic revision of the change, involving Latin as well as Romance languages, of the unmarked complement-head > headcomplement order. In a split type language like Latin, which has an unmarked order connected with both the complement-head type and with the headcomplement type, the first order was mainly linked with a higher sociocultural dimension, whereas the second one was linked with a less formal linguistic context (Fedriani and Ramat 2015).
2.3 Literary texts The evidence coming from non-literary texts at times intersects with and confirms the picture emerging from literary texts. Indeed, literary texts can also be useful for sociolinguistic investigations. This is especially true for texts whose language is connoted by explicitly mimetic features of spoken language, above all, in comedy (Fedriani and Ghezzi 2016; Romagno 2015). Letters which are intended for popularisation in the form of a literary work are relevant, especially when they may exhibit a less elegant or at least a more colloquial language than the literary one (De Felice forthc.). Certainly, just like non-literary texts, literary texts also must, mutatis mutandis, undergo a series of methodological caveats in their possible sociolinguistic interpretation. We should not overlook the essential fact that the language of a literary text, in spite of its mimetic character of spoken language, corresponds to the canons of its literary genre of reference and is in some way influenced by the literary tradition. Another constraint concerning poetic works is metre (Fedriani and Ghezzi 2016). Keeping these methodological clarifications in mind, dramatic texts, especially comedy, allow us to identify significant clues concerning variation at various language levels. For instance, rhotacism of the final -s is attested in the words of one of Aristophanes’ characters of Spartan origin, and this can be interpreted as a possible attestation of a pronunciation which already existed in Aristophanes’ times, but which was disregarded because of its diastratically low dialectal trait. This same trait is shown in the epigraphic texts of Laconia from the 2nd century A.D. (Romagno 2015). In this case, the linguistic element found in a literary text is confirmed by a non-literary text.
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At the pragmatic level, comedy also offers interesting elements for the reconstruction of sociolinguistic dynamics. Indeed, the study of code-switching in Plautus allows us to frame the Greek language in the repertoire, within a multiethnic and multi-lingual context such as the Roman one. In Roman society, Greek is indeed doubly connoted: On the one hand, it is considered as the language of a social and cultural élite; on the other hand, it is considered as the idiom of slaves and foreigners, typically associated with diaphasically and diastratically low contexts. The distribution of code-switching phenomena in Plautus’ comedies perfectly reflects the characters’ social status (Fedriani and Ghezzi 2016).
2.4 Extra-linguistic elements Another fundamental methodological aspect in sociolinguistic research as applied to ancient languages and pressing with reference to non-literary texts concerns the importance of equipping the available documents with meta-linguistic (i.e. regarding text type and its pragmatic function) and extra-linguistic (i.e. historical, geographic, etc.) information (cf. also Clackson 2011; Mancini 2012; Consani 2016; Cotugno 2015; Donati 2015; Donati et al. forthc.; Marotta 2015; Rovai 2015b; Fedriani and Ramat 2015). In this sense, the collocation of the extra-linguistic element within a possible sociolinguistic frame can hardly depart from considering the elements revolving around the text, in particular, the geographic origin, the text type or genre, the ascription, and the possible co-participation in the conception and editing of the text. Through the integrated investigation of linguistic and contextual elements, typically linked with historical and archaeological evidence, we can attempt to reconstruct the (dia)system of classical languages. The contextual elements allow scholars to collocate a text along the diaphasic axis, although only with some approximation.
3 Other linguistic traditions and further methodological remarks In summary, it seems that several major problematic issues can be identified. A large number of studies, focused on different languages and socio-historical contexts, apparently share the same overall purpose of applying the methodological results of modern historical sociolinguistics in a more stringent and
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systematic way than ever before. Obviously, a conscious effort is made to avoid the use of unacceptable mechanical extensions and the resulting anachronisms (Bergs 2012). In order to delineate these crucial issues, we shall first provide a brief introduction that outlines the most frequent kinds of case studies, and then proceed to indicate some of the main findings. Variationist sociolinguistics typically analyzes individual traits – more precisely, the products of individual speech acts (primarily at the phonetic level) – which are uniquely attributed to the specific socially identified speaker. Moreover, it is well known that phonographic writing systems (such as those of the languages dealt with in the studies we are considering) are approximations of the phonological system of some variety (see Coulmas 2013 and Marotta 2000 for the Roman alphabet); likewise, it is also common knowledge that comparative historical linguistics tends to deal more with phonological variables than phonetic variations (Fox 2015; in general, see also Honeybone and Salmons 2015). Furthermore, the historical linguist often questions the phonetic consistency of the ‘phonological variable’ represented by a grapheme (Minkova 2015) or examines phenomena of mere phonetic consistency that do not emerge at the level of phonological representation. Therefore, heuristic research carried out by a historical linguist in this field of historical sociolinguistics will essentially refer to three levels of representation: a) the individual speech act (e.g. in relation to the specific intervention of a character in a play by Aristophanes or in ‘autographs’ e.g. in graffiti on the walls of Pompeii, see e.g. Solin 2015), b) the average value of an individual’s realizations (characterization of individual identity); c) the average value of the realizations of dimensionally (and socially) variable groups (characterization of group identity). In the last two cases, the phonic unit is understood as a ‘cluster’ of articulatory realizations; in the last case, in particular, the phone can be represented as a class of average articulatory realizations and configures the interface which, in substance, is closest to the phoneme represented on the graphemic level. On the other hand, although one of the most popular and leading research topics is certainly phonetics-phonology, a growing number of studies deal with morphological / syntactic features (see Auer and Voeste 2012), lexical features (see Grzega 2012), and pragmatic features (Jucker and Taavitsainen 2012; see below for some examples). Furthermore, a number of works (Berruto 2013, 2015) have underlined the benefits of considering not only the relations between individual linguistic traits and possible social variables (according to the ‘classic’ variationist approach), but also the possible relationship between (sub)systems of the language, which are relevant to any level or component of the latter, and social variables. In this regard, importance is given to assessing the data /
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linguistic features within strong theoretical frameworks of a ‘formal’ kind which regain their systemic position.
4 Sociolinguistic analysis For the sake of clarity, we shall outline some of the above-mentioned research fields and studies, by dividing the subject into two main levels of analysis: the micro- and the macro-sociolinguistic ones. It goes without saying that the boundaries between the two levels are often blurred and that the two points of view quite often represent two heuristic steps of the same research.
4.1 Analysis at the ‘micro-sociolinguistic’ level A correspondence exists between the best socio-historical research and the amount of available documentation. A close examination of recent literature has shown that these studies tend to assume a relationship between linguistic data, seen of course as a dependent variable, and social data, which is just as obviously taken as the independent variable. The assiological profile of both linguistic and social variables is identified by studying the linguistic contexts, which are distinguished into text types related to differentiated socio-linguistic, pragmaticperformative and cultural conditions (for each specific topic, see Consani 2016; Cotugno 2015; De Felice forthc.; Donati 2015: Donati et al., forthc.; Fedriani and Ramat 2015; Marotta 2015, 2016; Martino 2016; Molinelli 2015; Paulis 2013, 2016; Pinto 2015; Puddu 2015; Romagno 2015; Rovai 2015b; Virdis 2015). In particular, a series of studies demonstrate how historical-sociolinguistic research has started to focus on pragmatic data (see especially Molinelli 2015), so that the most farsighted historical sociolinguistic studies are combined with historical pragmatics.1 The general framework indicates the relevance of the degree of ‘idiosyncraticity’ of each document that is being examined. In other words, it is important to consider just how far the written document is representative of a widespread ‘standard’ and hence could be adopted as a typical social variety or, on the contrary, and conversely, to what extent it can be attributed to a specific individual. In the latter case, at the primary heuristic level, linguistic behavior can be examined, even though the different degrees of ‘filtering’, e.g.
1 On historical pragmatics, see at least Jucker (1995), Jucker, Taatvitsainen (2003), Fitzmaurice, Taavitsainen (2007).
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by a scribe, have to be taken into consideration.2 Especially in this set of cases, the studies hypothesise correlations between linguistic and social variables, combining the study of linguistic data with social variables (socio-demographic) associated with the author of the text (gender, age, income, ethnicity, etc.; see Kiełkiewicz-Janowiak 2012). The case in question easily fits into the normal procedures of ‘synchronic’ variational sociolinguistics (see Cerruti 2017) and is closer to the foundational studies of historical sociolinguistics applied to medieval and modern English, which has a wealth of ‘autograph’ documents that can be attributed to individual writers (see Elspass 2012 and, more generally, Mazzon 2015; see Conde-Silvestre 2012 for attempts to reconstruct the interindividual relationships up to the level of the social network). The result is obviously finer-grained than in those cases where it is impossible to ascertain the individual profile of the writers. The studies by Bruno (2015) and, in some respects, Serra (2015) and the aforementioned Consani (2016) and Cotugno (2015) fall into the latter category. It is always extremely difficult to determine when and to what extent a text, which is not immediately attributable to an ‘individual’, can be seen to represent a supra-individual variety (see again Minkova 2015). For reasons of time and space, we shall only cite one example. Literary texts (see above Section 2.3 for a specific sub-class) are generally regarded as representative of a supraindividual variety, since literary language is forged through references to a set of paradigms that represent the ‘standard’.3 On the other hand, a significant trend in research flatly rejects such an assumption and considers all documents, including literary ones – to a certain extent – as idiolectal (see e.g. Anipa 2012).4 Another set of cases are those in which the document can be identified either as the speech act of a writer (e.g. an unofficial entry) or as the direct recording of a linguistic event for which, due to the lack of objective information, the speakers’ social and sociolinguistic profiles can only be broadly inferred, by referring to the general social and socio-historical repertoire. Pompeo’s work (2015) is such an example (although the study should be considered within the broader methodological context offered by Benvenuto, Lucidi, and Pompeo 2015). This approach illustrates one of the specific requirements of a historical 2 It is obviously essential that the original features of the individual profile have not been obliterated by the succession of copyists in the course of the manuscript tradition. 3 In the interests of brevity, we shall only deal with the problems deriving from the use of this term in modern linguistics. 4 Alongside an important tradition of studies in the history of literary languages, this position is strongly rooted in empirical and reductionist theories, which only bestow ontological reality upon individual facts, and even consider concepts such as ‘language’, ‘variety’ and so on, as mere abstractions.
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linguistic study of the ‘social’ aspect: Although in sociolinguistics tout court, dependent linguistic variables are experimentally associated with independent social variables as a means of verifying the existence of a causal relationship, historical linguistics compares the documented linguistic ‘variable’ to the macrosociolinguistic background and uses it to hypothetically infer the sociolinguistic profile of the ‘speakers’. This therefore results in a forced asymmetry between data and models. Moreover, from an argumentative point of view, whereas in the former case the process is oriented in an empirical-inductive sense, in the latter, it is largely abductive: The locus communis on which this generalization is based is the correlatability of social traits (with a causal value) and linguistic behaviour (as caused effects). This commonplace is defined by a uniformitarian extension of causality from the present to the past. On the other hand, the historical-social reconstruction reconnotes socio-cultural traits by representing them in a historical context. This is how – de facto and notwithstanding a certain amount of conceptual polarity – uniformitarianism (in processes, at least to some extent) and historicism (in states, see Comrie 2003) are combined. An opposing but complementary case is represented by those texts which actually provide explicit information about the social order of the interlocutors: Paulis (2013) reconstructs the sociolinguistic status of certain classes of personal names in Medieval Sardinian based on indications of the social status of the people who bore these names; such data emerge from a number of revealing texts of economic and legal transactions, in which social roles had to be declared. This condition – after independent fact-checking to avoid begging the question – allows associations of social status (social variables) to be made, which then give rise to associations of a socio-linguistic type (socio-linguistic variables). The possible relationship between language (sub)systems and socio-linguistic features is the subject of several studies that consider different linguistic levels, from phonology to syntax. Once again, we shall cite just a few of these works. Mion’s (2015, see below) work on phonology has suggested a relationship between a systemic feature ‘in absentia’, namely, the loss of the emphatic consonants in Cypriot Arabic, with the macro-social feature of the absence of conservative and regulatory classical Arabic from the linguistic repertoire of Cyprus. At the morphological level, and with reference to medieval Sardinian, Pinto (2015) and Pinto, Paulis, and Putzu (this volume) suggest a link between the productivity of certain derivative affixes and “prestige” and the level of Ausbau in the donor language (mainly Tuscan). The study of these dynamics is used to connect a system concept like morphological productivity with a purely sociolinguistic notion such as that of prestige, where the (macro) social variable
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(prestige) – according to the general pattern – conditions the (macro) linguistic variable (the productivity of the individual morphological process). At the syntactic level (although from a synchronic perspective), Cerruti (2017) assigns a sociolinguistic parametrization to the spectrum of variation of relative clauses in the Italian repertoire (architecture of the language): The innovative processes that characterize the neo-standard can be explained in terms of the loss of sociolinguistic markedness based on a polarized continuum that goes from supra-standard to substandard. On the other hand, when studying the syntactic dimension, one is obliged to isolate the conditions of pragmatic markedness, not only to distinguish between syntactically driven phenomena and context-sensitive pragmatic phenomena, but also to appreciate any changes in social motivation: Such an example is the previously mentioned work by Fedriani and Ramat (2015) on constituent order in nuclear sentences in Pompeian Latin. Molinelli’s work (2015) embraces vocabulary, syntax and pragmatics and uses a single perspective to integrate historical-linguistic data, its pragmatic connotations (derived from a philological approach to the text) and social status as the motivation for allocutive polarizations. Her study reconstructs the modifications that have come about in the Italian allocutive system from its late Latin origins to the language of today, in which a change from above has gradually infiltrated the lower registers. Apart from each individual and specific consideration, it is clear that all these different cases show the importance and effect of the types of text (see Sects. 1 and 2.4) in both defining the data (see the essays collected in Molinelli and Putzu 2015) and also in its sociolinguistic interrogability (see especially McGillivray 2015; Puddu 2015).
4.2 Analysis at the ‘macro-sociolinguistic’ level: the social repertoire Another group of case studies deal with social repertoires (macro-sociolinguistics or sociology of language) with different approaches being offered by Benvenuto, Lucidi and Pompeo (2015), Cuzzolin (2013), De Angelis (2016), Fedriani and Ghezzi (2016), Milizia (2016), Putzu (2015), Murgia (2014), Lorenzetti and Schirru (2013), and Rovai (2015a). In this context, the attributed values (status) do not refer to individual linguistic features (‘micro’ level), but to languages jointly and severally: the interpretation of the previously attributed values of individual linguistic traits leads to the hypothesis of status relationships at the macro level. In linguistic situations that are totally unlike those of today’s national states, such as in the Ancient World and the Middle Ages (but even in at least
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several others e.g. in the contemporary post-colonial societies, see Putzu 2012), the social repertoire is characterized by a marked plurilingualism and becomes the social setting for language contact. By contrast, contact linguistics has often considered language contact from an intersystemic and/or aereal point of view, without considering – at least not in a systematic and explicit way – that the social factor could have had an effect on both this contact and its outcome.5 Thus, a certain trend of studies is subtended by the experimental hypothesis that the dynamics of interlingual contact – often assumed as being socially undifferentiated – are actually affected by these social differentiations (see Thomason 2008 for a critical synthesis, with particular reference to language variation and change): in other words, contact does not generically come about between languages, but occurs at the specific levels of language or registers of the speakers who come into contact and / or which are determined by contact pragmatics. Because of social factors, this kind of aforementioned contact is the reason why borrowed features (be they lexical elements or structural phenomena) possibly spread in language tout court (see e.g. Gasbarra and Pozza 2015). Furthermore, the repertoire acquires its territorial concreteness with its own precise historical and geo-linguistic space (see e.g. Martino, this volume and 2016) and thereby encounters linguistic geography and areal linguistics (see Hernández Campoy 1999; Aikhenvald and Dixon 2001; Hernández Campoy and CondeSilvestre 2005; Muysken 2008; Matras 2009 etc.: after all, the latter is one kind of language contact; see e.g. Benvenuto, Lucidi, and Pompeo 2015 for a specific case in the field of historical sociolinguistics). On the other hand, any interpretation of how social repertoires are made up must also have access to a series of data relevant to the socio-demographic characteristics of the community of speakers and the scope of use of their variety. By taking these factors into account, we are able to define different types of macro-sociolinguistic settings. To cite just one example, peculiar conditions affect the other varieties of language repertoires which have ‘no native speakers’: thus, other dynamics were at work in the ‘high’ Latin of a community from the Imperial period (in which the high variety is – however, and in some way – a register of a language that does of course have native speakers, (see the abovementioned Adams 2003, 2007, 2013 for the general framework, and for some specific situations, e.g. Lorenzetti and Schirru 2013 for Cyrenaica, Rovai 2015a for the provinces of Africa and Gaul), and again, others were at play in the Middle Ages, when a Latin that was no longer a native language occupied the 5 Language contact has been dealt with from different perspectives in a number of papers. For obvious reasons, these cannot be described here (see the contributions collected and contextualised in Consani 2015).
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upper pole of the repertoire in conditions that gradually led to diglossia (Kahane 1986): see, on the one hand, the case of Latin in the various linguistic situations of the Romance world which were characterized by an ‘internal’ diglossia, that is to say, a genetic continuity between the repertoire varieties (see e.g. Paulis 2016; Serra 2015, but also Martino 2016, and this volume), compared to the Germanic and Celtic world (for the latter case, in particular, see Cuzzolin 2013), where Latin is involved in an external diglossic relationship with the other varieties. From another point of view, interesting observations can be made for those cases where a ‘native’ variety appears in repertoires which do not have a genetically (and culturally) homogeneous high-prestige variety: an example of this is the above-mentioned case of Cypriot Arabic (Kormakitis), an isolated and peripheral variety of neo-Arabic from the Mediterranean region, which is found in a predominantly Greek-speaking context whose high pole, also used for religious purposes, is Greek. Mion (2015) has hypothesised that the loss of the emphatic system was due to the fact that Classical Arabic, with its extremely conservative pronunciation (for religious reasons) and of course its emphatic system, is absent from the repertoire of the Cypriot Community. Moreover, a similar phenomenon can be observed in Malta: for centuries, Latin and Italian have been the reference languages in the Maltese repertoire (indeed, both of the above-mentioned communities are Christian). It is also important to remember that the choice of a writing system often has strong implications for the sociolinguistic status (Coulmas 2013; Lillis 2013; Lillis and McKinney 2013, etc.): for example, Milizia (2016) argues that the Greekbased graphemic system adopted by Coptic fulfilled the “ideological” function of obliterating the Egyptian component and helped the community blend into the Greek linguistic-cultural environment. Therefore, the writing system, which is so often the vehicle of linguistic ideology, is indicative of a status relationship between the repertoires of Greek and Coptic.
5 Some conclusions In conclusion, notwithstanding the diversity in areas of application and methods, on the one hand, the studies presented highlight the theoretical and methodological difficulties that depend on the aforementioned uniformitarian paradox (see e.g. Gasbarra and Pozza 2015: 171), while, on the other, the results achieved in the various fields of research are shown to be consistent and ripe for development. The whole body of research discussed here attempts to embrace sociolinguistics in handling the variational data of ancient texts, within a framework of solid methodological and historical-critical awareness, so as to avoid any
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of the anachronisms that could result from mechanically imposing methods designed for the present on ancient languages. The continuous improvements in the analysis of the individual linguistic features at different levels or language components is flanked by an increasing interest in the possible correlations between complex features such as language (micro-) systems and social traits. This repertoire of relationships becomes the framework where language-contact relationships are blended together. In other words, if « the language-using individuals are [. . .] the locus of the contact » (as Weinreich famously asserted in [1953] 1979: 1), contact also takes place in the articulation of the linguistic repertoire and in the relative socio-cultural dynamics of the communities that come into contact.6 In this perspective, areal contact spatiality also plays an important social role as it forms a complex pluridimensional space.
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De Felice, Irene. Forthc. Syntactic changes and sociolinguistic variations. Expressing purposes in Late Latin. In Latin Vulgaire – Latin Tardif 11th. Donati, Margherita. 2015. Variazione e tipologia testuale nel corpus epigrafico CLaSSES I. In Giovanna Marotta & Francesco Rovai (eds.), Ancient Languages between Variation and Norm. [Special issue]. Studi e Saggi Linguistici 53 (2). 21–38. Donati, Margherita, Francesco Rovai & Giovanna Marotta. Forthc. Prospettive sociolinguistiche sul latino: un corpus per l’analisi dei testi epigrafici. In Latin Vulgaire – Latin Tardif 11th. Elspass, Stephan. 2012. The Use of Private Letters and Diaries in Sociolinguistic Investigation. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, 156–169. Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Fedriani, Chiara & Chiara Ghezzi. 2016. Pragmatic strategies in (con)texts. Language ideology and code-switching practices in Plautus’ and Goldoni’s comedies. Quaderni di AIΩN n.s. 4 Linguaggio, ideologia e loro rappresentazioni. 41–66. Fedriani, Chiara & Paolo Ramat. 2015. Ordini OV e VO in latino: per una rilettura sociolinguistica. In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 69–92. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Fitzmaurice, Susan M. & Irma Taavitsainen (eds.). 2007. Methods in Historical Pragmatics. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Fox, Anthony. 2015. Phonological Reconstruction. In Patrick Honeybone & Joseph Salmons (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Historical Phonology, 49–71. Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Gaeng, Paul A. 1977. A Study of Nominal Inflections in Latin Inscriptions. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Gaeng, Paul A. 1987. Variétés régionales du latin parlé: les témoignage des inscriptions. In József Herman (ed.), Latin Vulgaire-Latin Tardif. Actes du Ier Colloque International sur le Latin Vulgaire et Tardif, 77–86. Tübingen: Niemeyer Verlag. Gasbarra, Valentina & Marianna Pozza. 2015. Considerazioni (micro)sociolinguistiche su fenomeni di interferenza in area egeo-anatolica tra II e I millennio a.C. In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 171–191. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Grzega, Johachim. 2012. Lexical-Semantic Variables. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, 271–292. Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Herman, József. 1978. Du Latin épigraphique au Latin provincial: essai de sociologie linguistique sur la langue des inscriptions. In Étrennes de septantaine: Travaux de linguistique et de grammaire comparée offerts à M. Lejeune, 99–114. Paris: Éditions Klincksieck. Herman, József. 1985. Témoignage des inscriptions latines et préhistoire des langues romanes: le cas de la Sardaigne. In Mirko Deanović (ed.), Mélanges de linguistique dédiés à la mémoire de Petar Skok (1881–1956), 207–216. Zagreb: Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti. Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel. 1999. Geolingüística. Modelos de Interpretación Geográfica para Lingüístas. Murcia: Universidad de la Murcia. Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre. 2005. Sociolinguistic and Geolinguistic Approaches to the Historical Diffusion of Linguistic Innovations: Incipient Standardisation in Late Middle English. International Journal of English Studies 5 (l). 101–134.
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Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mazzon, Gabriella. 2015. Historical sociolinguistics and history of English. In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 50–68. Milano: FrancoAngeli. McGillivray, Barbara. 2015. Metodi computazionali per la linguistica latina. In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 93–112. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Milizia, Paolo. 2016. Problemi di grafia e fonologia nel lessico copto-greco. In Paolo Di Giovine & Valentina Gasbarra (eds.), Dinamiche sociolinguistiche in aree di influenza greca. Mutamento, variazione e contatto. Atti del convegno internazionale (Roma, 22–24 settembre 2014). [Special issue]. Linguarum Varietas 5. 177–190. Minkova, Donka. 2015. Establishing Phonemic Contrast in Written Sources. In Patrick Honeybone & Joseph Salmons (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Historical Phonology, 72–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mion, Giuliano. 2015. Sull’interfernza fonologica in arabo cipriota. In Carlo Consani (ed.), Contatto interlinguistico fra presente e passato. 359–378. Milano: LED. Molinelli, Piera. 2015. Polite forms and sociolinguistic dynamics in the contact between Italian varieties. In Carlo Consani (ed.), Contatto interlinguistico fra presente e passato. 283–313. Milano: LED. Molinelli, Piera & Ignazio Putzu (eds.). 2015. Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Murgia, Giulia. 2014. Un “sociolinguista” cinquecentesco: Girolamo Olives e i suoi Commentaria et Glosa in Cartam de Logu (1567). Rhesis. International Journal of Linguistics and Philology 5 (1). 79–112. Muysken, Pieter. 2008. Introduction: Conceptual and methodological issues in areal linguistics. In Pieter Muysken (ed.), From Linguistic Areas to Areal Linguistics, 1–23. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. Paulis, Giulio. 2013. Dinamiche linguistiche e sociali a Cagliari nel corso dei secoli. Le alterne fortune di un “vocativo” di lunga durata. In Giulio Paulis, Immacolata Pinto & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Repertorio plurilingue e variazione linguistica a Cagliari, 39–80. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Paulis, Giulio. 2016. Latino, greco e volgare nella Sardegna bizantina e alto-giudicale. Dinamiche sociolinguistiche e onomastica personale. In Paolo Di Giovine & Valentina Gasbarra (eds.), Dinamiche sociolinguistiche in aree di influenza greca. Mutamento, variazione e contatto. Atti del convegno internazionale (Roma, 22–24 settembre 2014). [Special issue]. Linguarum Varietas 5. 191–209. Pinto, Immacolata. 2015. La derivazione in sardo medievale: una prima analisi in prospettiva sociolinguistica. In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 264–281. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Pinto, Immacolata, Giulio Paulis & Ignazio Putzu. Morphological Productivity in Medieval Sardinian: Sociolinguistic Correlates. Action Nouns and Adverbs of Manner. This volume. Pompeo, Flavia. 2015. I Greci a Persepoli. Alcune riflessioni sociolinguistiche sulle iscrizioni greche nel mondo iranico. In Carlo Consani (ed.), Contatto interlinguistico fra presente e passato, 149–172. Milano: LED. Puddu, Nicoletta. 2015. Costituzione del Sardinian Medieval Corpus: prime proposte per la codifica e l’annotazione. In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici,
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13 ‘Contrata dicta in lingua latina Scandali, in lingua greca Chandachi, et in lingua saracenica Alcastani’. Playing with Identities in the Multilingual Place–names of Medieval Sicily 1 Introduction My reflections regard the usability of onomastic and chiefly toponymic materials in the construction of a research method in historical sociolinguistics.1 The area considered is medieval Sicily between the 11th and the 13th centuries. It is generally known that Sicily’s linguistic history has been marked, since ancient times, by a stratification of colonization languages: Phoenician, Greek, Latin, Arabic etc., in constant interaction with the native languages (Vàrvaro 1979, 1981). The result is a linguistic melting pot with situations of multilingualism and diglossia in constant evolution. When the Normans arrived, in addition to the three languages of Arabic, Greek and Latin culture,2 there were other diatopically compartmentalized popular varieties at work on the island: Siculo– Romance languages and a variety of Arabic dialect which has been given the name of Siculo–Arabic. The example this research stems from is one amongst the thousands that can be found in Sicily’s diplomatic materials produced by the Norman chancery, an institution of special sociolinguistic interest owing to its multilingualism. Four languages come into play (Greek, Arabic, Latin and Sicilian Romance), but the diastratic and diaphasic varieties are much more numerous. Indeed, such materials, sometimes bilingual or trilingual, include public notarial deeds – royal, judicial or ecclesiastical (privileges or diplomas, concessions, donations, rural statutes, letters etc.), as well as private deeds (purchase deeds, etc.). 1 The Società Italiana di Glottologia devoted a conference to the topic: La toponomastica come fonte di conoscenza storica e linguistica, published by E. Vineis (1981); essential papers by Caracausi (1981) and Vineis himself. 2 On the dialectics between the three cultures see Becker (2008), Falkenhausen (1979, 1987, 1994). Paolo Martino, Università LUMSA DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-013
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We are in an area of central-western Sicily where, under the reign of William II the Good (1166–1189), Greek and Arabic are still quite vital. Indeed, it is known that during the Norman period (11th–12th cent.) the languages in use in notarial practice were – depending on the addressee’s language – Latin, Greek and Arabic,3 the latter also used by Jews (“Judaeo-Arabic”). We do not have any original documents from the Arabic administration; the oldest documents recording land concessions date back to the Norman period and are written in Arabic, Greek and/or Latin. Some documents are registers of villeins ( jarāʾid al-rijāl) who were an integral part of the assets pertaining to the landed property, often accompanied by meticulous registers of boundaries ( jarāʾid al-ḥudūd). Especially after the major administrative reform of 1140, within the Dīwān al-Maʿmūr an office (the Dīwān al-Taḥqīq al-Maʿmūr) is established whose task is to produce a proper land register and see to the revision of boundaries.4 The recording of rural microtoponyms in all three cultural languages is common in documents during the period of William II, when it became widespread to use the notarial “transumpt” for the confirmation of old privileges entrusted to documents at that point rendered illegible by the deterioration of the parchment, but also because written in Arabic. The most outstanding register is the so-called Rollo di Monreale (MS. Vat. Lat. 3880). Thanks to the tolerant policy of both Rogers of Altavilla and both Williams, their successors, the many Muslims left on the Island could draw up their deeds in Arabic, the Greek-Byzantines in Greek, and the Siculo-Normans in Latin. Only with Frederick II the Swabian did Arabic cease to be used in Sicily due to lack of speakers; the last document written in such a language in Sicily dates, to our knowledge, from 1242 (Latin and Arabic text). Roger I, the Great Count (1071–1101), continued to make use of the Arab administrative units and the land registers compiled by Muslim emirs, confirming as well the Byzantine and Muslim officials from previous governments, though with a considerable strengthening of the Greek component. For the administration of demesne and feudal lands, for the definition of boundaries and their recording in special documents (dafātir), Roger II (who reigned from 1130 to 1154) created a new office (Dīwān al-Taḥqīq al-Maʿmūr). Bureaucratic
3 The diplomas of the Liber privilegiorum, ordered by William II in May 1182, are written in all three languages. The diploma known as Rollum Bullarum published by Salvatore Cusa at the end of the 1800s is particularly rich; in it converge several earlier transcribed or translated documents, the Arab jarāʾid and the Greek plateiai, public papers containing land descriptions and lists of names of the servants and villeins belonging to the landed properties. 4 Cf. Metcalfe (2001: 43); Johns (2002).
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reasons internal to the royal Dīwān promoted the creation of a trilingual vocabulary. Some plateiai ‘registers’ of Monreale are drawn up in Arabic and Greek with checks in Latin (cf. Enzensberger 1981: 123–124). An illuminated manuscript from the Burgerbibliothek of Berne (MS. 120 II) contains the Carmen de rebus Siculis by Pietro of Eboli; one of the illuminations represents the royal chancery around 1190, during the reign of Tancred, William II’s successor. The distribution of languages is revealed within four arches: below the first one, starting from the right, the vice-chancellor Matthew is seated and writing to Tancred by candlelight; following in order are Latin notaries, without beards, then Saracens with a turban, and finally bearded Greeks, all sitting in pairs below their own arch, intent on writing diplomas. Enzensberger (1981: 123) speculates that the order in which the pairs are disposed corresponds to a precise hierarchy of the languages (the Greeks, being the furthest from the vice-chancellor, would occupy the lowest rank). In the following centuries, though, many deeds originally written in Arabic or in Greek no longer existed; we have the versions in Latin or in “vernacular language”.5 First of all, we are dealing with a particular technical variety: the notarial language. However, the non-standard sections of diplomas contain forms and syntactic structures contaminated by vulgar Arabic, Greek and Romance. Among these, proper names (anthroponyms and microtoponyms) stand out, as notaries had to record them with the greatest accuracy and with references to the current designations of their times. The place and date are therefore relevant.
2 Arabic in medieval Sicily The topic is complex, also owing to the vastness of the partly unedited corpora and to the multiplicity of competences required. Fortunately, we already have at our disposal studies of method and of detail on medieval Sicilian toponymy, in addition to Caracausi’s repertoires (1993a, 1990). Of little use the two volumes by Di Giovanni (1892) dedicated to the casali in the 13th century. Recent studies have considerably added to the data collected in the works of Amari ([1857, 1880] 1988), Cusa ([1868, 1882] 1982), Garufi (1899) and of other Arabists from Palermo: Nallino, Di Matteo, Rizzitano, De Simone. We can now avail ourselves of the studies by the Arabists from the Oxford and Lancaster teams who have been working on Siculo-Arabic: Agius (1996), Metcalfe (2003, 2009a, 2009b), Johns (2002), Sottile (2013); by the French Bresc and Nef, 5 See for example the 1441 notarial deed published by Spata (1862: 369).
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who investigated the concept of “Sicilian Mozarabic”. And this, in addition to Vàrvaro’s masterly synthesis (1981). A lot of attention is paid to onomastics; suffice it to mention the research by Pellegrini (1957, 1962, 1975, 1986a, 1986b) and Caracausi (1993b), Abbate’s most recent studies (2004, 2006, 2008) on the Arabic element in Sicilian anthroponymy, and Korhonen (2011, 2012), who discusses problems of method. For Sicilian Greek, we should also remember Spata’s sylloge (1862); at present, many more synthetic and detailed works have been added to the studies of Pellegrini, Enzensberger, von Falkenhausen and Caracausi. In Sicily, Arabic penetrated deeply as a high variety over the 254 years of Muslim rule (from 827 to 1091).6 Even during the years of Norman rule and during the subsequent Swabian period, Arabic remained an administrative language alongside Greek and Latin, though in gradual decline on the diastratic scale. However, it has not been demonstrated that, at a popular level, a complete language substitution occurred during the Muslim period. The term Siculo Arabic, introduced by Amari in 1857, designates a Sicilian Maghribi pidgin which would have developed on the island during the long period of the Muslim rule, continuing to thrive until the 13th century. A theory recently supported by several authoritative experts (Brincat 2003, Agius 2007) actually considers it at the origin of Maltese, which others regard instead as a Maghribi variety of African importation. The theory is risky. On the other hand, there are interesting possibilities in the idea that ethnic and cultural assimilation (“amalgamation” or “arabization”) do not coincide with linguistic assimilation (“arabicization”), which would have been more sizeable: many Sicilians would have learnt the rulers’ language and developed a real Creole, but would have kept their Christian faith. In this case the linguistic data tends to emerge as a sociolinguistic indication and as a mark of identity. Bresc and Nef (1998: 140) do not hesitate to speak of a “Sicilian Mozarabic” and of an “onomastique melée, puisqu’elle affirme à la fois, l’arabisation des individus qui l’élaborent et leur maintien dans la religion chrétienne” (cf. Nef 1996). Undoubtedly, the linguistic data comes to the fore as a fundamental record to delineate this region’s history in the Middle Ages. Vàrvaro (1981: 111–124) considered in these terms the Latin-Arabic lexical integration shown by many GreekLatin onomastic elements in the names of the Arab-Muslim villeins listed in the papers. This fact would attest a massive conversion phenomenon of Greek and Latin Christians to Islam.7 6 For Fatimid Sicily (Fāṭimid Sicily: 909–1040) see Chiarelli (1986). 7 Christians were in the subordinate position of dhimmi, ‘protected’. The dhimma (“protection”) guaranteed their personal security, property rights, freedom of movement and religion provided that they recognized the Islamic sovereignty and paid taxes, especially the ğizya.
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In the subsequent Norman-Swabian period the opposite phenomenon takes place: Latin ascends to high variety; many Arab villeins are baptized but keep their names. Therefore, onomastic questions must be treated with the utmost caution. The fact that in the Norman period villages were inhabited by villeins with Arabic names does not mean that they spoke Arabic or were Muslim. The ethnic Hagarene or Saracen is also used in documents in the sense of ‘villein’, not differently from the modern Moroccan or Filipino in Italy. Arabic was thus the “lingua franca” of trade and administration in the Muslim period; during the Norman period the number of Muslims and Arabic speakers gradually decreased on the island due to migrations and conversions to Christianity. In the 12th century, a reversal of the diastratic collocation of varieties occurred, with the rise of Sicilian Romance at least in popular use. In the 13th century, when the era of translations begins, the royal Norman chancery is still populated by Greek, Latin and Arab notaries; the latter were mainly Christian Converts who gathered in the palatine chapel of Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio. There is no substantiation of an actual mass conversion to Islam, as some Arab sources maintain.8 Unlike Andalusi Arabic and Maltese, Siculo-Arabic does not seem to be a Creole variety spoken by the people, but rather a notarial Mischsprache which elaborated “an interchangeable, trilingual administrative vocabulary” (Metcalfe 2003: 135). Lexical Arabisms and some morphosyntactic structures were assimilated into Romance varieties and into Greek,9 especially in onomastics (Alessio 1953, 1955; Caracausi 1993b; De Simone 1992b; Agius 1996: 243). Nevertheless, the massive presence of names of Arabic origin, however preponderant, surely cannot testify to a vitality of Arabic as “lingua franca”. Instead, anthroponyms and microtoponyms are important to outline a sociolinguistic framework. Certainly, the frequent conversions of kuffar, κάφιροι (the kāfir is ‘he who practices a religion different from Islam’), especially in the countryside, and the numerous mixed marriages between Arab men and Sicilian women may have facilitated the creation of a pidgin variety. Now it is true that pidgins are used for specific communicative functions and rarely entail any social distinction, nor do they entail, in principle, 8 The Muslim geographer Yāqūt wrote in the 13th century: “Per lungo tempo rimase la Sicilia in potere de’ Musulmani: la più parte della popolazione si convertì all’islamismo, e vi innalzarono delle ǧami ‛ e delle moschee. Indi gli Infedeli sursero contro di essi e impadronironsi dell’isola, la quale tengono oggidì: Iddio (solo può) aiutarla” [Sicily for a long time remained in the hands of Muslims: the most part of the population converted to Islam, and they raised some ǧami‘ and mosques. Then the infidels arose against them and conquered the island, which nowadays take: God (just may) help] (it. trans. by Amari [1857] 1988, I: 202–203). 9 See Pellegrini (1972); De Simone (1979, 1984, 1992a, 1994, 1999); Caracausi (1983, 1984); Agius (1996, 2007); Metcalfe (2003).
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any group identification. In Sicily, though, the conflict between the two religious cultures is widely documented. Ibn Ḥawqal, a merchant and geographer of the 10th century, in his Viaggio in Sicilia (Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ) speaks of *muša‘miḏūn, ‘apostates’, that is to say converts from Christianity to Islam, and relates that in mixed families boys are brought up as Muslims and girls as Christians (Falkenhausen 2002: 255; Metcalfe 2002: 290). Such a situation is unfailingly reflected in personal onomastics. Therefore, in medieval Sicily the identity value of languages must have been consistent. Even after the Norman conquest, Arabic was undoubtedly a daily language among Arabs, Berbers and Jews,10 especially in the countryside, inhabited by villeins with Arabic names, and in seaports such as Palermo and Messina; whereas in the Norman period Sicilian and an administrative variety of Latin-Romance prevailed. In Sicily Arabic stopped being spoken definitely and officially only in 1492: the date of the expulsion of Jews from all Spanish dominions marked the death of Arabic in Sicily.11
3 The importance of microtoponymy The order in which the toponym is recorded in 12th-century diplomas (Latin, Greek, Arabic) is very important. It reflects the order of languages in bilingual or trilingual deeds: the Latin text comes first, even when it is a translation from Arabic.12 The Greek documents of the Norman chancery, the πλατείαι, which continue the tradition of the ǧarā’id al-riǧāl (lists of villeins) of the Arab administration, keep more than 6000 personal names just in the Monreale register, coeval to our diplomas from Petralia. As Metcalfe observes (2003), such names were generally composed by a first, always Latin element and a second one, translated or transliterated, serving as a determiner. This order also recurs in bilingual (Greek-Arabic) and trilingual (Latin-Greek-Arabic; Greek-Latin-Arabic) liturgical texts (see Mandalà 2014: 105). In the north-western part of the island, the existing microtoponymy bears witness to a deep arabization of the territory, which certainly dates back to the 9th and 10th centuries when lands in the countryside, abandoned en masse by Greek-speakers seeking refuge in Calabria, were allotted to Arab and Berber 10 For Judaeo-Arabic see cf. Rocco (2002: 5–16). 11 In fact, the already ancient condition of Siculi trilingues occurs again in the Middle Ages, but we must specify that – as Moses Finley had already noted with regard to the end of the Roman Republic – the linguistic distinction in Sicily was rather social, not geographical. 12 See Metcalfe (2010).
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peasants13 immigrated from Africa. The people who stayed on, though forced to convert, could nonetheless find an element of identity precisely in linguistic customs. In any event many names were adapted to Arabic phonetics from their previous Romance form as Di Giovanni pointed out in his review of 12th-century villages.14 The principle also applies to rural microtoponymy which, in the vast majority of cases, presents either entirely Arabic names or compounds with a head designating a geotoponymic element: a village (raḥl), a fortified town (qal‘at), an estate (manzil), a hill (ǧabal), a river (wadī), a spring (‛ayn), a ditch (ḥandaq), followed by a modifier usually of Greek or Latin derivation. There are plenty of microtoponyms with an Arabized Greek or Latin head: rocca > ruqqa ‘castellum’, castrum > qaṣr, Cefalà = Ǧafala etc.15 Starting from the 12th century, in the strip between Vallo di Mazara and Valdemone, there are numerous cases of mixed Greek-Arabic onomastics of the type Filadelfos Cafiris ‘Filadelfos the Infidel’ (Cusa [1868] 1982: 425), Anastasis Changemis ‘Anastasius the Barber’, Philippus filius Buseit ‘P. son of B.’, Jafar filius Capre, Philippus filius Bulfadar, Basilius filius Abdesseid etc,16 peasants with a Christian first name and an Arabic patronymic, a clear sign of the ongoing reversal in the diastratic hierarchy. Some have tried to understand why the names present in the Arab documents of the royal chancery are usually transliterated in Greek documents and translated in Latin ones (Metcalfe 2003: 151). Out of roughly seventy cases where the formula quod vocatur + N ‘which is named + N’ or quod dicitur + N ‘which is 13 See Pellegrini (1972, I: 237–332); Caracausi (1983: 88–407); Agius (1996), Metcalfe (2003: 17). 14 Di Giovanni (1892: 493–494): Balarm ‘Palermo’, Tirmah / Termi ‘Termini’, Qaruniah ‘Caronia’, Sant Marcu ‘San Marco’, Li Ag ‘li Aci’, Qataniah ‘Catania’, Lintini ‘Lentini’, Notus ‘Noto’, Ragus ‘Ragusa’, Limbiyada ‘Olimpiada’ = ‘Licata’, Gergent ‘Girgenti’, Mazara ‘Mazara’, Tarabanis ‘Trapani’, Partiniq ‘Partinico’, Qarini ‘Carini’, Giatu ‘Iato’, Qurliuni ‘Corleone’, Casr Nubu ‘Castronovo’, Iblatanu ‘Platanu’, Sutir ‘Sutera’, Naru ‘Naro’, Gangah ‘Gangi’, Bizini ‘Vizini’, Minau ‘Mineo’, Batarnu ‘Paternò’, Santuorib ‘Centorbi’, Adornu ‘Adernò’, Nastasiah ‘Sant’Anastasia’, Ambulah ‘Ambola’, Bolis ‘Polizzi’, Betraliah ‘Petralia’, Nicusiu ‘Nicosia’, Garas ‘Geraci’, Munt Alban ‘Montalbano’, Galat ‘Galati’, etc. . . . 15 Only in few instances were the appellations of important towns completely changed: Lilybaeum > Marsā Allāh or Marsā ʿAlī ‘Marsala’, Taormina > al-Mu‘izziyya. Palermo, as Ibn Ǧubayr remarks, was called ’B.larm’ (< Panormus) by Christians, but ’al-Madina’ (‘the City’) by Muslims. All the same, the statement by Metcalfe (2003: 19) that “Greek demographic divisions can be reckoned from the distribution of toponyms” should perhaps be slightly mitigated, at least for central-western Sicily: the Vallo di Mazara and Val di Noto appear more profoundly Arabized, without it being synonymous with a massive immigration, whereas the Val Demone plays a role in the preservation of insular Greek memory. 16 Cf. especially Garufi (1899: 25, 186); Metcalfe (2003: 147).
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called + N’ recurs in the 1182 Monreale register, few introduce a complete transliteration (e.g. esiar agiu < ašǧār ǧuǧǧūw ‘Jujube trees’ (Metcalfe 2003: 149), while usually one of the elements of the compound word, generally the head, is transliterated and the second element translated. The transliterations present in Greek documents are introduced by a similar formula: ἐπονομαζομένος ‘which is named’ or λεγόμενος ‘which is called’. When analyzing the onomastics in eastern Sicily during the 12th and 13th centuries, Kalle Korhonen (2011) tends to revalorize the consistency of Arab and Greek elements, which resisted Latinization and still remain today, while minimizing the role of the Romance component. This could be explained as a natural effect of semantic bleaching, a desemanticization which would have overshadowed the connotative values of such names. However, we cannot exclude the vital role of identity motivated by religious, cultural and linguistic differences. A proper name, whether anthroponym or toponym, may signify many things beyond its denotative functions. All the more does this apply in central Sicily.
4 Chandachi, Scandali, Alkastani The question inspiring this work concerns the designation of a landed property situated in central-northern Sicily, near the towns of Petralia, Polizzi and Caltavuturo, in the park of Madonie (PA). In that area, code-mixing must have been quite developed. From Malaterra (II: 20) we know that in 1062 the inhabitants of Petralia Soprana (Petrelejum) besieged by Roger, were ex parte Christiani et ex parte Sarraceni.17 With a Greek deed of sale from 1176, a certain Leone, with his wife and children, sells to the Monastery of S. Maria de Latina di Agira, in the area of Petralia to the north of Enna, a land identified with three names: Latin, Greek and Arabic. The designation of the microtoponym in three languages represents a real puzzle. If we suppose that they are contemporary, the three names should correspond to one another. But it is known that toponyms can change over time and 17 In 882 Polizzi was the stage of a victory of the Saracens over the Byzantines which started of the ghettoization of the Christian population. The Arabs settled in the fortress and town of Rahalburd, also called Scannali. The Greeks gathered around the church of San Pancrazio and in town in the San Pietro quarter. The Latins were gathered around the Monastery of Santa Maria de Heremitis or de Gadera. In 1082 Roger donates the castle of Polizzi to his niece Adelasia and in 1097 he builds a new castle in the Campo estate, in order to control the entire area of the Madonie.
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their popularity may vary in connection with the cultural and linguistic standards of the moment. Whilst the Arabic appellation seems perspicuous and the Greek one easily interpretable as a partial transliteration, the corresponding Latin translation poses problems. Though the Greek parchment was lost, we have, for this transaction, a Latin transumpt from 20 July 1346 made by Notar Vitale di Leone of Messina and preserved in the Grande Archivio di Stato of Palermo in a copy of the 18th century.18 The deed, commissioned by the Monastery of Santa Maria di Latina of Polizzi19 as they were interested to assert their property right, says that the land in question is situated in contrata dicta in lingua latina Scandali, in lingua greca Chandachi, et in lingua saracenica Alcastani. The first problem to address is obviously of a palaeographic nature. The exact understanding of the text is often compromised by the bad conditions of the parchment and becomes more problematic in case of proper names. It can be surmised that some mistakes are ascribable to the publishers. The thanduthi or thandathi lesson should be attributed to Di Giovanni and to Garufi, or rather to their 18th-century sources. In his reconstruction of the history of the monastery, Vincenzo Di Giovanni read: “contrata dicta in lingua latina Scandàlj, que dicitur in lingua greca Thandathi, et in lingua saracenica Elchastanj, et dividimus ipsam sic: ab oriente est vallonus conjunctus nostrarum terrarum, et . . . ascendit dictus vallonus usque ad publicam viam. . .” ‘estate called Scandàlj in Latin, Thandathi in Greek, and Elchastanj in the language of Saracens, and we divide it in this way: from east there is a ditch close to our lands, and . . . this ditch rises up to the public street’.20 In his Documenti inediti di epoca normanna, Garufi (1899: 163, n. LXVI) read for the Greek form thanduthi. But Cusa ([1882] 1982, II: 735, n. 151) gives the correct reading: Chandachi. As does Giambruno (1909: 173), who reproduces the document in his edition of the Tabulario di S. Maria di Polizzi, a register of great importance which preserves our toponym in various documents.
18 The 12th-century Greek deed was kept in the monastery of S. Maria di Polizzi. The codex containing the Latin transumpts is a parchment (mm 435 × 219 – Restored vellum), written in minute chancery hand and included in the Tabulario del monastero di S. Margherita di Polizzi published by S. Giambruno (1909: 173–176, n. V). For the dating see Cusa (1982, II: 735), n. 151. Note that the document, kept in the Grande Archivio di Palermo, is a copy from the 18th century. On the back of it one can read Instrumentum tenimenti Scandali – transuntu di grecu in latinu [. . .]” [Instrument of the estate of Scandali – transumpt from Greek into Latin]. 19 On Polizzi see Di Giovanni (1880); Flandina (1884); Anselmo (2006). 20 Di Giovanni (1880: 27–29). The form Sandali on p. 27 must be a misprint since shortly afterwards the text of the deed has Scandali.
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The same estate is also mentioned in a Greek deed of sale made soon after, a parchment codex from 1185 published by Cusa (1982, II: 659–661), in which Constas and Petros, sons of Cacabullos, with their wives and children, sell to the Prior and to the friars of the Monastery of S. Maria di Gadèra, for the price of 33 taris, the portions they are entitled to of a property situated in the area of Petralia in the place called Chàndak Elkastani (χωράφιον ὅν κτώμεθα ἔν τῷ ἄστει πετραλίας εἰς τόπον λεγόμενον χάνδακ ἐλκαστάνι).21 The correct reading is chandachi, transliteration of medieval Gr. χανδάκι ‘trench’, ‘ditch’, where the second element is omitted. It should be noted that the estate, crossed by the river Salso which draws the boundary between the two valleys (Valdemone and Vallo di Mazzara), is characterized by a vallonus which extended as far as Caltavuturo.22 Is Chandachi Greek (χανδάκι) or transliterated Arabic (ḥandaq)?23 The priority of the Greek form would seem established for prosodic and morphological reasons; furthermore, in the late Hellenistic period the diminutive χανδάκιον, dim. of χάνδαξ, -ακος, is quite widespread, even documented as a toponym in Crete.24 In truth, Calabrian-Greek and Siculo-Greek only have reflexes of the derivative χανδάκι: Bovese ḣandáci [xan’daʧi] (Rohlfs 1964: 558); Calabrian candáci ‘little furrow where vegetable seedlings are planted’. Thus, the chandachi from the 1177 diploma may be classified, following Caracausi (1983: 45), among Greek loan words “trasmigrati tramite l’elemento grecofono da Bisanzio” [transmigrated thanks to Greek speaking people from Byzantium], in the same way as ἀμηρᾶς vs. ἀμίρ, which is a direct Arabism.
21 Cusa (1982, II: 735, n. 151); cf. Di Giovanni (1880: 25–28); Giambruno (1909: 173). On the back of the parchment you can read writings considered by palaeographers to be subsequent to the 15th century: “Compra di terre nella valli Elchastani seu Sandali in greco, colla traduzione in italiano, fatta alli Patri di Santa Maria Gadera oggi Santa Maria Latina, nell’anno 6694, cioè l’anno 1186” [Purchase of estates in the valley Elchastani or Sandali in Greek, with translation into Italian, made to the fathers of Santa Maria Gadera, today Santa Maria Latina, in the year 6694, i.e. the year 1186]. 22 ḥandak / χάνδακ is identified in some texts with ῥύαξ ‘stream’ or κοιλάς ‘valley’ (Pellegrini, 1972: 304). In two other documents from 1334 and 1335 concerning the estates in finibus Policii, they speak of “quoddam tenimentum terrarum [. . .] secus flumen” [a certain estate [. . .] beside the river] (Di Giovanni 1880: 39). 23 The rendition of the unvoiced pharyngeal fricative ḥ with χ in Greek is systematic; here converge the unvoiced laryngeal fricative [h] and the unvoiced velar fricative ḫ (Trovato 1995; Sgroi 1986). 24 Cf. Sophocles 1900: 1160 s.v. χάνδαξ, Arabic name of Iraklion, later transformed by Venetians into Candia; for the derivation Sophocles refers to Turkish Hendek, Arabic KNDQ ‘τάφρας, ditch, trench, fortification’. Cf. Babiniotis ([1998] 2002: 734) s.v. Ηράκλειο.
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On the contrary, the forms χάνδακ ἐλκαστάνι (1185, Cusa 1982, II: 660), Χάνδακα έλχάνες (1122, Cusa 1982: 415), χάνδεκ έξαμάρ (1134, Cusa 1982: 14) which appear in other Greek documents, are of Arabic origin – clear transliterations from Arabic. From here the Maltese ḥandaq (Barbera 1939: 486), the Pantellerian cánnacu and the Sicilian ciànnaca (Pellegrini, 1972: 258; Caracausi 1983: 247), despite Alessio (1939: 895). The “Saracen” toponymic designation Alcastani evidently presupposes the ellipsis of χανδάκι or χάνδακ, as attested by the numerous toponyms recorded by Pellegrini (1972: 304): ḥandak al-ġarīq = vallonem elgaric ‘the ditch of the drowned’; ḥandak ar-rūmi = vallonem rumi ‘the ditch of the pilgrim’; ḥandak al.balāt = vallonem balate ‘the ditch of the slab’; ḥandak al.kātib = vallonem notarii ‘the ditch of the lawyer’; ḥandak al-aḥasan = vallonis lahacsen ‘the ditch of al-Ahsan’; ḥandak al-kabīr = ad magnum vallonem ‘at the great ditch’; ḥandak al-faraš = vallonem cadaverum ‘the ditch of the corpses’; ḥandak al-qatīl = vallonem occisi ‘the ditch of the dead man’; ḥandak al-dāliya = vallonem vitis ‘the ditch of the vineyard’; ḥandak al-qaṣab = vallonem cannarum ‘the ditch of the canes’, etc. Caracausi (1990: 615) correctly identifies the expression χάνδακ ἐλκαστάνι (1185, Cusa 1982, II: 660)25 as a faithful transliteration from the Arabic ḥandaq *al-Qaṣṭanī, derived from Qaṣṭanah (Κάστανα). The meaning of Chàndak Alkàstani should therefore be ‘Ditch of the chestnut tree’ and the previous Greek designation χανδάκι [*Καστανίας]. The form Scandali remains cryptic. Rubricated as “Latin”, it finds no parallel in Latin-Romance toponymy26 although we would expect a translation of the type *vallonus castaneti. Metcalfe (2003: 134) enumerates cases of inconsistency in the Latin translations (“examples of transliterated forms in the Monreale and other 12th-century registers suggest that in many cases transliterated words were obscure and abstruse”), with the creation of nonsense words, later adjusted in dialects. In such cases it would seem that the Latin scribe, uncertain about the meaning of the Arabic forms, preferred to transliterate as best as he could rather than to venture a translation. This is not our case, though, since Scandali is not a transliteration and is furthermore the most popular and durable name, still in use today (Scannàli, in the area between Collesano, Polizzi and Scillato, with the expected assimilation of -nd-). Scandali was the usual name for the estate
25 ḫandaq Alkàstani = ‘Vallis Elcastani’: the Arabic article al- presents the phenomenon of imāla (regular in Arabic dialects, including Andalusi), so that the open vowel a/ā becomes ɛ/e in certain contexts. 26 Staying within the field of phytonymy, we could think, but without evidence, of a derivative of the Latin scandala (Isid. XVIII, 62: scandala genus hordei), which has produced northernItalian toponyms: Venetian Scandolé, Lombard Scandolara etc. Cf. Alessio (1962: 80).
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in the 14th century according to a series of instruments that, on the other hand, bear witness to the progressive usurpation of the property by private people who had a contract of perpetual emphyteusis.27 In the following 15th century several emphyteusis contracts to private individuals confirm the gradual abolition of property rights and the extension of the toponym to the town of Caltavuturo.28 We may speculate that for “Latin language” the scribe here rather meant “vulgar”, that is neither Greek nor Arabic, and that the form Scandali referred to as Latin was a pre-Islamic term. Seeing that a reinterpretation of chandachi (perhaps redefined with the suffix -ali and “intensive” s-) is improbable, we could think of a derivative from the Latin root scando, Sanskrit skándati,29 a
27 A 1354 Privilege of King Louis sanctions the transfer of the estate to the Monastery of S. Margherita di Polizzi and then the transfer by emphyteusis to Count Sclafani (Di Giovanni 1880: 48). 28 Polizzi, 13 July, 1417: the Monastery of S. Margherita di Polizzi grants under perpetual emphyteusis to Ruggero di Buerio “pecium unum terre vacue tuminatorum quinque situm et positum in contrata Scandali videlicet de vallone dicti territorij. . .” [a piece of vacant land of five tuminates site and placed in the country Scandali i.e. de vallone of that territory] (Giambruno 1909: 321, n. CI); Polizzi, 1 February, 1428: They agree on the rights of the Monastery of S. Margherita di Polizzi and of Count Henricus Rubeus, Comitatus Sclafani Comes, over the territorium vocatum de Scandali, situm in territorio Calatavuturi prope flumen magnum quod vocatur de pulici et prope terras eiusdem monasterii [land called de Scandali, located in the territory of Calatavuturo at the great river called de Pulici and close the lands of the same monastery], object of dispute in the High Court of King Alphonse of Aragon (Giambruno 1909: 349, n. CIX); Polizzi, 19 December, 1438: Beatrice abbess of the Monastery of S. Margherita di Polizzi grants under perpetual emphyteusis to Pietro di Bages “plantam unam cum terra vacua coniuncta et collaterali sitam et positam in territorio Caltabuturi in pheudo Scandali iuxta vineam Mathei de boverio limite comuni mediante et iuxta Vallonem dicti pheudi. . . dicti vallonis scandali” [a plant with an adjacent vacant lot located and placed in the territory of Caltabuturo in Scandali feud, at the Matteo de boverio vineyard with a common border at the Vallonus of that feud [. . .] called vallonus Scandali] (Giambruno 1909: 373–378, n. CXV); Polizzi, 26 February, 1441: Beatrice abess grants under perpetual emphyteusis to Raimondo Sideli peciam unam terre vacue dicte ecclesie sitam et positam in contrata de Scandali iuxta Vallonem Scandalis [a piece of vacant land of the said church, located and placed in the district of Scandali at the Vallonus Scandali] (Giambruno 1909: 377, n. CXVI); Polizzi, 17 May, 1454: Guido Machuni procurator habitator policij procurator et jconomus monasterij sancte margarite concede in enfiteusi a Giovanni Giovanni Valenza “certam partem vinee ruynose et quasi deperdite. . . sitam in territorio calthabulturi in contrata de scandali . . .” [a certain part of the vineyard ruined and almost destroyed . . . located in the territory of Calthabulturo in the district of Scandali] (Giambruno 1909: 380, n. CXVII). We deduce that Scandale is the name of a vast territory characterized by the Valley where several plots of lands are situated. 29 Cf. Gr. σκάμμα (< σκάπτω) ‘ditch, trench’, Bovese. scanní neutral noun ‘stool’ < Byz.Gr. σκαμνίον < σκάμνος. Less likely the theory of a reinterpretation of a sequence of the chandak al-kastani type with lexicalization of the sequence chandaq al.
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legacy from Ancient Latin whose survival must also be acknowledged for preByzantine Sicily (Peri 1954: 364), or rather of a term from Graeco-Latin koine, considering the suffix -ali as well. Its semantics may perhaps be paralleled by the term vallonus, recurrent in the document. Scandali videlicet de Vallone recurs in documents from the 15th century. In fact, the toponym Σκανδάλη or Σκαντάλι is found in Lesbos in the nomos of Lemnos, whereas Scandale indicates a village in northern Calabria,30 near the ancient Greek metropolia of S. Severina (KR), situated on a high hill which rapidly slopes down into a deep narrow valley where the Esaro River flows. An estate with the same name lies near Mongiana (Rohlfs 1974: 308); as a surname it is attested to in the municipalities of Catanzaro, Crotone, Mesoraca and Petilia Policastro (Rohlfs 1979: 237). The notary’s great accuracy in indicating the toponym in all three chancery languages is quite understandable. Nonetheless, it is obvious that the translator scribe himself did not clearly discern the linguistic pertinence of the three names, but was interested in the exact topographic determination. If Latin was the chancery language of Messina’s notaries in 1346, which could have been in 1185 the vehicular language of the notary, the contracting parties and the witnesses? The problem may actually be of little relevance inasmuch as the notary’s accuracy in recording personal and place names should be taken for granted. However, we cannot rule out mistakes and false readings in the transliteration of toponyms on the part of Leone da Messina in the 14th century and, even more, on the part of the drafter of the copy of the transumpt drawn up in the 18th century and kept in the Grande Archivio di Stato of Palermo.
5 Toponymy in notarial ‘scripta’ Several theoretical questions arise preliminarily in the sociolinguistic historical study of toponymy (see Consani 2015). The first is the starting point of innovation: Is it triggered as the choice of the individual speaker, who has two or more lexical repertoires at his disposal, or is the diastratic collocation of the variety determining? Are any formal restrictions (constraints) identifiable in the rendition of toponyms? Can the syntactic structure of mixed microtoponyms be classified as a result of code-mixing / code-switching, seeing that these phenomena are triggered at the level of speech?31 Besides, we may wonder if, in the 30 Cf. Alessio (1939: 383) Gr. Σκανδάλη ‘spring’; Caridi (1987: 85–105). 31 Berruto raises the issue (2015: 33–52). Is a formalistic approach, in this case the generativist principle of the functional head, applicable to toponymy? Do lexical heads always determine the syntactic properties of their complements?
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translation of the compound toponym, the order of elements (modified-modifier) might have influenced the translations, though in ours the Arabic structure could easily be transferred into the vulgar tongue: ḥandaq *al-Qaṣṭanī > χανδάκι [*Καστανίας] > *Vallonus Castaneti, or vice versa. However, it should be remembered that the formal approach appears weak in principle as, in the case under review, the syntactic checking is not structural but extralinguistic. In our case, most of the data is qualifiable as “bad data”, to put it as Labov,32 since it comes mainly from multilingual diplomatic scripte, in addition not accurate and very divergent. It is necessary to establish not only the sociolinguistic identity of the speakers (= commissioners), but also that of the drafters of the texts. What dynamics are established when recording microtoponymy in notarial scripta? The hybrid compounds are by then rigid lexical forms and it is the L1 which determines their structure (cf. Savoia 2009: 127). Therefore, we cannot speak of code-switching in the word. Berruto rightly observes: “Non esiste codificazione normativa dello switching, che è fenomeno naturale, non regolato da standardizzazione né da norme di corretto parlare” [Switching is a natural phenomenon, it is neither codified, nor subject to the rules of standard, nor rules of correct speaking] (2015: 46). In medieval notarial deeds from Sicily diaphasic varieties of the same language intersect: notarial Greek and popular Greek, notarial Latin and vulgar Latin, notarial Arabic (Korhonen 2012). The aim behind the choices made by the tax official or by the notary being the incontrovertible localization of the place and its boundaries, it is therefore presumable that the choice would tend, in principle, towards the most usual forms. Nevertheless, given the fact that the identifiability of the property designated by the toponym is guaranteed by other elements (detailed description of the boundaries), we cannot rule out that the choice of the toponymic form and the order in which the names are mentioned are dictated by political-ideological intents, particularly in case of official registers. We should consider that our document dates back to a period in which the Arab-Muslim component was already ghettoized; merely fifteen years before, in 1161, there had been the massacre of Muslims in Palermo. No doubt that a formal approach to contact sociolinguistics presents serious limitations for the past, especially when it is a matter of onomastic vocabulary. Phenomena of contact lexicalization certainly have to do with issues of cultural and social identity. We can acknowledge that the over 6000 names of the plateiai reflect a significant choice on the part of the bearers and in particular on the part of
32 Labov (1972: 98); cf. also Consani (2015, Introduzione).
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the parents who imposed them on their children. It is generally known that proper names serve as identifiers, veritable labels that are completely asemantic. However, they could testify to situations of sociolinguistic interest. The choice of a name or its transformation entails at any rate an affirmation of identity or a break with the past, especially in areas where different religious traditions coexist. We can guess which names are of Arabic origin from the typical standard structure, usually composed of an ism followed by the nasab ‘patronymic’ (X ben Y), by the kunya ‘nickname’ and/or by the laqab ‘hypocorism’. Moreover, it should be noted that Arabic names transliterated into Greek or Latin with full vocalization constitute an important source for the study of medieval Arabic morphophonology. Rural toponyms are really plentiful given the need to mark exactly the boundaries of the properties; such elements are conservative by nature and are not conditioned by the standard structures of the register. Is the microtoponym mentioned in the document the popular name? Or was it created artificially by the notary by means of transliterations, translations and calques? La Corte (1902) rightly refers to the dialectal form as the most genuine (even the current toponymy, recorded in the papers of the Istituto Geografico Militare is greatly distorted). But a greater prestige of Arabic and Greek seems undisputed still at the time of the two Williams where the hierarchy of languages is “an instrument of power”. Christianized Arabs were assimilated to the Greek cultural environment rather than to the Latin one, and Normans tolerated or even encouraged this process.33 Metcalfe (2002: 311): “a large body of 33 Cf. Enzensberger (2004: 439–440): “Die folgenden Urkunden Rogers II. für Palermo sind in griechischer Sprache ausgestellt. Dies ist ein weiterer Beweis dafür, daß die Wahl der Urkundensprache nicht ausschließlich nach der Sprache des Empfängers erfolgte, sondern die sprachliche Zugehörigkeit der betroffenen Bevölkerung bzw. der zuständigen Funktionäre ebenso eine Rolle spielte . . . Hier erscheint auch deutlich, daß die christianisierten Araber sich offensichtlich eher dem griechischen als dem lateinischen Kulturkreis anschlossen und dies von der normannischen Staatsführung anscheinend voll toleriert, wenn nicht gar gefordert wurde. Auf dem Gebiet der Staatsverwaltung hatte in Sizilien und Kalabrien das griechische und arabische Element eindeutig das Obergewicht, eigenständige lateinische Traditionen gab es nur in den früheren langobardischen Fürstentümern” [The following documents of Roger II for Palermo are issued in Greek. This is further evidence that the choice of the language of the notarial deeds was not exclusively based on the language of the recipients, but the linguistic affiliation of the affected population or of the responsible functionaries also played a role . . . Here, too, it seems clear that the Christianized Arabs apparently joined the Greek rather than the Latin culture, and this was apparently fully tolerated by the Norman government, if not required. In the field of state administration, in Sicily and Calabria, the Greek and the Arab elements had undoubtedly the greatest weight, while the autonomous Latin traditions were in force only in the previous Lombard principalities].
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vernacular interferences between Greek and Arabic that appear regularly in both public and private documentation throughout the entire Norman period suggest a similar conclusion of widespread Greek-Arabic bilingualism” (cf. also Falkenhausen 1987). For instance, the 1144 Greek-Arabic document (Cusa 1982: 614– 615) lists 24 names of Arab servants with Greek transcription. Problems become more complicated in case of “transumpts” or heterolinguistic transcriptions, which are more recent by one or two centuries, that is when Greek and Arabic were in decline. In general the notary gets the deed translated “de lingua et scriptura greca et sarracenica in latinam” ‘from the Greek and Saracen language and writing systems into Latin’, so that “apud omnes plena intelligentia et fides ex ipso tamquam a vero et originali transumto possit assumi” ‘everyone can get full understanding and reliability from the transcription as well as from the true and original (deed)’ (Spata 1862: 451–452). In his reconstruction of the social and linguistic situation at the end of the Islamic period, Metcalfe (2003: 22) notes how in 1190, thirty years after the end of the Islamic period, a diploma of Roger II (Rogerii ΙΙ Diplomata, no. 23, pp. 64–66) establishes that in the castrum ‘fortress’ of Patti only homines quicumque sint Latine lingue ‘whoever is a speaker of Latin’ were allowed (p. 78). The researcher deduces that “this remarkable proviso was designed to exclude Greek speakers as well as Arabic speakers, irrespective of their religion and shows explicitly, at least in this one case, how language was used as a defining measure of ethnicity”. The interpretatio ‘translation’ of Latin translators is declared de verbo ad verbum ‘word for word’; cf. Spata (1862: 455): “Ego . . . interpres scripturam arabicam dicti scripti ipsam scripturam transtuli de verbo ad verbum una cum predictis interpretibus et me subscripsi” [I . . . translator translated the Arabic writing of the text mentioned above word for word together with the mentioned translators and signed]. Even with regards to the accuracy of the writing, Spata (1862: 450) observes: “The ink is black, the Latin script is clear, not so the Greek one, which is unrefined and crass”. The confusion of notaries seems obvious as, with regard to toponymy, they did not distinguish well between the three languages.34 The importance of transliterations is not only phonetic, but also sociolinguistic. It is significant that the majority of Arabic derivations have subsisted 34 Metcalfe 2001: 47: “This distribution of synonyms is both erratic and curious”. Cf. Caracausi (1988: 17): “It is indeed not uncommon that in copies, translations, transumpts, Arabic or Arabicized forms which were incomprehensible to editors were so badly distorted as to make their exact reconstruction impossible. Such an event could have occurred much more easily in case of toponyms, failing the guiding help of the context”.
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until today adapted to Romance phonetics.35 To the Arabic substratum some also attach syntactic traits widely used in boundary registers, such as lexical duplication; in actual fact – according to the prevailing opinion – a Greek stylistic element loaned to Arabic and Latin (e.g.: τὴν ὁδὸν ὁδὸν > al-ṭarīq al-ṭarīq > per viam viam ‘right along the road’), which confirms the solidity of the Greek substratum.36 The pertinence of cases of mixed toponymy, ‘portmanteau’ words (Mongibello type), still remains sub judice. Are they the result of an intensive and prolonged bilingualism or a phenomenon of synonymic repetition to answer the need of great precision of the diplomatic language? In short, in the case of our estate, only the origin and fortune of the Scandali appellation, designated as Latin in documents, but most likely of Greek origin, remain uncertain. Nevertheless, the usefulness of a study of these onomastic materials from a sociolinguistic point of view is confirmed. Finally, the theory of a Siculo-Arabic Creole in the 12th century cannot be based simply on onomastic data, which is why it would be more prudent to speak of a bureaucratic lingua franca. Pagliaro’s balanced position, expressed in 1934, still applies as it calls into question the idea of a complete substitution of Sicilian Latin in favour of Arabic: Costretta a apprendere l’arabo per potersi intendere coi dominatori, la popolazione indigena anche degli strati più bassi non dimenticò il proprio idioma, come certo non abbandonò intieramente le costumanze e la religione dei suoi padri. In quest’idioma portò dall’arabo soltanto quegli elementi che, per essere legati a vari settori della vita pratica dove più si esercitava l’influenza dei dominatori, erano venuti ad avere diritto di cittadinanza nella sua coscienza linguistica. [Forced to learn Arabic to be able to understand each other with the rulers, the local population even from the lowest strata did not forget their own language, as they certainly did not entirely abandon their forefathers’ costums and religion. Into this language they brought from Arabic only those elements that, being linked to various areas of practical life where the rulers most wielded their influence, had gained a right of citizenship in their linguistic consciousness.]37
The question concerning the usability of our data coming from chancery scripta for a historical reconstruction of the linguistic transformation therefore remains unresolved.
35 Of Arabic derivation is for example Monte Gibilmesi, in the magna divisa of Iato (Monreale) < Ar. Jabal al-Maʿaz ‘Mountain of the goats’, which in Latin is translated as mons caprarum. For a list of toponyms translated from Arabic into Latin cf. Metcalfe (2001). 36 See Metcalfe (2012: 37–55), Metcalfe (2003: 127–140). 37 Pagliaro (1934: 371–372).
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Immacolata Pinto, Giulio Paulis and Ignazio Putzu
14 Morphological Productivity in Medieval Sardinian: Sociolinguistic Correlates. Action Nouns and Adverbs of Manner 1 Introduction The majority of sociolinguistic correlational studies usually concentrate on linguistic variables such as the single units of a system or on individual language components, e.g. single phonemes/phones. However, an increasing amount of research has started to show an interest in the correlation between more complex traits, such as micro-systems or sub-systems (Berruto 2013).1 More specifically, the frequency of lexemes and morphemes derived from the classical languages in the Romance languages is directly proportional to a low or high degree of Ausbau. As a consequence, the productivity of morphemes derived from classical sources is increasingly guaranteed by the steady and continuous contact with the Greek-Latin cultural-superstrate. This came about within the lengthy process that started with the emergence of the vulgar varieties to the use of official and written versions, and then culminated in the formation of the so-called “national languages” (at the same time, therefore, as national states came into being and language policies were established).2 However, an everincreasing level of Ausbau was not just a phenomenon that characterized the 1 As part of the current PRIN research on historical sociolinguistics, and within the field of phonetics/phonology, Mion (2015) has recently proposed this kind of analysis for the structural micro-system of the emphatic sounds in a number of peripheral regional varieties of Arabic spoken in the Mediterranean. Likewise, a growing number of morphological studies have started to focus more attention on any eventual social correlates within linguistic processes. For example, as regards the scope of this paper, Pinto (2004, 2012) underlines how the productivity of more than one of the morphological rules active in Sardinian depends on linguistic and extra-linguistic factors (for more on the topic in general, see also Romaine 1985; Plag 1999; Lindsay 2012). 2 As regards Sardinian, see Paulis (1998); for more about linguistic nationalism in general, see Putzu (2012); Putzu and Mazzon (2012). Note: The present work is the result of a joint effort by the authors; Ignazio Putzu was the main author for paragraphs 1, 4, 5.2; Giulio Paulis for paragraphs 2, 3, 6; Immacolata Pinto for paragraphs 5.1, 5.3, 5.3.1. Immacolata Pinto, Giulio Paulis and Ignazio Putzu, Università di Cagliari DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-014
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sociolinguistic history of those Romance varieties that went on to become national and official languages. Several other variants, which for historical reasons never became national languages, also arrived at the Age of Nationalism with equally high levels of Ausbau, especially as regards their subcodes (e.g. literary ones). The development or non-development of elaborate codes is seen as an obvious and notoriously discriminating factor in the oppositional language-dialect continuum proposed by a Klossian-type theoretical framework (Kloss 1968, 1978, 1987). For reasons of space and above all relevance, our analysis will concentrate mainly on Late-Medieval Sardinian, that is to say, from the late XI century to around 1409/1478, which is the only medieval period in which Sardinian appears in a written official form. The study is divided into two parts. The first section gives a brief outline of the macro-sociolinguistic situation of Medieval Sardinian, and also provides information about the number of varieties of languages attested in the known documentation (legal-administrative and chancery records). It also offers a few essential references to historical sociolinguistic literature in order to contextualize the theoretical framework. The second part contains a synthetic analysis of three specific cases that concern the morphology of Medieval Sardinian: for two of these cases (negative prefixation with in- and adverbs of manner in -mente), macro-sociolinguistic factors can be shown to be at the basis of the application (or non-application) of a productive rule. The third case is a work in progress regarding action nouns.
2 The Sardinian social repertoire in the XI–XIV centuries The Sardinian social repertoire underwent numerous changes throughout the course of the four centuries that are considered here. For a series of obscure historical reasons, Sardinian (in its documented Medieval varieties or, better, the Logudorese, Arborense and Campidanese scriptae) soon became the official language of the offices and chanceries of the Giudicati, and was also adopted in legal, administrative, economic and military proceedings.3 This led Tagliavini ([1949] 1982: 516) to make the following comment: 3 Documentary evidence has shown that medieval Sardinia was divided into four independent kingdoms called giudicati at least from the XI century onwards. There is no shortage of literature about the subject and, hence, readers are referred to just a few titles which are essential for providing a general overview: see Putzu (2013, 2015). For an overview on changes in the Sardinian linguistic diasystem in the Middle Ages, see Paulis (1983, 1997), Dettori (1994), Loi Corvetto (2000).
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Dal punto di vista dei testi volgari antichi, la Sardegna è, senza dubbio, la parte d’Italia che ce ne dà la messe più abbondante ed omogenea. La documentazione ha grande valore linguistico oltre che storico-giuridico (giacché molti testi antichi sardi sono documenti di primaria importanza per la storia del diritto italiano) ma è assolutamente priva di valore letterario. [From the point of view of ancient vulgar texts, Sardinia is undoubtedly the part of Italy that provides us with the richest and most homogeneous collection. These documents are extremely important in terms of their linguistic content and also make a valid contribution to legal history (seeing that many of the ancient Sardinian texts are of primary importance for the history of Italian law) but their literary value is negligible.]4
As Sardinia gradually withdrew from the sphere of Byzantine influence and Byzantine Greek stopped being used officially (Putzu 2015), following several centuries of indisputable bilingualism, Sardinian proved itself to be perfectly functional for use in politics, administration, and so on. Indeed, it was used for almost all official purposes, except for those linked to the Church or international relations (Virdis 2004), in a context that saw Sardinia, particularly after the schism of 1054, fall under the governance of Western Europe. The oldest Sardinian document to have come down to us in its original version (in the lack of Sardinian medieval documents) is the Carta di Nicita (1064/65) (Serra 2015). The so-called Merovingian Latin of the text clearly demonstrates the extremely limited linguistic competence of its writer and also indicates that the language was little used. Thus, the eleventh century opens with a repertoire dominated by Sardinian varieties that lie along the different axes of variation, with a possibly high use of residual Byzantine Greek in the Church, and especially in the monasteries of Eastern doctrine as well as in the kingdoms of Calari and Arborea. However, as the century drew to a close, Latin was reinstated, not only as the language of the Church, under the influence of the monastic orders obedient to Rome, (except for the Vittorini from Marseilles, who had settled again in the south of the Island, and who continued to favour the use of Greek), but also as the official language of the Giudicati in the sphere of international relations. During the XII and XIII centuries, Latin played an increasingly functional role, especially within the high-status domains of the repertoire, even though Sardinian was still the main language in terms of use and for official purposes. On the other hand, the growing influence of Pisa and Genoa determined the constitution of an Italian-speaking mercantile community and the gradual spread of Italian as the language of commerce. 4 On the “literary” aspects in the writing of the Condaghi, see Delogu (1997) and especially Serra (2012).
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The dawn of the XIV century was characterized by the strong presence of Italian, especially in Cagliari and in the North of the island. However, the aftermath of the hard-fought Catalan victory (from 1323 onwards) and the consequent arrival of a population of Catalan-speakers,5 along with the expulsion of the Pisans and Genoese from their settlements, wrought numerous changes in the societal repertoire of several parts of Sardinia. In 1316, the Logudorese translation of the Confederate Commune of Sassari’s Statuti della Repubblica di Sassari, based on the original XIII century Latin version, is a clear indication of the status of Sardinian in the linguistic repertoire of a community that is extensively not Sardinian. Moreover, this period also saw a diminished Pisan, Genoese and Catalan presence in the powerful and last-surviving Giudicato of Arborea. In the second half of the XIV century, the Giudici set about collecting and organizing the local body of laws, which derived mainly from Roman law (sa razone) and orally transmitted customary law in Sardinian Arborense (Mariano IV’s Codice rurale and Mariano IV’s-Eleonora d’Arborea’s Carta de Logu). With the fall of the Giudicato of Arborea (1409/1420) and the subsequent loss of the Marquisate of Oristano (1478), Sardinian was no longer used for political and administrative purposes, but continued to be the language employed for the administration of justice. This was also due to the fact that the Carta de Logu came to be used as the standard for local law (1421) throughout enfeoffed Sardinia (excluding the “royal cities”).6
3 Some remarks on legal-administrative Sardinian Thus, as has already been mentioned, almost all the texts that have come down to us are either chancery or economic-administrative documents. An analysis of the medieval documents demonstrates a number of lexical, syntactic, and 5 In 1326, the Pisans were expelled from Castel di Castro (Cagliari), which was repopulated with Iberian inhabitants (DISTOSA: 263). In 1372, Sardinians and foreigners were exiled from Alghero which was repopulated with an Iberian community of Catalan speakers, (further expulsions were to follow in 1459 and 1478). 6 As Rainer and Buridant (2015) state: “It is important to bear in mind that what is sloppily called ‘Old French’ was not a homogeneous standard language, but a collection of regionally differentiated writing traditions scriptae”. Likewise, as regards Medieval Sardinian in the Giudicato period, mutatis mutandis, it is important to remember that the name covers different linguistic realties.
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textual differences that depend on the type of text, and when it was written. Generally speaking, the older texts (XI–XIII centuries) are characterized, on the one hand, by a strong structural homogeneity and formularity, which is typical of varieties that have been stabilized by use, while, on the other hand, they show a significant openness and adherence to the spoken language.7 This was due to the fact that the probative value of any testimony was influenced by the objectivity (and verisimilitude) of it being copied verbatim, and also by its conformity to the formulary repertoire in question. The language used in the Condaghi (monastery registers) is characteristic in this sense, since, as a consequence of the aforesaid openness to the spoken language, there are remarkably few (and relatively late) grammatical loan words from Tuscan for example. The oral traits in such texts (Virdis 2002) are the linguistic reflection of an age-old tradition of common law and orality in the practice of law and administration. By contrast, the syntax of legal texts from the XIV and XV centuries is far more complex and shows a far greater use of subordination with subordinates borrowed from Italian. Likewise, their textual articulation is generally more elaborate, which is also due to the presence of borrowed text connectives. Thus, despite differences, the written texts of officially recognised legal documents, such as the Statuti della Repubblica di Sassari and Arborea’s Carta de Logu (almost two centuries after the condaghi) demonstrate particular syntactic structures and a strong presence of loan words (from Classical Medieval Latin or Italian). This suggests that the drafting of the great legal corpora in the XIV century prompted the elaboration of an appropriate register within the functional legal subcode, and that this was modelled on legal works in Latin and Vulgar Latin (Italian, and to a lesser extent, Catalan). In this case, the model was also the source of the loan (Fiorelli 1994; Dettori 1994, 2004; Putzu 2013).8
7 Syntactic structures that are considered as typical of the spoken language are emphatic dislocations and also certain argumentative movements. On these aspects, see again Dettori (1994, 2001). This openness to speech means that the longer and more articulated texts of some of the Condaghi (such as the Condaghe di San Pietro) contain whole sections of dialogues. On the importance of the Biblical model in the configuration of speech, see Serra (2012). 8 Paulis (1997) masterfully highlighted the underlying presence of the very specific, Byzantine Greek and especially Latin textual patterns in medieval Sardinian legal texts. In this respect, see also Putzu’s review (2001) of Paulis (1997). These facts suggest that at least in this stage, the processing and standardization of the legal and administrative subcode of Medieval Sardinian was “hetero-directed” or, rather, that its paradigm was in another language (see Berruto 2005: 213).
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4 Linguistic data in a sociolinguistic perspective As recent lexical and morphological studies have shown, sociolinguistic studies are far more wide-reaching than they were back in the 1990s (Berruto [1995] 2005; Hernández-Campoy and Conde-Silvestre 2012). In particular, it is generally accepted that a) in principle, language variation in all its parts tends to be correlated with social factors and b) that this property affects not only individual units (such as phonemes), but also complex structures (systems) and processes (Auer 1997; Berruto 2013, 2015). In the case in question here, this kind of analysis is well suited for studying some of the phenomena related to Sardinian morphological derivation. As a matter of interest, the usefulness of derivative morphemes for such purposes had been proposed in different ways by several authoritative historical linguists (Meillet 1921; Coseriu 1971; Silvestri 1987) and historical sociolinguists (Romaine 1985; Rissanen et al. 1992), and this has been further confirmed by recent studies on diachronic morphology (Rainer and Buridant 2015). More specifically, this section will show how productivity of a rule can be conditioned by various extra-linguistic factors (status, function) which are reflected in the language (in terms of how the lexicon is composed or in morphological restrictions). Therefore, in this respect, the interface between morphological and sociolinguistic analysis is clearly represented by those cases of co-variation which are sensitive to the social context. Now, an (active) process may be associated with certain properties of the context of use which sets up a stable pattern that is classified as co-occurrence. In their turn, stably associated sets of co-occurrences determine different varieties of language, where language varieties are understood as conventionalized forms of embodiment of the system, which represent a recurrent pattern of concretization of some of the possibilities inherent to the system, which is activated by the socio-situational context (Berruto 2005: 63). This definition is well suited to the different varieties of Sardinian that make up the repertoire of Medieval Sardinian.
5 Some examples A number of other works on Sardinian which focused on word formation rules (prefixes, agent suffixes, Pinto 2004, 2012, 2015) also adopted a linguistic perspective for the study of extra-linguistic conditioning. As previously stated, this paper will briefly examine three cases: negative prefixation with in-; adverbs of manner with the suffix -mente, and action nouns with particular regard to the suffix -tione.
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5.1 Negative prefixation Diachronic comparative analysis (Pinto 2004, 2015) has shown that the negative prefix in- in the Romance languages developed in the more elaborate codes (classical languages), starting obviously from Latin. Instead, in languages like Sardinian (but see also Sicilian, Corsican, etc.), which for historical reasons did not undergo these processes of normalization and standardization, the negative in-prefix is only found in forms derived from the classical languages or Latinisms (Medieval Log. infirmu, inutilitate, inreparabiles, Stat. Sass. I, 9, 28, 29; II, 46) or, also from Spanishisms in the modern age, or from Italianisms in the contemporary period. As a consequence, the competing popular prefix (i)s- (< ex-, dis-), which also expresses a negative value (Pinto 2011), continued to gain ground as shown by the data in the table below: Table 1: Occurrences of in-negative and (i)s- and neoformations9 Occurrences XI–XIV
Occurrences XVIII c.
Neoformations XX c.
Prefixes
CSPS
CSNT
CSMB
Stat. Sass.
CdL
Cossu 1788–89
Wagner 1960–64
in-negative (i)s-
– 4
– 8
3 20
32 10
6 19
61 159
–10 309
Table 1 indicates the occurrences of the negative prefix in Medieval Sardinian and in a 1788 educational text,11 and shows, in particular: a) the continued use and high frequency of the (i)s- prefix; vs. b) the lack of continuity and low frequency of the negative in- prefix. 9 From a synchronic-diachronic point of view, it is essential to recognize the difference between attested forms and neoformations since the former do not always have a clear origin. However, in terms of a morphological analysis, both contribute to the realization of a pattern (see the concept of “derivative force” i.e. those conditions that favour the extension of a word formation rule, see Pinto 2012: 237, 2015: 265, see also Rainer 2004, Haspelmath 2002). 10 It should be pointed out that three lemmas with negative in- are found in Wagner ([1960–64] 2008): two of these are of Ibero-Romance origin while the other is a Latinism (see Pinto 2004: 201). As is well known, this datum is a result of the scholar’s deliberate choice of “genuine Sardinian” forms over words from the classical languages (Paulis 1996, 2008). However, even in those cases where different “ideological” choices have been made (see e.g Porru’s synchronic dictionaries [1832] 1981, Casu [1934–1947] 2002), there are still very few or practically no examples of neoformations with learned morphemes (see Pinto 2004, 2012, 2015; see also the following § 5.3). 11 This is a sort of instruction manual, in which a censore (a public official who is an expert in agriculture) is teaching a farmer how to grow mulberry trees and showing a woman the techniques for breeding silkworms and producing silk (Cossu [1788–89] 2002).
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5.2 Adverbs of manner: forms in -mente/-menti The majority of XI–XIII century Sardinian documents emanated by the offices and chanceries of the Giudicati (i.e. in documents with a high degree of formality) show little evidence of adverbs with suffixes grammatically derived from Latin MENTE. These forms are also practically absent from the condaghi (there is only one occurrence in the Arborense Condaghe di Santa Maria di Bonarcado 33, 7) which, even though they fall within the framework of a relatively formal register, were expressly – and to some extent deliberately – oriented to orality. The conjunction comente (and varr.) from QUOMO(DO) + -mente (see Wagner 2008 s.v.) is a peculiar case. This form, which is still functional in contemporary Sardinian and roughly corresponds to the Italian come, is present in several Romance varieties (see Meyer-Lübke 1935, 6972): consider, for example, the French comment. Since this form had already been lexicalized in Medieval Sardinian and was therefore not the result of the application of a word formation rule in the period under study, it will be excluded from our analysis. In texts from the XI–XIII centuries, the function of manner is expressed by single word forms (bene, male etc.) or through adverbials, which are essentially prepositional phrases rigidified in expressions such as levare a llarga ‘take away (unduly)’,12 hochier a ffura ‘kill in secret’ (said of tamed animals, e.g. Carta de Logu 38), etc. As regards XIV century documents, adverbs of manner in -mente are found in the Statuti Sassaresi (which, for the record, in a largely Italian speaking community, were translated from Latin into Logudorese),13 whereas we find examples of both -mente and -menti in the Carta de Logu, which was written in Arborense. -menti proves to be the only form in Campidanese and also appears in fourteenth century Pisan codes, such as the Breve di Villa di Chiesa, which has come down to us in a manuscript from 1327. This work will only focus on the Carta de Logu and in particular on the fifteenth century incunabulum (BUC, Inc. 230): this version also contains the so-called Codice rurale di Mariano IV and is slightly longer than the other manuscripts (BUC, ms. 211). The constitutio textus of the first critical edition of the 12 Expression “usata ad indicare il ratto a scopo di matrimonio” [used to indicate abduction for the purpose of marriage] (CSNT 151: see Gloss., levare 3; see Merci CSNT XXX). For adverbs in Medieval Sardinian, see Blasco Ferrer (2003, I: 216–218). 13 17 cases of such adverbs appear in the Libellus iudicum Turritanorm which is also in Logudorese and also dates from the fourteenth century. This is the only medieval Sardinian text dealing with historiography and not legal matters. However, it will not be considered here, since it has come down to us in a later version that dates to the Spanish age and shows traces of linguistic modernization (see Serra 2012 for a detailed and up-to-date analysis of the matter).
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incunabulum is the work of Giulia Murgia 2016 (as for the language of the Carta de Logu, see also Murgia, this volume). There are a total of 106 occurrences of adverbs in -mente / -menti, with 62 examples of the form -mente and 44 of the form -menti. As things stand, the two forms seem to occur in free variation. From a functional point of view, the following can be stated14: adverbs of manner in -mente / -menti never have nuclear functions at the predicate level (thus uses like Italian comportarsi correttamente are missing: for Old Italian, see e.g. mattamente si porta, in Bono Giamboni, Fiore di Rettorica, in Ricca 2010, 727). By contrast, the majority of occurrences (around 78% of the total) are subtypes of adverbs of manner which act as extranuclear verbal modifiers. For example: (1)
CdL 3, 5: Et in casu qui alcuno homini hochirit alcuno attero homini inprovisamente et non cum animu deliberadu et non pensadamente ma pro causa fortunabili secundu qui solint avenne multos desastros, volemus qui in tali casu istet et istari depiat at arbitriu et correctione nostra. ‘And if a man should kill another man suddenly, with no deliberate intent or premeditation, but merely by chance, which is how many catastrophes come about, in this case it is required that he should, and must, throw himself at our mercy and accept our punishment’.
The remaining occurrences act as adverb phrase modifiers and can be attributed to the following classes: a) adverbs of frequency (only one case: continuamente): (2)
CdL Cod., Proemio, 1: Nos Marianus, pro issa gracia de Deus, iuyghi de Arbaree, compte de Gociano et bisconti de Basso, considerando sos multos lamentos ‹qui› continuamente sunt istadus et sunt per issas terras nostras de Arbaree et de Loghudore, pro ssas vignas, ortos et lavores, [. . .] ‘By the grace of God, We Mariano, Judge of Arborea, Count of Goceano and Viscount of Bas, considering the many complaints (that) have been and are continuously lodged about our lands of Arborea and Logudoro, with regards to the vineyards, orchards and fields [. . .]’.
14 For the theoretical references, see Ramat and Ricca (1994, 1998), and for Old Italian see Ricca (2010).
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b) modal adverbs (three cases, with simigantemente as a variant, see Carta de Logu 8, 2): (3)
CdL 53, 3: Et pro sa secunda nunza ‹qui› l’at esser mandado et non at benne, paghit dinaris .xx. per lira et satisfaçat su spendiu simigiantimenti. ‘And for the second summons that will be sent to him and for which he will not come, let him pay 20 coins per lira thereby covering expenses’.
c) (4)
speech-act adverbs (8 occurrences of a single type: veramente): CdL 197, 3: Veramente si intendat que su pubillu de su bestiamini possat avere et appat regressu contro su pastore [. . .]. ‘In truth, it is agreed that the owner of the livestock can and will receive a refund from the herdsman [. . .]’.
Adverbs in -mente were never used to modify adjectives or other adverbs in the CdL. There is only one case of adverbs used as d) focalizers: (5)
CdL 51, 1: Volemus et ordinamus, considerando su grandu defectu et ma‹n›chamentu qu’est de notare in sa isula de Sardigna, non solamente in sas citadis, terras et loghos murados [. . .]. ‘We hereby decree that, considering the great shortage and lack of notaries in Sardinia, not only in the towns, lands and places protected by walls [. . .]’.
Finally, similemente and var. also appear as a connective providing textual cohesion (8 occurrences):15 (6)
CdL 101, 7: Et simigiantemente ordinamus qui cussas personas qui at clamare cusu homini qui fagherit testamentu pro curadores de cussos cerachos dessos benes issoro, e siant presentes a su faghire su testamentu o non, deppiant·indi esser constrictus de lus recivire et de esser tudores issoro, salvu si monstrarit legittimamente excusa pro sa quali non los poderent recivire et non poderent esser in sa dita tutela o curadoria.
15 On the frequency e.g. of Old It. simil(e)mente as both an adverbial predicate and connective, see Ricca (2010: 747).
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‘And in the same way, it is decreed that whosoever is nominated by he who drafts the will as the curators of these young people and their property, irrespective of whether they are present or not at the drafting of the aforesaid will, shall be forced to take them in and be their guardians, unless they are able to proffer a legitimate excuse as to why they are unable to take them in or act as their guardians’. Reasons of space prevent us from carrying out a strictly morphological analysis of the adverbs in question here. From a functional point of view, the fact that most of the adverbs in -mente/-menti which are found in the CdL are mainly extra-nuclear predicate modifiers is in line with Ramat and Ricca’s (1994) radial classification of adverbs which has the function of manner predicate modifier at its centre (Ricca 2008: 430), whereas the more eccentric functions, such as textual connectors, discourse markers and focalisers are gradually arranged towards the outside of this category. On the other hand, this configuration is predictive of the direction of development (cline) of the different cases at both a functional and formal level. An etymological analysis of adverbs in -mente clearly shows that the majority are derived from Italian and that their presence in Medieval Sardinian is therefore mainly due to linguistic borrowing. As regards the text in question, the number of examples of some adverb classes are too few to provide adequate data. However, the unquestionable polarization between central and peripheral uses is in line with expectations, both in terms of diachronic development and also as regards the “hierarchy” of borrowability (Haspelmath 2008), for which it is assumed that the elements conveying the core functions of a category are examples of earlier and more intense borrowing than those expressing progressively eccentric functions. Such a sudden and clear difference between fourteenth century documents and those dating from the XI–XIII centuries can only partly be explained in terms of diaphasic and, albeit indirectly, diamesic variations. On the other hand, it is common knowledge that orality also had a strong effect on the language in the CdL. In the process that took place in the fourteenth century when the traditionally, partly oral, Sardinian community law was set out in a written corpus, marked diaphasic factors, and diamesic ones for the written language, determined the loan of lexical, morphological (and even syntactic) items from the model language (or, better, from the language in which the model texts were drafted as far as the written register was concerned) to the copied language.16 16 On the problem of distinguishing between internal and external factors in borrowing, see Curnow (2001).
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This is consistently evident even in a negative example, for example, pairs like humile et dolciemente (Novellino, nov. IV, ed. by Sicardi, quoted in Migliorini [1954] 1957: 148) are completely missing from the CdL17. To quote Migliorini (1957: 154), “il costrutto ereditario romanzo, ancora vivo nei primi secoli in italiano al pari che nelle altre lingue neolatine, si estenua nel Trecento. E il fatto che non appaia nelle maggiori opere letterarie di quel secolo toglie al costrutto la possibilità di rientrare nell’uso, attraverso l’efficacia normativa di esse.” [In the early centuries the construct inherited from the Romance languages was still found in Italian, just as it was in the other Romance languages, but it fell from use in the fourteenth century. And the fact that this construct never appeared in the major literary works of the century and the efficiency of their rules prevented it from any possible reutilization.] Other studies involved in this research project have also demonstrated that this inter-linguistic contact occurs within precise sociolinguistic orders and levels.18
5.3 Action nouns The case of action nouns further confirms the comments made in relation to the two previous cases since, once again, we are dealing with a case of the non-productivity of a derivational morpheme of learned origin (-tione). At the same time, a systematic analysis in a diachronic and synchronic perspective clearly shows how the base structure and the related structural constraints play a decisive role in terms of the productivity of a rule. This poses a number of research questions, which, in our case, are related to discovering why there is an increased presence of deverbal nouns with zero suffix in the Condaghi compared to other legal texts, and explaining the extralinguistic and linguistic causes. In particular, the nouns in the Condaghi are almost exclusively action nouns like kertu, conporu, fura, larga, followed as regards their number by nouns ending in -(t)ura (es.: partitura, postura, binkidura); on the contrary, almost all the action nouns in the Statuti Sassaresi end with the suffix -tione and -mentu, with more examples of the former than the latter (e.g. condennatione, deliberatione, electione, taxamentu) followed by nouns in -tura (e.g. cassatura). The Carta de Logu, much the same as the Statuti Sassaresi, has a large number of
17 On these forms, see also Patota (2010). 18 It is worth recalling that the linguistic configuration of this type of document is highly dependent on the scribe or copyist and, hence, one cannot automatically extend any generalizations about the phenomena found in the text to the “language” tout court.
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nouns in -tione and -mentu (e.g. execucione, juigamentu), but also, just like the Condaghi, a greater quantity of zero suffix nouns (e.g.: nunça, chertu, clamu). The following table provides some initial quantitative data on the framework that has been described up until now. The table shows the number of types with the most frequently occurring word formation rules in the analyzed corpus that dates from between the XI and XIV century, compared with a bilingual “educational” text from the Savoy and Piedmont period.19 And finally, the number of neoformations found in Wagner’s etymological dictionary are also shown (2008): Table 2: number of types with the following WFR: N-u, N-a; N-mentu; N-tura; N-tione Occurrences XI–XIV
Occurrences XVIII c.
Neoformations XX c.
WFR
CSPS
CSNT
CSMB
Stat. Sass.
CdL
Cossu 1788–89
Wagner 1960–64
N-u/N-a N-mentu N-tura N-tione
16 5 11 3
12 1 7 1
14 3 10 11
14 38 19 55
19 21 9 27
6 11 4 29
56 9 16 –20
In particular, it should be noted that the suffix -tione, just like the negative in- prefix, has not become productive in Contemporary Sardinian, and that the popular model is preferred over the learned one, albeit with a different base structure. In fact, the base in the production model of Contemporary Sardinian is generally composed of a parasynthetic verb, which is in contrast with what happened in Medieval Sardinian (see Medieval Sardinian kertare vs. Contemporary Sardinian imbrunkai, Medieval Sardinian largare vs. Contemporary Sardinian inkundzare, that is to say, V-are vs. Pref-V-are). These different bases give rise to different structures as shown in the following table:
19 The Savoy-Piedmont period lasted from 1718 to 1861. This was the phase when Sardinian was used alongside Italian to express an anti-Spanish feeling (see Dettori 2001). 20 The same observations for negative in- also apply to -tione. In particular, there are three lemmas of exogenous origin ending in -tione (Pinto 2011: 154). Despite the presence of a great number of lemmas with this suffix in synchronic dictionaries, see e.g. Porru (1981), Casu (2002), there are no neoformations in Contemporary Sardinian. Loans are also far more common in written Sardinian literature than neoformations (e.g. Camp. Cali occupazioni? S’occupazioni sua fut cudda. . . Lobina 1987: 92; a fai cudda rivoluzioni chi narànta. . . , Lobina 1987: 96).
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Table 3: Structure of action nouns in Medieval and Contemporary Sardinian Prevalent structures found in Medieval Sardinian
Prevalent structures (productive in Contemporary Sardinian)
N-u, N-a
e.g.: kertu e.g.: larga
Pref -N-u, Pref -N-a
e.g.: Camp. imbrunku ‘obstacle’ e.g.: Log. inkundza, camp. inkunǧa ‘harvest’
–
–
Pref -N-ada
e.g.: Camp., Log., Nuor. abbuddada ‘feast/ binge’
N-tura
e.g.: cunjatura
Pref -N-tura
e.g.: Log. ispedriadura ‘freshly ground flour’
N-mentu
e.g.: juigamentu
Pref -N-mentu
e.g.: Log. illimbamentu ‘malicious gossip’
N-tione
e.g.: electione
–
–
In addition to their fundamental role in Contemporary Sardinian, it is worth pointing out that parasynthetic verbs were also extremely common in the medieval phase of all the Romance languages, at the time when these varieties presented a greater mutual convergence in terms of word formation rules. (Migliorini [1960] 1994: 152, e.g.: it. allibrare, indenaiato, sbarbare; Reinheimer Rîpeanu 1974, see also Bisetto 2010). It is common knowledge that parasynthetic verbs are closely connected with the evolution of the popular prefixes in- ad- and s-, the three most productive prefixes in Sardinian (Log., Nuor., Camp. a(d)- (< A-/AD -), Log., Nuor., Camp. in- (var. il-, im-, ir- (only spatial- conceptual), (< IN -), and Log., Nuor. is- (var. il-, im-, in-, ir-), Camp. s- (var. š-) (< EX-, DIS -), and that they have a long history in all the Romance languages. It should be recalled that the increase in productive prefixes in the Romance languages was a direct result of the presence of learned prefixes in some of these varieties, that is to say, in those which nowadays have become national and official languages (see the aforementioned case of negative in-). Therefore, the non-productivity of -tione in Sardinian is a direct consequence of the various extralinguistic conditions that were also observed for the negative in- prefix, and mainly due to the absence of an established and long-lasting learned lexical layer. Furthermore, the growing number of exclusively parasynthetic verb forms in the Sardinian lexicon, which generally do not take this suffix, also had an inhibiting effect. For example, the restrictions for It. -zione are closely linked to the presence of a rich lexical layer21 which derives from a learned source and is both stable and continuous. In fact, the restrictions on 21 As demonstrated by various scholars, the presence of a specific lexical layer is fundamental for the productivity of a word formation rule (see Marchand 1969; Gusmani 1986; Heinold 2009; Martín Arista 2011; Pinto 2012).
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the Italian suffix -zione dictate that it normally appears with bases that have a) learned prefixes (e.g.: It. impreparazione); b) learned suffixes (e.g.: It. -ific-, -izz-, unificazione, laicizzazione); c) learned bases on account of their phonological features (e.g.: It. obliterazione) or ones that come from specialist languages (e.g.: It. catalogazione, coibentazione, formattazione, etc.; Gaeta 2004: 227–332). As a result of these restrictions, It. -zione is generally not found so frequently in parasynthetic verbs that have been formed with the popular It. prefixes ad-, in-, e s-, and in which, the competing suffix -mento usually results as being more productive (e.g.: It. abbattimento, infarcimento, etc.).22 From an inter-linguistic perspective, the absence of neoformations in Sardinian outlines a situation that is diametrically opposed to that of the official and national Romance systems, in which -tione in its learned form has become the most productive suffix, with the exception of Romanian23 (see the section on Romance languages in Müller et al. 2016, see also the concept of “euromorphology” in Rainer 2002). Once again, it is clear that morphological productivity plays an extremely important role in a diachronic approach in the correlation between a linguistic datum understood as a cluster or, rather, as an indicator of a set of linguistic data that co-occur in determining a relevant sociolinguistic variable (Berruto 2013: 33; Auer 1997). 5.3.1 Analysis of action nouns’ meanings At this point, we shall now go on to analyse, at least as regards their form, the main meanings that are attributed to action nouns in medieval Sardinian. For reasons of space, we shall limit our analysis to a few representative examples of the types shown in the table above (Table 2). In particular, this article will focus on how “action” and “result of action” functions are expressed, leaving any possible semantic specializations to be dealt with eventually by future research. 22 The contrasting sociolinguistic data for Italian and Sardinian once again confirm the close links between synchronic and diachronic data. (see Thornton 1990: 200–206; see also Säily 2014; Scherer 2015). 23 In fact, the popular form -ciune (es.: stricaciune ‘deterioration’) prevailed in Romanian, until the XIX century. Then other forms entered the language due to contact with French (e.g. -ţie and var., e.g. erudiţie ‘erudition’, especially until halfway through the XIX century; -ţiune from the 1950s onwards, creaţiune ‘creation, in the sense of God’s creation’, see Fischer 1989: 34). In fact, to date, neither the popular nor the learned form are among the most productive WFR in the formation of action nouns. Instead, deverbal nouns formed with the suffix -re or through the conversion of supine verbs (e.g. pregătire ‘preparation’, râs ‘laugh’) are in first position (Grossmann 2016).
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Let us start by saying that the basic model underlying this type of text is a communicative event in which there are three essential components: the action, the participants in the communicative event (see agent, patient, beneficiary), and the result of the action. For example, in the case of the Condaghi, which often contain references to legal disputes (kertu), the participants are often called by name. See for example the Condaghe di S.Pietro di Silki, where there are only two occurrences of the form kertatore ‘lawyer’ compared to the 204 cases of the verb kertare and the 105 examples of the noun kertu. In fact, as clearly emerges from the texts and the legal praxis of the period, lawsuits were rarely put in the hands of a ‘lawyer’,24 but hearings generally began with a preliminary debate between the plaintiff and defendant before the judge or curator (administrator) who chaired the panel of judges or crown, and the other members of this panel (Dettori 1994: 473). This also explains the importance of the numerous dialogues between the contending parties which are often examples of direct speech (see CSPS 79 Kertu de servos ‘dispute over servants’): (7)
CSPS 79:
E GO Petru Muthuru ki kertai in corona de iudike Gosantine, cun Ithoccor de Kerki, e ccun Ithoccor de Carbia, (. . .) pro fiios de Barbara Rasa, (. . .) . Et issos kertarunimi ca « alicando nen a pparentes nostros nen a nnois, nond’apit kertu fattu, e nen binkitos in co nos kertas » (. . .) ‘I Petru Muthuru who took part in a legal dispute in the crown court of Judge Gosantine with Ithoccor de Kerki and Ithoccor de Carbia, [. . .] over the children of Barbara Rasa, [. . .]. And they protested that “there have never been legal proceedings against us or against our parents, and nor have we ever lost any case that regards these charges”’. This short passage clearly shows how the plaintiff and the defendant against whom the kertu has been filed are called by their proper names, usually introduced by the preposition cun. It is also interesting to note that the subject of the dispute (pro fiios de etc.) is stated, followed by the actual conversation between the contending parties, generally introduced by the complementizer ca (Wagner [1951] 1997: 326–327). The situation as regards the distribution of the two functions in question (“action of V” and “result of V”), compared to the increase in the number of competing forms within the same text and within the entire corpus, could be
24 For the meaning of ‘lawyer’ see also the translation as kertadore suggested by Murgia (2016) (sheet 62 De chertadore).
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summarized as follows. Generally speaking, examples in -mentu, and -tione in the Condaghi overlap with those ending in -tura as far as the function of “action of V” is concerned, whereas the “result of V” is usually expressed with the zero suffix,25 as shown in the following examples: (8)
CSMB 12.4: Et sa parte26 de sa mugiere, si obierit sine filiis, remaneat tota assa domo de sancta Maria ‘And the part due to his wife, if she were to die childless, shall be left to the entire rural complex of Santa Maria’.
(9)
CSMB 101.3: Custa particione fuit facta in Masone de Cabras davenanti Ugo de Bassu iudice d’Arboree ‘This division was carried out in the Masone of Cabras before Judge Ugo de Bas of Arborea’
(10)
CSMB 100.27: custa partidura fegerus plagende assu curadore et assos maiores ki levaant sa parti pro iudice ‘This division was made with the consent of the liquidator and the maiores who acquired what was due to the judge, on his behalf’.
(11)
CSMB 166.3: custu partimentu amus factu, sos donnos, a bene [. . .] ‘This division was carried out by us, the owners, for the good’.
On the contrary, in the Statuti Sassaresi and in the Carta de Logu, nouns in -tura mainly express the “concrete result of an action” as shown by the following examples:
25 It should be noted that the reference dimension of this type of analysis is synchronic and that, regardless of its origin, the function a form generally takes must be identified in relation to the other directly competing forms (Rainer 2004). 26 It is worth noting that parte is a synonym for parçone: e.g. sa parthone sua de su saltu de Veneriosu et issa parte sua dessu saltu de Frassinetu ‘his part of saltu (areas of uncultivated forests or pastures) de Veneriosu and his part of saltu de Frassinetu’ (CSNT 257, 2). In fact, parthone and parte have the same value in all the examples considered: ‘result of V’.
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CdL (passim) Cobertura ‘roof’, cunjadura ‘fence’, intradura ‘entrance’, mescadura ‘crossbreed’, tentura ‘the capture of cattle grazing illegally and the relative sanction’, iscriptura.27
(13)
St Sass, respect.: I, 3; I, 35; I: 73: cassatura ‘cancellation’, cauallicatura ‘mount’, cottura ‘cooking/baking with reference to bread, food’.
Furthermore, the nouns in -tione and -mentu basically express the same function (almost as if they were proper synonyms, see firmamentu alongside firmatione; intendimentu alongside intentione in the Stat. Sass.; see for Old It. Bisetto 2010). In fact, as is well known, the suffix -mentu is also used to represent the ‘action of V’ ( juigamentu, pagamentu CdL), expressed in classical Latin by -tiō (Fruyt 2011: 160), and which can be seen in a comparison with the Latin version of the Statuti Sassaresi (e.g.: donamentu I, III vs. donationem in the Latin version). Therefore, the suffix -tione in fourteenth century Sardinian is also of learned origin and thrived in the language of the law, as proven by the various historical documents. Its use then diminished when socio-historical and, more generally, macro-sociolinguistic conditions changed. On a structural level, the new form did not catch on, since it was disadvantaged by the presence of highly productive processes of popularization, which were therefore entrenched in the language,28 such as suffixation in -mentu and in -tura to express the function of “action of V”. The latter was in systematic opposition and complementary to the backformation (initially from simple verbs, and later from parasynthetic ones) used to express the function of “results of V”. Moreover, morpheme induction did not easily take place and derivational processes were not activated in the Sardinian legal code, since it lacked the learned bases, with which the learned affixes could combine.
6 Conclusions Based on current data, the situation of negative in-, -mente and -tione can be extended to include the rest of the prefixes and suffixes in Sardinian. In other words, we can say that Medieval Sardinian (as well as, indeed, Contemporary Sardinian) lacks any productive learned prefixes or suffixes and only has complex lexemes with learned prefixes or suffixes. Therefore, the learned vs. 27 See Glossary in Lupinu (2010) and the one prepared by Murgia (2016). 28 In short, the notion of entrenchment is thus used in Cognitive Linguistics – and especially in Langacker’s influential framework of Cognitive Grammar (. . .) to refer to the degree to which the formation and activation of a cognitive unit is routinized and automated (Schmid 2010: 119).
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popular opposition is only applicable at the lexeme layer, but does not hold true for derivational morphemes. On the contrary, in Romance languages with an elevated degree of Ausbau, this antithesis also applies to derivational morphemes (especially from the nineteenth century onwards). The history of the Sardinian language, ever since it first appeared in medieval documents, shows a close correlation between its status as a historical variant and the varying levels of Ausbau within the language itself. In particular, on the one hand, a) the political code, which, as is well known, appeared very early on in the Romance languages, shows features of progressive elaboration based on models derived from functionally equivalent exogenous codes (Byzantine Greek, Latin, Italian and Catalan / Castilian, which differ in their type and period, while, on the other, b) the collapse of the local medieval kingdoms and the loss of political independence caused a rapid obliteration of the political code and, more generally of the elaborate codes which reaffirmed the aforesaid correlation ex negativo. This centuries-old situation contributed to furthering the image of Sardinian as an agro-pastoral language lacking any means of abstract expression (and thus with a reduced degree of Ausbau in Klossian terms), as emerged from the description produced by Max Leopold Wagner in the early twentieth century (Paulis 1996).
Abbreviations BUC Camp. CdL Cod. CSMB CSNT CSPS Fr. Inc. It. Log. N Nuor. Pref Sp. Stat. Sass. WFR
Biblioteca Universitaria di Cagliari Campidanese Carta de Logu Codice Condaghe di S.Maria di Bonarcado Condaghe di San Nicola di Trullas Condaghe di San Pietro di Silki French Incunabulum Italian Logudorese Noun Nuorese Prefix Spanish Statuti Sassaresi Word Formation Rules
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Corpus CdL: La Carta de Logu: a cura di Giovanni Lupinu (2010), Oristano, S’Alvure. CdL: Carta de Logu dell’Arborea. Edizione critica secondo l’editio princeps (BUC, Inc. 230), a cura di Giulia Murgia (2016). CSPS: Il Condaghe di San Pietro di Silki: a cura di Alessandro Soddu e Giovanni Strinna (2013), Nuoro, Ilisso. CSNT: Il Condaghe di San Nicola di Trullas: a cura di Paolo Merci (1992), Sassari, Delfino. CSMB: Il Condaghe di Santa Maria di Bonarcado: a cura di Maurizio Virdis (2002), Cagliari, CUEC. Stat. Sass.: Gli Statuti Sassaresi: a cura di Pier Enea Guarnerio (1892), in Archivio Glottologico Italiano XIII, 1–124.
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15 Geminated Consonants in the Vindolanda Tablets. Empirical Data and Sociolinguistic Remarks 1 Introduction The topic of this chapter1 is gemination in the Vindolanda tablets. In particular, the focus is on the graphemic and (possibly) phonological process of ‘spurious gemination’, i.e. the occurrence of double consonants that do not correspond to the normative spelling of Classical Latin; e.g. missi, resscribere, etc. (vide infra). Although these unexpected geminates have already received notice in previous literature, where they are interpreted as hyper-correct (Bowman and Thomas 1983: 72–74) or archaising forms (Adams 1995: 100), they have yet to be analysed in detail. The present analysis is quantitatively-driven and is couched in several linguistic layers, i.e. lexicon, morphology, prosody and segmental phonology. As we shall see, the phenomenon of ‘spurious gemination’ in the corpus Vindolandense is constrained to the lexical and phonological levels. After a short introduction on some historical and linguistic aspects of the Vindolanda tablets (Section 2), the phenomenon of spurious geminated consonants will be discussed (Section 3), with subsequent detailed analysis regarding the linguistic layers involved (Sections 4 and 5) and the variable degrees of literacy of the writers. The evidence from the Vindolanda tablets will be compared with that emerging from other corpora of non-literary Latin, such as the Uley tablets and La Graufesenque pottery, with special focus on the ‘fake’ gemination of (Section 6). Final remarks will try to summarise the main results, as well as suggest future lines of research.
1 The chapter is the result of a collaborative effort; however, for academic purposes only, Sections 2, 3 and 6 were written by Francesca Cotugno and Sections 4, 5 and 7 by Giovanna Marotta; Section 1 is shared. Special thanks are due to Francesca Mencacci, who read a previous version of this work. Francesca Cotugno and Giovanna Marotta, Università di Pisa DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-015
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2 The Vindolanda tablets The Vindolanda tablets have represented the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain for a long time. Only recently, the London-Bloomberg excavations have found a significant collection of Roman writing-tablets dating back to the 1st century CE (Tomlin 2016). Nonetheless, the Vindolanda corpus is still the largest and most varied collection of non-literary texts for Roman Britain. Therefore, their archaeological and linguistic relevance is extremely high, since they represent a direct source of data concerning the Latin language as it was written, and (presumably) spoken, in the British Isles in the first centuries of the Christian era.2 These tablets represent an intriguing snapshot of garrison life at a Roman fort between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE. The bulk of the corpus Vindolandense belongs to the historical period when the fort was occupied by the IX cohors Batavorum (roughly from 95 to 103 CE).3 The tablets here considered are the ink tablets, also known as tilia, which represent the Corpus Vindolandense stricto sensu.4 Apart from their multi-faceted content, linked to different text types, there is a great assortment of individual handwriting, adding new evidence to our knowledge of Roman cursive writing around 100 CE. Accounts, private letters and military reports compose the great majority of the Corpus Vindolandense. The Vindolanda speakers or, more precisely, writers, did not belong to a specific social class. As Halla-aho (2009: 21) has already pointed out, there were many scribes, with different degrees of education, ranging from very good writers to less-educated ones (Halla-aho 2011: 437). In the Vindolanda corpus, the handwriting in use is commonly known as 2 Vindolanda was one of the military forts built before Hadrian’s Wall (or the Antonine Wall) on the northern limes. As is well-known, the first writing tablets were unexpectedly discovered during Robin Birley’s 1973 excavation. The tablet fragments had lain for centuries in the ditches of the fort, preserved thanks to the anaerobic conditions. More fragments were then discovered in subsequent archaeological excavations organised by the Vindolanda Trust (see the web site http://www.vindolanda.com/_blog/excavation/post/end-of-excavations-season-update/). 3 The IX cohors Batavorum was an auxiliary unit residing in the territory of contemporary Netherlands, stationed at Vindolanda in the late 80s to early 90s CE as a cohorts quinquagenaria, and between 95 and 103 as a cohors miliaria. This unit, made up of non-citizen recruits, came from the region of the Upper Rhine, between the Rhine and the Waal (Battaglia 2013: 53). 4 As far as their size is concerned, the tablets were made from thinly cut slivers of wood, whose thickness varies from 1 to 3 mm. In relation to the type of text involved, if the text type was personal correspondence, they were about the size of a modern postcard, on which the correspondent wrote before folding the leaf in half and writing the address on the back. Conversely, if the text type was an account or a military report, the tablet was used in a different way: they were written across the grain – i.e. transversa charta – in a slightly bigger vertically oriented format (Bowman and Thomas 1983: 35–44; Cotugno 2015a: 59–60).
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Old Roman Cursive, a script generally used for documents and letters written in the Roman world in the first centuries CE (Bowman and Thomas 1983: 53).5 The wide spread of this kind of writing is reliable evidence for its prestige in all the Roman empire, since the wider the geographical domain of a script, the higher its social relevance (Turchetta, this volume). The Vindolanda tablets belong to the wide range of non-literary texts that are available for the Latin language. Although the language represented in the Corpus Vindolandense is basically correct (Clackson 2011), some deviations from the normative spelling of Classical Latin do occur. Since the pioneering work by Bowman and Thomas (1975), many studies dealing with different aspects of the Vindolanda evidence have blossomed over the last forty years. Bowman and Thomas (1983, 1994), and then Bowman, Thomas, and Tomlin (2010, 2011) investigated the historical and archaeological aspects of the findings, and Birley (2002) tried to shed light on Romano-British onomastics by combining archaeology and historical linguistics. From a more linguistic point of view, Adams (1990, 1995, 2003) inspected the texts and highlighted the sub-literary elements, on the path already marked by Väänänen (1937) for Pompeian Latin and then by Mann (1971) for British Latin. Moreover, Adams’ main works (2003, 2007, 2013) gave proper consideration to the Latin of Vindolanda, pinpointing the fact that, due to sociolinguistic variation, its linguistic uniformity is fairly demostrable. For instance, military reports (i.e. the renuntia) display a formulaic style, in which non-standard forms repeatedly occur; e.g. debunt for debent (Adams 1995: 102–3, 130–1; Clackson 2011: 517). This kind of text was normally written by the optiones, i.e. modestly literate under-officers who did not belong to the upper-class elite. Conversely, no substandard forms occur in other tablets written by more literate scribes. In more recent times, syntax has also been investigated. Halla-aho (2009) noticed a trend towards a rather extended use of the accusative, due to the substantial changes that occurred in the case system from the first centuries of the Latin Empire onwards. On the other hand, an indication of a more careful style is the OV order, which is the most frequent order found in the Vindolanda tablets. In parallel, Fedriani and Ramat (2015) have interpreted the different
5 According to Bowman and Thomas (1983: 60–67), the characters are often small and sometimes resemble modern capital (upper case) letters more than lower-case letters. In addition, ligatures sometimes join the letters together, since unlike modern handwriting, they are more usually written separately. The appearance of the Old Roman Cursive used in the Corpus Vindolandense looks like the script of contemporary papyri from Egypt, for instance Claudius Terentianus’ papyrus. For further details on the palaeographic aspects, see Cotugno (2015a).
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orders of syntactic constituents occurring in the Corpus Vindolandense in sociolinguistic terms. The recent work by Cuzzolin (2013) also deserves mention since it focuses on the difficulties in defining the Latin of Britain (Cuzzolin 2013: 129– 131) due to the spreading of bilingualism and diglossia in Britain and Ireland, especially between the 5th and 10th centuries. In this context, Cuzzolin acknowledges the relevance of non-literary corpora, such as the Vindolanda written tablets and the defixionum tabellae from Uley and Bath. From 1983 until the most recent 2011 update, the Vindolanda tablets have been edited by Bowman and Thomas several times. At the moment, the Corpus Vindolandense is composed of 772 documents. The extremely fractured state of the tablets, as well as the very faded ink, allows the reading of no more than isolated letters and hence, 245 texts were excluded from the linguistic analysis presented here. The remaining 527 tablets have been classified as follows: Table 1: Text types available in the Corpus Vindolandense Text Types
Number
Personal correspondence
Correspondence from men Correspondence from women
Official correspondence
Request of Leave Letters of Recommendation Memoranda Accounts Military Reports
Literary Texts Miscellany6 Total
233 12 11 4 2 78 46 7 134 527
As for methodology, each tablet was analysed with the aid of computer graphics software (such as Gimp) and graphic devices (such as Wacom Graphic Tablet) in order to identify the letters via their ductus and to enhance the image quality by adjusting grey-scale, brightness and contrast (cf. Bowman and Thomas 2003: 14; Cotugno 2015b). In this respect, it is worth taking a few words to consider the methodological criteria followed in our classification of the available data. A researcher working on the Vindolanda tablets can unconsciously run the risk of over-interpreting or under-interpreting the data, because the tablets are quite often difficult to read, due to the bad state of the writing surfaces or to the faded ink. Although 6 Bowman and Thomas (1983) and the succeeding editions of the Corpus Vindolandense offered a different classification. The category of miscellany includes the documents not belonging to one of the previous labels used.
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the more and more sophisticated tools available via software (see above) allow written materials to be cleaned and lightened, there is still a margin of arbitrariness in reading some of the tablets. In the present analysis, we take the direct reading and evaluation of the letters as the general criterion for including a word in the corpus of ‘false’ geminates. Only letters evaluated by both authors as having a sufficiently clear form have been considered. As a consequence, words reconstructed by the previous editors have been systematically excluded. An example of s-doubling is presented in Fig. 1.
Figure 1: Spurious gemination in the word commississem, Tab. Vind. 344
3 Spurious gemination In the current analysis, 47 instances of spurious gemination were identified by the authors of this paper in the Corpus Vindolandense using autoptic analysis (cf. Table 2). Because of their uncertain reading, other instances of spurious gemination reported in the literature have not been included.7 At a first glance, ‘false’ geminates show a scattered distribution. Verbs are the most frequently affected word class (22 instances). It is worth observing that the preferred target for the process are the verbal forms with the stem mis-, i.e. the perfectum of the verb mitto, as already signalled by Adams (1995: 85). The other classes most represented in the corpus are common nouns (16 tokens) 7 For instance, ssumma in Tab. Vindol. 645. The scriptio of this tablet is quite dense, with words generally separated by a small gap. The first s is readable, whereas the second was erased by the writer. This is quite common in the Corpus Vindolandense, where whole words appear to have been cancelled when the writer recognized the mistake in his writing. Another possible reading is proxuma, since the form ssumma is preceded by pro. See Adams (2003: 539) for further details.
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Table 2: Index of words with spurious geminated consonants in the Corpus Vindolandense Tab.
Text type
Word
Classical Form
Translation8
180 181 182 187 203 208 225 225 255 256 268 280 284 299 301 309 309 309 309 309 312 312 314 318 324 343 343 344 581 581 581 582 591 595 602 609 628 641 645
Account Account Account Account Account Miscellany Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Account Account Account Account Account Account Account Account Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp.
ussus uexsillari fIunnt 9 Viddicus offellam alliatum occassioṇẹṃ occassIonem ussibus remisseris missI missi exsigas missit sexs missi axses axsis axses missi misseras Viriccium missi missI resscribere nissI vexsare commississem Chnissone Exso[mni] Onessimo ChnissonI cummini (con)fussicI britt[anic-] Verruini uexsilló ussu fussá
usus uexillari fiunt Vidicus ofellam aliatum occasionem occasionem usibus remiseris misi misi exigas misit sex sisi axes axis axes misi miseras Viricium misi misi rescribere nisi uexare commisissem Chnisone Exomni Onesimo Chnisoni cumini confusici britani Veruini uexillo usu fusa
use flag-bearer to total10 proper name pork cutlet Food made with garlic opportunity opportunity use (if you) release I have sent I have sent (if you) expel I have sent six I have sent axles axles axles I have sent I you send proper name I have sent I have sent to write again except that to injure (If) I had committed proper name proper name proper name proper name cumin mixed Britains proper name standard use spilled
8 The following translations are drawn from Bowman and Thomas (1983, 1994, 2003) and from Bowman, Thomas and Tomlin (2010, 2011). 9 The original spelling with I longa has been retained. The I longa is adopted to mark both the long vowel and the glide (cf. Weiss 2009: 29). 10 Since the word fiunnt occurs in a list of food items, it has been translated with the verb “to total”.
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Table 2: Continued Tab.
Text type
Word
Classical Form
Translation8
645 645 662 691 691 716 735 838
Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Male corresp. Miscellany Account
resscribas resscribere maxsimum reffecti dimissi resscribas dixsit casseum
rescribas rescribere maximum refecti dimisi rescribas dixit caseum
you write back to write back the greatest restored I have sent out you write back Has said cheese
and proper names (7 tokens). Furthermore, we found just one conjunction (nissi) and one numeral (sexs). Many nouns affected by ‘spurious’ gemination are concrete and belong to every-day language; e.g. axsis, offellam, cummini, casseum. Personal names occurring in the Vindolanda tablets with spurious geminates do not belong to the tradition of Latin onomastics. Some of them are attested in other documents from different regions of Romania (e.g. Virricius-Viricius; Viddicus-Vidicus). There is also one example of an ethnonym (i.e. Britt[ani]) with the gemination of the letter corresponding to a voiceless dental stop, unique in this corpus. The only conjunction affected by spurious gemination is nissi (instead of nisi). Although it is attested only once in the Corpus Vindolandense, the same form occurs several times in other corpora of British Latin, such as Uley’s defixionum Tabellae (Leach and Woodward 1993; see below, Section 6). Morphological structure does not appear to be relevant, since spurious gemination occurs both at the morpheme boundary (e.g. resscribere) and within the word stem (e.g. occassionem, casseum). Prosody also plays no role in triggering the phenomenon, since both stressed and unstressed syllables are affected; for instance, offellam, casseum, ussus, as well as reffecti, resscribere. As for word position, the phenomenon occurs in intervocalic position in more than half of the tokens (23 cases; i.e. 49%). The remaining contexts concern five medial clusters (i.e. 11%) and a “hidden” consonant cluster, i.e. (11 cases; i.e. 23%), which also occurs once in final position (sexs). The only consonant cluster involved is , attested twice as resscribere and twice as resscribas. The form fiunnt (Tab. Vindol. 182) is a hapax legomenon, whereas fiunt is attested in two other tablets (Tabb. 180 and 185). Note that other ‘fake’ do not occur in the whole Corpus Vindolandense. Therefore, fiunnt may reasonably be considered a misspelling.
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4 Spelling and segments The spelling deserves special attention, as it does not represent a true example of gemination. In other words, cannot be considered a letter doubling, since it is merely a spelling of the phonetic cluster [ks] for speakers who intend to follow a general principle of formal transparency: one sound, one letter; two sounds, two letters. In Roman alphabetical notation, the letter is indeed the only one that stands for two sounds, as had already been observed by the ancient grammarians.11 It is therefore no surprise that the asymmetric equivalence [ks] = , typical of the alphabetical notation available in classical Latin, could have changed into the more transparent [ks] = . In the new spelling, the principle of bi-univocal correspondence between the letters and phonemes is respected, inasmuch as could represent a voiceless velar segment. Moreover, the interpretation of as a hidden cluster is confirmed by the same spelling which is found in many other non-literary Latin texts; for example CIL I2 582 exsigito, taxsat, lexs, proxsumeis; and, for the British area, RIB 169 uxsor, RIB 716 vixsit, RIB 1016 sexs, Uley’s tablets, exsigas. A new allograph for the phoneme /k/ is therefore attested in the spelling . As is well known in the history of Latin, other ancient allographs were normally conditioned by the following vowel: /k/ = , , . Instead, in the case of , the allograph is selected by the following consonant. Therefore, and may be considered graphic variants. If we continue to consider the consonant class, it is worth noting that consonants are not affected by spurious gemination in a uniform way. The consonant most frequently involved is the voiceless alveolar fricative, i.e. : 27 cases out of a total of 47 (i.e. 57%). The other ‘fake’ geminates, i.e. , occur only once each (except , twice). The lexical items involved in sgemination are mitto (missi six times, missit, dimissi, remisseris, misseras, commississem), usus (three times: ussus, ussu,12 ussibus), rescribere (rescribere twice, plus rescribas), occasio (occasionem, twice), fusus 13 (once) and two proper names (Chnisso and Onesimus). Some ‘fake’ geminates might be considered lapsus calami, since another geminate consonant occurs in the preceding syllable of the word (e.g. offellam, occassionem). 11 Cfr. Prisc. V. II p. 12 K.: x etiam duplicem loco c et s vel g et s postea a Graecis inventam assumpsimus. 12 The form ussu (Tab.Vind. 641) can be considered a nominal token as well as a verbal token (i.e. from utor). 13 The form fussa has been taken to be a past participle from fundo following Bowman and Thomas (1994) and Adams (2003: 556–557).
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As has already been observed, the forms derived from the perfect of the verb mitto are the most frequent ones: 11 tokens out of a total of 23, i.e. half. In the context of correspondence, this lexeme is expected. In detail, missi (six times), missit (once), dimissi (once), remisseris (once), misseras (once), commississem (once). This evidence does not appear to be a mere coincidence. As a matter of fact, this verb shows gemination in the present stem and in the form of the past participle (missus), whereas the perfect form in Classical Latin is misi, with a long vowel and a singleton consonant. On the grounds of the prosodic template CVCCV, occurring in mitto and missus, a perfect like missi could easily arise as an analogical form. Analogy is an extremely common cognitively motivated process, which works as a force in removing the irregularities and anomalous forms that, due to sound change, frequently occur in languages, as already suggested by Sturtevant.14 In the case in question, the allomorph missi for misi is a product of analogical levelling, motivated by a general principle of formal transparency and leading to the reduction of morphological alternations within a paradigm. Otherwise, the forms with the geminate could be considered archaic, since missi and missit are already attested in Old Latin (e.g. missit, CIL 12.1216; cf. Weiss 2009: 157). Their occurrence in the Vindolanda tablets might therefore testify the survival of the ancient spelling for this lexeme.
5 The special status of s As has already been stated, the large majority of examples of spurious gemination in the Vindolanda tablets involve the sibilant. This wrong s-doubling could be interpreted as a form of archaism or even hypercorrection (Bowman and Thomas 1983: 72–74), since the words involved in the misspelling are precisely those discussed by the ancient grammarians as instances of alternation in writing geminates with reference to the different ages of Latin. For instance, Quintilian (Inst. 1.7.20), who was almost contemporary with the bulk of the Corpus Vindolandense, stated that in documents remarkable for their artificial Latinity, such as laws and archaizing inscriptions, gemination would have been adopted for its old-fashioned flavour15 (Bowman and Thomas 1983: 73; Adams 1995: 89). 14 Cf. Sturtevant (1947: 109): “Phonetic laws are regular but produce irregularities. Analogic creation is irregular but produces regularity”. For further comments, see Anttila (1989). 15 Cf. Quint. Inst. I, 7, 20–21: « Quid quod Ciceronis temporibus paulumque infra, fere quotiens s littera media uocalium longarum uel subiecta longis esset, geminabatur, ut ‘caussae’ ‘cassus’ ‘diuissiiones’? Quo modo et ipsum et Vergilium quoque scripsisse manum 21 eorum docent. Atqui paulum superiores etiam illud quod nos gemina dicimus ‘iussi’ una dixerunt ».
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Such forms with singleton consonants after a long vowel (or diphthong) may be interpreted as evidence for Latin prosodic drift, pointing towards the removal of hyperheavy syllable rhymes composed of long vowels and long consonants, via the double route of vowel shortening (e.g. meitto > mītto > mĭtto) or consonant shortening (e.g. mīssī > mīsī).16 As is well known, the trend towards progressive lightening of syllable weight is even stronger in unstressed syllables: phenomena like iambic shortening17 and lex mamilla18 bear unequivocal witness to this trend. In parallel, a general drift towards the loss of the feature of length can be reasonably recognized as taking place in the long-term evolution of the Latin language.19 However, the Corpus Vindolandense shows a quite complex picture with regard to the prosodic context of spurious gemination, since the phenomenon occurs after both short and long vowels. On the other hand, vowel length is quite often marked in the Corpus Vindolandense, through I longa and apex, although with the inconsistent compliance of etymology. Taking into account the prosodic picture drawn so far, forms like missi, remisseris, etc. might also be interpreted as a reaction to the simplification of ss after long vowels, a phonological process which is known to have been in progress before the beginning of the Christian era. In such a vein, ‘false’ s-doubling could be considered a feature of archaism, as suggested by Adams (1995). Looking at other kinds of non-literary texts, Adams20 (1990, 1995: 89), Camodeca (1999) and Clackson and Horrocks (2007: 243) observed that in the Sulpicii archive, the libertus C. Novius Eunus wrote -ss- for -s- as many times as possible, even without any etymological motivation, as in scripssi (TPSulp. 51, 52, 67, 68), Cessaris (TPSulp. 51, 52), Cessare (TPSulp. 52). In the four chirographa belonging to Eunus, 28 of the 30 cases of doubled consonants involve , while the other two cases involve and (positta, TPSulp. 51, and Acceronio, TPSulp. 51). Conversely, we have some cases of continuants and stops written as single in place of double, as in suma for summam, mile for mille and, in other texts, faris for farris ‘spelt’ (TP.Sulp. 51, 52) and quator for quattuor ‘four’ (TPSulp. 16 See Sommer and Pfister (1977: 156), Leumann (1977: 202–203), Benedetti and Marotta (2014). 17 For instance, modō > modŏ; egō > egŏ. See Sommer and Pfister (1977: 106, 155); Leumann (1977: 108–109); Marotta (1999, 2006); Fortson (2011: 98). 18 The lex mamilla is a phonological process of Latin which refers to the degemination that mostly occurs in nominal derivation with a concomitant change in stress position; e.g. mamma – mamilla; offa – ofella, etc. See Leumann (1977: 184); Sommer and Pfister (1977: 106, 155); Giannini and Marotta (1989: 109). 19 See Loporcaro (2011), Marotta (2015). 20 Adams (1990) presents the old classification of the Tabulae Sulpiciorum; in detail, he considers documents 15, 16, 17, 18 as written by Eunus, whereas Camodeca (1999) numbered the same documents as TPSulp. 51, 52, 67, 68.
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51, 52). Moreover, in other inscriptions, such as the Lex de Gallia Cisalpina of 49 BCE (CIL I2.592), there are, for example, cases of remeisserit, repromeisserat, repromeississet and promeisserit (Adams 1995: 89). It is worthwhile to observe that there is no evidence of spurious gemination in the letters of Claudius Terentianus and in the ostraca from Bu-Njem (Adams 1995: 89). If s-gemination might reveal a taste for archaizing spelling, as claimed by Adams (1995: 88), it cannot be interpreted as a phenomenon typical of the sermo rusticus. One should wonder (rather than simply ascertain) how it is possible to recognize this special taste for the archaizing geminates. The Corpus Vindolandense is not a monolithic and homogeneous set of documents reflecting the same socio-cultural milieu, although their degree of literacy is on average quite high. What, then, could be the reason for the choice of archaizing spelling in the case of texts like the accounts or privatae epistulae? As a matter of fact, the distribution of spurious geminates in the tablets is concentrated in just these two classes of texts (cf. Table 2). With reference to text type too, Vindolanda data offer a scattered situation: out of the total 47 geminated consonants, 31 occur in male correspondence, 14 in accounts, and 2 in the so-called miscellanea. Taking into account the variables connected with the writer, 3 tokens belong to the prefect’s correspondence, in particular to drafts (e.g. Tab.Vindol. 225), 2 to centurions, 3 to decurions. There are also 29 tokens available for soldiers whose rank is that of decurion or lower (e.g. Tab.Vindol. 284, 312), 2 for civilians (i.e. Tab.Vindol. 343), 1 for a slave (i.e. Tab.Vindol. 301), and 7 uncertain cases (e.g. Tab.Vindol. 208; 691). Furthermore, s-gemination may occur together with forms of non-standard Latin; for instance, in Tab.Vindol. 343 the elision of final -m and the monophthongisation of ae also occur. Therefore, ‘fake’ geminates are constrained by the writer as well as by the text type. In particular, in some cases we are dealing with a mere list of items (e.g. Tab.Vindol. 591), where it would be surprising to find a feature mimicking a cultivated and archaic spelling. According to an alternative hypothesis (Bowman and Thomas 1983), the misspelling with s-doubling could be due to a phenomenon of hypercorrection, i.e. to a reaction against the trend towards degemination after long vowels. However, only 15 instances of wrong degemination can be counted in the Vindolanda tablets (e.g. Tab.Vindol. 341 karisime for karisime, Tab.Vindol. 439 ampula for ampulla), in view of 47 instances of spurious gemination. Only five of these 15 cases concern . Since there is no evidence for such a strong trend towards the loss of consonant gemination, it becomes difficult, at least at the level of the written language, to interpret ‘fake’ geminates as a reaction against degemination.
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On the other hand, Sihler (1995: 224) highlights how spellings with spurious gemination might be related in general to a possible corresponding shortening of the previous vowel. If this is the case, the spelling with a double ss points out the speaker’s provenience from a culturally low milieu, where the feature of vowel length was no longer in use. In sum, two opposite interpretations of spurious gemination face each other: on the one hand, spurious letter doubling bears witness to the first steps of language evolution pointing towards the loss of vowel quantity (Sihler 1995) or consonant gemination (Bowman and Thomas 1983); on the other, Adams (1995) states that spurious gemination must be considered an archaizing spelling. Contra Sihler, one might underline the fact that it does not seem plausible to state that the prefect of the IX cohors Batavorum, i.e. Cerialis, as well as his scribes, would ever have been incapable of discriminating between a correct spelling and a wrong one. On the other hand, contra Adams, many tablets are accounts; in detail, 5 of the 36 cases21 show spurious gemination of in this text type. This kind of text did not usually exhibit any special stylistic pretension, as they regard the domestic administration of the praetorium, or stock lists, small transactions and recipes. Thus, for this kind of text we are forced to assume something different from archaism as a means of interpreting the wrong letter doubling. The “anomalous” gemination, which is not linguistically motivated, concerns both lexical and morphological contexts and refers to verbs in common use, as well as to common and concrete nouns belonging to the sermo cotidianus (cf. Section 3). An alternative hypothesis for interpreting spurious s-doubling might be couched in prosodic structure. However, as has already been discussed, there is no evidence of prosodic constraints, since the phenomenon occurs after a long vowel as well as after a short one, and in stressed as well as unstressed syllables. Nor may it even be considered a mark that remains for a true geminate, i.e. for a long segment. In our opinion, the spelling was in use in Vindolanda to represent a segment marked by the phonological features [–voiced, +tense]. The Latin language only had a voiceless s; its history saw the voiced sibilant change into a rhotic (cf. Weiss 2009: 150–152). Rhotacism is indeed the process that resolves any possible opposition between [s] and [z]. In parallel, West Germanic languages show a quite similar picture to that of Latin, so much so that an intervocalic s was not voiced, but was instead voiceless and tense, and often written as (Cercignani 1979; Saibene and Buzzoni 2006). If one considers that the fort of Vindolanda was occupied by the IX cohors Batavorum at the end of the first 21 In this evaluation the digraph has already been excluded.
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century CE, an interference between Latin and some Germanic varieties seems more than plausible. The Batavi spoke a north-western variety of Germanic languages where rhotacism occurred; e.g. *MEIS- / MOIS- > Germanic *maizon > Got. maiza but OFris. māra; MDutch mēre; oe. māra; ohg. mēro; Germ. mehr (Lehmann 1986: 242; König and van der Auwera 1994: 20–21). In these varieties, the voiced /z/ resulting from the voiceless fricative /s/ via Verner’s Law developed into /r/.22 Moreover, it could be relevant to point out that Germanic languages bore an intensive and strong stress on the first word syllable from an early age (Cercignani 1979: 74–82; Ramat 1986: 35–37; König and van der Auwera 1994: 74; Morlicchio and Leonardi 2007: 94–95). Germanic populations living in the Vindolanda garrison definitely learned Latin with its prosodic rules, but they could have preserved their own original accent, typical of their mother tongue, which is exactly what happens nowadays in situations of language interference. It then becomes plausible to assume that, especially in the case of s-gemination, this was a graphic expedient to signal the voiceless and tense pronunciation of the sibilant in the intervocalic position. It is worth mentioning that, at least nowadays, the Germanic languages contrast tense and lax consonants, rather than voiced and voiceless ones, as the Romance languages do and Latin did. For those who lived at Vindolanda, where language contact was usual, the Old Roman Cursive script plays an important role as a unifying asset for written communication. Nevertheless these people might have tried variable spelling strategies in order to represent different phonetic habits that were strictly linked to their identity. And since the non-Roman scribes adopted the Latin orthographic system, the difficulty in representing the German sounds could easily cause spelling inconsistency, as already pointed out by König and van der Auwera (1994: 90). As it is well known, social groups use writing actively or passively, in association with their socio-cultural weight (Turchetta, this volume).
6 A comparison with other corpora of non-literary Latin In order to better insert the empirical data from the Corpus Vindolandense into a more extended frame, we analysed other contemporary sources (i.e. dating between 22 Rhotacism is normally assumed as immediately subsequent to the First Germanic Sound Shift, dated to the undocumented era of Proto-Germanic (Prokosch 1939: 62–64; Saibene and Buzzoni 2006: 94–95; Harbert 2007: 276; Schrijver 2014: 168).
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the 1st and 3rd centuries CE) and relative to three major geographic areas of the Roman Empire: for the Insular area, the defixionum tabellae from Uley;23 for the Continental area, the graffiti of La Graufesenque24 and the chirographa written by Eunus;25 for the African area, the letters of Claudius Terentianus26 and the ostraca from Bu-Njem.27 All these aforementioned materials may form a homogeneous corpus of non-literary Latin from the Imperial age, since they share the same sociocultural milieu. Although the social class of the writers may vary, these documents can still be considered equivalent. In fact, Terentianus was an Egyptian enrolled in the Roman army; the Bu-Njem ostraca, just like the Vindolanda writing-tablets, were found in a Roman fort; Eunus was a freedman, but involved in commercial business just like the writer Octavius in the Tab.Vindol. 343; finally, the defixionum tabellae are along the same lines as the Tabulae Vindolandenses, since many segments of the population seem to be involved (Leach and Woodward 1993: 117). Now that the legitimacy of a comparison between the data from the Vindolanda tablets and the data relative to these other sources has been established, we will focus on spurious s-gemination. The results of a quantitative analysis of all the single sibilant letter (i.e. not geminated) available in the 23 The Uley defixionum tabellae (Gloucestershire) are mainly dedicated to the god Mercury. These curse tablets were discovered in Britain and are slightly different from the others found in the Provinces of the Roman Empire, since they are mostly concerned with some sort of theft. The corpus of defixionum tabellae from Uley is composed of 140 lead tablets, but only 40 are actually readable, due to the very bad state of preservation. The language used in this corpus is quite formulaic and correct, with some features of Vulgar Latin and of the Celtic substratum (Leach and Woodward 1993: 115–130). 24 The potting records from La Graufesenque (Millau, Midi-Pyrénées) make up an invaluable source for language contact in the ancient world, since it was home to a bilingual Gallo-Roman commercial community. The bulk of the pottery dates approximately between 20 CE and 120 CE (Marichal 1988, Mullen 2015). The corpus is composed of 213 documents in Old Roman Cursive, scratched on ceramica sigillata. 25 These chirographa, dating between 37 and 39 CE, belong to the major corpus of the Sulpicii archive, found just outside the walls of Pompeii and written by the freedman Eunus (cf. TabPSulp. 51, 52, 67, 68). This writer’s spelling, though generally correct, shows a clear trend towards degemination, in parallel with the misspelling -ss-, especially in intervocalic contexts (Adams 1990: 247). Guessing the real provenance of Eunus is a tantalising question, although a sort of Oscan influence can be assumed on the basis of the substitution of fateor for dico (Calboli 2009: 331–344). 26 The letters of Terentianus (2nd century CE) were written by different scribes and show a clear graphemic influence of Greek (Clackson and Horrocks 2007: 252–253). 27 The ostraca from Bu-Njem are 146 documents written on sherds found during the excavation of a Roman fort built on the Limes Tripolitanus. They date back to 254–259 CE and were written by various scribes (Marichal 1979: 437–438).
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corpora here considered are given in Table 3, with reference to three different contexts: initial, medial and final position. Although, due to their variable size, the absolute occurrence of the segments is uneven in the different corpora, the scores are statistically similar with reference to word position. In particular, in medial position (the one most relevant for gemination), -s- mean frequency is about 20% in the corpora considered, regardless of their size. Table 3: Distribution of the single sibilants in the different contexts in different corpora Corpus
initial s-
%
internal -s-
%
final -s
%
Total
Vindolanda La Graufesenque Eunus Uley
529 82 33 66
28% 11% 23% 37%
361 158 24 50
19% 20% 17% 28%
988 534 87 63
53% 69% 60% 35%
1878 774 144 179
As far as s-gemination is concerned, the scores of spurious and correct (classical) geminates are presented in Table 4. Table 4: Correct and spurious ss in the different corpora Corpus
correct ss
%
spurious ss
%
Tot.
Vindolanda La Graufesenque Eunus Uley
107 2 4 5
80% 50% 12% 36%
27 2 28 9
20% 50% 88% 64%
134 4 32 14
Further information can be gathered by focusing on the data regarding intervocalic position, which is the default target for gemination. Table 5 presents the statistical incidence of ‘spurious’ gemination occurring in the different corpora with respect to the number of intervocalic single sibilants.28 Table 5: Single and spurious sibilants in intervocalic context Corpus
internal -s-
%
spurious ss
%
Tot.
Vindolanda La Graufesenque Eunus Uley
88 92 3 5
79% 98% 15% 36%
24 2 17 9
21% 2% 85% 64%
112 94 20 14
28 The intervocalic segments (both single and spurious geminated) obviously represent a subset of the total number of sibilants occurring in internal position, as presented in Tables 3 and 4.
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As we have already underlined (Section 5), spurious s-gemination is particularly frequent in Eunus’ chirographa. Its score is indeed high both with respect to the correct geminated -ss- (87%) and intervocalic -s- (85%). On the other hand, the incidence of spurious s-gemination in the data from Vindolanda is only about 20% in both comparisons. As far as the other two corpora considered are concerned, the low number of words with geminated -ss- (both corrected and spurious) does not allow a meaningful statistical evaluation. However, in the curse tablets from Uley,29 the percentage of spurious s-gemination remains stable with respect to the corrected -ss-, as well as to the total number of intervocalic -s-. On the contrary, in the ostraca from La Graufesenque s-gemination is very unusual (2%),30 especially if we consider the relatively high number of words showing intervocalic -s- (92 tokens), which could represent the ideal context for the occurrence of wrong gemination. The ostraca from La Graufesenque are also special because the most common geminated consonants are nn and ll (46 and 43 instances,31 respectively), whereas in the Vindolanda tablets and in Eunus’ chirographa, ss is the most frequent one. On the other hand, the opposite process, i.e. degemination, is much more frequent in the La Graufesenque corpus, suggesting that these speakers were not able to appreciate the difference between long and short consonants (Marichal 1988: 67). The reason for the asymmetric picture emerging from the data is couched in the variable register of the texts. Both Eunus’ chirographa and the Uley tablets mimic procedures, terms and formulae of Roman law, whereas many kinds of text types of variable register occur in the Vindolanda tablets. Thus, for instance, in the case of personal correspondence the writers were less prone to imitate any kind of bureaucratic and legal terms, which would probably have entailed the over-gemination of s, in the case of more formulaic texts.
7 Conclusion If one considers geminate consonants in the Corpus Vindolandense, a fluctuation between “correct” and “wrong” spelling can be noticed. Spurious gemination in 29 Seven cases involve the conjunction nisi, written as , Uley 3, 4, 72, or , Uley 3, 4, 76. 30 There are only two instances, linked to the Gaulish lexicon (cf. LG19 cassidani for casidani; LG3 bess[alis] for besalis). 31 The number of nn is slightly different in Marichal (1988), since he also takes into account the uncertain forms (not considered in our computation).
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the Vindolanda tablets is a phenomenon which may be interpreted in the light of lexical and phonetic constraints, leaving aside prosody and morphology. Due to the phonological status of the contrast between short and long consonants, Latin spelling consistently marks the doubling of consonants in inscriptions from the 2nd century BCE until the end of the Roman Empire (Wallace 2011: 18). However, the spurious geminates occurring in the corpora of non-literary Latin, for instance in the Vindolanda tablets, and also in those from another British site, Uley, cannot be considered ‘phonetic transcriptions’. In other words, the finding of spellings like missi or remisseris does not imply that speakers pronounced the corresponding words with a long sibilant. Therefore, wrong letter doubling may be explained with reference to lexical and segmental constraints, taking into account also lapsus calami. As far as the lexicon is concerned, the great quantity of forms from the verb mitto are easily interpreted in light of text type and analogical force. As for the segmental aspect, the frequent s-doubling can be interpreted as a cue for rendering a voiceless and tense pronunciation of the sound represented by this letter. The more traditional hypotheses couched in archaism (Adams 1995) or hypercorrection (Bowman and Thomas 1983) do not seem to offer better and more convincing evidence. Halla-aho (2011) has stressed the special status of epistolary Latin, which has to be viewed in terms of a written register instead of some form of a spoken vernacular. The writers of the Vindolanda writing-tablets are arranged on a whole scale of variation, ranging from the most standard language to a less standard one. However, notwithstanding the occurrence of some mistakes, the language as witnessed in the Vindolanda tablets is apparently correct; in particular, the spelling generally reflects Latin educational norms (Clackson 2011: 525). As a final remark, we would like to underline the relevance of the Vindolanda tablets in the study of variation in the Latin language. Following Adams (2013: 18), we claim that “non-literary texts, such as inscriptions, writing tablets, ostraka and defixiones, may reflect the language use of lower-class speakers”. In the specific case of spurious gemination, we do not believe that misspelling with ‘fake’ geminates may reflect pronunciation. At the same time, we are not denying that spellings not congruent with the ‘standard’ norm of the language might become relevant cues for reconstructing sociolinguistic variation in the ancient world, in particular with reference to the diaphasic and diastratic dimensions (Marotta 2015). The data collected, despite their relative scarcity from a quantitative point of view, reveal some elements of interest, at both the lexical and phonological level. Due to their scattered nature, they do not supply evidence for reconstructing a systematic sociolinguistic picture of the Latin language. Nevertheless, they
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may shed some light on how Latin was spoken in Britain in the first centuries of the Christian era. In particular, studying the interference between Latin on the one hand, and Germanic and Celtic languages on the other, could become a new frontier for research in this domain, as recently pointed out by Alex Mullen (2015). Our proposal on the interpretation of ‘false’ as a tense segment leads in this direction. The reconstruction of the special Latin accent in the mouths of the populations living at the Vindolanda fort may remain a hypothetical target, but it is still an exciting challenge.
References Adams, James N. 1990. The Latinity of C. Novius Eunus. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 82. 227–247. Adams, James N. 1995. The language of the Vindolanda writing tablets: an interim report. The Journal of Roman Studies 85. 86–134. Adams, James N. 2003. The New Vindolanda Writing-Tablets. The Classical Quarterly n.s. 53 (2). 530–575. Adams, James N. 2007. The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC-AD 600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Adams, James N. 2013. Social Variation and the Latin language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anttila, Raimo. 1989. Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Battaglia, Marco. 2013. I Germani. Genesi di una cultura europea. Roma: Carocci. Benedetti, Marina & Giovanna Marotta. 2014. Monottongazione e geminazione in latino: nuovi elementi a favore dell’isocronismo sillabico. In Piera Molinelli, Pierluigi Cuzzolin & Chiara Fedriani (eds.), Latin vulgaire – Latin tardif X. Actes du Xe colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif, 25–43. Bergamo: Sestante Edizioni. Birley, Anthony. 2002. Garrison Life at Vindolanda: A Band of Brothers. Stroud: Tempus. Bowman, Alan K & John D. Thomas. 1975. The Vindolanda Writing Tablets and Their Significance: An Interim Report. Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 24. 463–478. Bowman, Alan K. & John D. Thomas. 1983. Vindolanda: the Latin writing-tablets. London: Britannia Monograph. Bowman, Alan K. & John D. Thomas. 1994. The Vindolanda writing-tablets. London: British Museum Press. Bowman, Alan K. & John D. Thomas. 2003. The Vindolanda Writing-Tablets, Vol. iii. London: British Museum Press. Bowman, Alan K., John D. Thomas & Roger S. O. Tomlin. 2010. The Vindolanda Writing-Tablets. Britannia 41. 187–224. Bowman, Alan, John D. Thomas & Roger S. O. Tomlin. 2011. The Vindolanda Writing-Tablets. Britannia 42. 113–144. Calboli, Gualtiero. 2009. Latin Syntax and Greek. In Philip Baldi & Pierluigi Cuzzolin (eds.), New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax 1, 65–193. Berlin-New York: de Gruyter.
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Camodeca, Giuseppe. 1999. Tabulae Puteolane Sulpiciorum. Roma: P. Groeschler. Cercignani, Fausto. 1979. The Consonants of German: Synchrony and Diachrony. Milano: CisalpinoGoliardica. Clackson, James. 2011. The Social Dialects of Latin. In James Clackson (ed.), A Companion to the Latin Language. 505–526. Chichester & Malden (MA): Wiley-Blackwell. Clackson, James & Geoffrey Horrocks. 2007. The Blackwell history of the Latin language. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Cotugno, Francesca. 2015a. Tradizione corsiva nella scrittura comune del Corpus Vindolandense. Scripta 57–68. Cotugno, Francesca. 2015b. I longa in iato nel Corpus Vindolandense. In Giovanna Marotta & Francesco Rovai (eds.), Ancient Languages between Variation and Norm. [Special issue]. Studi e Saggi Linguistici 53 (2). 189–206. Cuzzolin, Pierluigi. 2013. Bilinguismo e diglossia nelle Isole Britanniche tra il V e il X secolo: il ruolo del latino. In Piera Molinelli & Federica Guerini (eds.), Plurilinguismo e diglossia nella tarda Antichità e nel Medio Evo, 119–147. Firenze: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo. Fedriani, Chiara & Paolo Ramat. 2015. Ordini OV e VO in latino: per una rilettura sociolinguistica. In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 69–92. Milano: Franco Angeli. Fortson, Benjamin. 2011. Latin Prosody and Metrics. In James Clackson (ed.), A Companion to the Latin Language, 92–104. Chichester & Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Giannini, Stefania & Giovanna Marotta. 1989. Tra grammatica e pragmatica: la geminazione consonantica in latino. Pisa: Giardini. Halla-aho, Hilla. 2009. The non-literary Latin letters. A study of their syntax and pragmatics. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica. Halla-aho, Hilla. 2011. Epistolary Latin. In James Clackson (ed.), A Companion to the Latin Language, 426–444. Chichester & Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Harbert, Wayne. 2007. The Germanic Languages. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. König, Ekkehard & Johan van der Auwera. 1994. The Germanic Languages. London: Routledge. Leach, Peter & Ann Woodward. 1993. The Uley Shrine: excavation of a ritual complex on West Hill, Uley, Gloucestershire 1977–9. London: English Heritage. Lehmann, Winfred. 1986. Gothic Etymological Dictionary. Leiden: Brill. Leumann, Manu. 1977. Lateinische Laut- und Formenlehre. München: Bech. Loporcaro, Michele. 2011. Syllable, segment and prosody. In Martin Maiden, John Charles Smith & Adam Ledgeway (eds.), History of the Romance Languages. Volume 1: Structures, 50–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mann, John. 1971. Spoken Latin in Britain as Evidenced in the Inscriptions. Britannia 2. 218– 224. Marichal, Robert. 1979. Les ostraca de Bu Njem. Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 123 (3). 436–452. Marichal, Robert. 1988. Les graffites de La Graufesenque. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Marotta, Giovanna. 1999. The Latin Syllable. In Harry Van Der Hulst & Nancy Ritter (eds.), The Syllable: Views and Facts, 285–310. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Marotta, Giovanna. 2006. L’algoritmo accentuale latino nel confronto di due teorie fonologiche. In Renato Oniga & Luigi Zennaro (eds.), Atti della Giornata di Linguistica Latina, 133–158. Venezia: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina.
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Marotta, Giovanna. 2015. Talking stones. Phonology in Latin inscriptions? In Giovanna Marotta & Francesco Rovai (eds.), Ancient Languages between Variation and Norm. [Special issue]. Studi e Saggi Linguistici 53 (2). 39–63. Morlicchio, Elda & Simona Leonardi. 2009. Manuale di filologia germanica. Bologna: il Mulino. Mullen, Alex. 2015. Sociolinguistics. In Martin Millett, Louise Revell & Alison Moore (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Britain. 573–598. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prokosch, Eduard. 1939. Comparative German Grammar. Philadelphia: University of Pennsilvania Press. Ramat, Paolo. 1986. Introduzione alla linguistica germanica. Bologna: il Mulino. Saibene, Maria Grazia & Marina Buzzoni. 2006. Manuale di linguistica germanica. Milano: Cisalpino. Schrijver, Peter. 2014. Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages. London: Routledge. Sihler, Andrew. 1995. A new Comparative Grammar of Latin and Greek. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sommer, Friedrich & Raimund Pfister. 1977. Handbuch der lateinischen Laut- und Formenlehre: Eine Einführung in das sprachwissenschaftliche Studium des Lateins. vol. 1. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Sturtevant, Edward. 1947. An introduction to Linguistic Science. New Haven: Yale University Press. Tomlin, Roger S. O. 2016. London First Voices: Writing Tablets from the Bloomberg Excavations, 2010–14. London: MOLA. Turchetta, Barbara. The Writer’s Identity and Identification Markers in Writing Code Mixing and Interference. This volume. Väänänen, Veikko. 1937. Le latin vulgaire des inscriptions pompéiennes. Helsinki: Imprimerie de la Société de littérature finnoise. Wallace, Rex. 2011. The Latin Orthography. In James Clackson (ed.), A Companion to the Latin Language, 9–28. Chichester & Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Weiss, Michael. 2009. Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin. Ann Harbor: Beech Stave Press.
IV Identity through Orality, Identity through Literacy
Barbara Turchetta
16 The Writer’s Identity and Identification Markers in Writing Code Mixing and Interference 1 Approaches to writing contact and mixing In the framework of sociolinguistic research devoted to multilingual contexts and dynamics, several scholars have concentrated on code-mixing and codeswitching as communication strategies within multilingual communities. A lot of work has also been oriented toward the dynamics of lexical loans and syntactic structures as well as toward semantic and speech interference, both in multilingual speakers and in interlinguistic communication strategies. The historical perspective, concentrating especially on these last two phenomena of contact among languages, has shed some light on the strategies and mechanisms which lead to interference in portions of language, contributing to language shift and language change. Until very recently, the interest in the relationship between writing systems and languages has largely been directed towards the interface between sounds and graphic signs, mainly focusing on language as the object for investigation and writing as a tool to fix it. In linguistic and anthropological investigation, some attention has been given to writing systems. In the framework of the ethnography of writing most of the scientific research has been strictly focused on “writing systems” in their broadest sense, as a fundamental part of the symbolic heritage of human communities. Written signs are observed as part of the shared symbolic and cultural background of human groups. Social activities within larger communities contribute to the role writing has, both as an interface with oral language and as a symbolic system of values separate from the language. Unfortunately, most of the literature devoted to speech and its relation to the written text often defines writing simply as a support system. Language becomes, therefore, the main object of focus, whilst writing becomes a tool where the interface between the oral and the written sign is investigated in its intrinsic value, either from a variation perspective, as in many of the works by Coulmas (2002, 2013), or in its cultural and historical perspective, as in much of the work by Ong (1967, 1982) and Havelock (1986). In fact, there are several examples and strong evidence of
Barbara Turchetta, Italian University Line, Firenze DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-016
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this strict connection wherever human societies have been using the written language as a powerful means of storing knowledge, both in the past and in the present, where writing shows to be widespread and a culturally meaningful tool for a given society. In all the works we have quoted, there is a pervasive tendency to interpret writing in its narrow sense. That is, as a support for language where style and variation would be determined by a strong reference to a high prestige model both for the language and for the writing. We consider writing variation phenomena such as allography as a relevant element to be observed in order to re-orient our perspective and concentrate more on its intrinsic connection with speech variation. In these terms, allography, writing shift and interference would be a clear expression of what speech represents in terms of social variation according to speech content, relationship between the speakers and repertoire at a single speaker level. Both in a strict reference to a high prestige language choice and in its variation reflecting speech phenomena, writing in its narrow sense is definitely a means to conduct language and fix it on a support. Therefore, deviations from writing norms eventually shared by a group of writers are a more relevant variation, in sociolinguistic terms, than a mere mistake by a single writer. When considering writing in a broader sense as a way of communicating amongst individuals or communities, the traditional evolutionary perspective on the development of writing needs to be abandoned. Nevertheless, reflections on writing systems and literacy processes have mostly been investigated in their historical perspective. The evolutionary approach by Gelb offered a clear example of a diachronic perspective of the evolution of writing as stated in his masterpiece in 1952: “There are no pure systems of writing just as there are no pure races in anthropology and no pure languages in linguistics. As elements retained from an older period and innovation ahead of the accepted development may be found in a language of a certain period, so a system of writing at one period may contain elements from different phases of its development.” (Gelb 1952: 199–200).
A very similar evolutionary approach is offered by Cohen (1958), who has had a major influence on many researchers in interpreting writing in its evolution where pre-writing systems, and logographic and syllabic systems are just earlier steps from when alphabetic writing was conceived in classical literate societies. Language change in an historical perspective would have been part of a natural transformation process involving a cultural, ethical, and symbolic worldview of human societies and implying a stable and commonly diffused single pattern at a given time for a given society.
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In a more comprehensive perspective on writing offered by Harris (2000), writing is an instrument for noting memory, whether for a symbolic purpose or a functional one. Music, mathematics, language sounds and religious or magical symbols are therefore at the same level in being portrayed by written signs closely related to them. Writing in its broader sense is therefore a means of communication holding a functional or symbolic meaning and shared by a community. In considering the different points of view on writing, we can assume two different traditional attitudes in the scientific literature devoted to it: on the one side we can observe how a writing system is built up in relation to a single language in a strict interface between oral and written sounds and signs. On the other side, in a more semiotic and interpretive reflection, writing becomes a rational tool and a direct manifestation of knowledge, as it is in Barthes’ works or in other researchers who focussed mainly on semiotics and the interpretation of written texts. In taking into account the first technical perspective, we wish to observe writing in its strict sense, that is as a means to convey language. It is not our intention to consider the evolutionary perspective on writing systems; we wish to focus on its fluctuation, hesitation and switching within the framework of the ethnography of writing and the anthropology of writing, taking into account the self-representation and identity markers of the writer (Cardona 1981, 1986; Barton and Papen 2010). A broader view of writing as a communication device, regardless of whether this implies a close connection to speech or a particular language model, offers a relevant point of reference to observe both the writer’s identity (in its cultural and symbolic sense) and the writer’s identification in terms of self-confidence and personal skills with writing tools and writing choices. A variation in writing and the writer’s attitude in choosing alternative signs would mean a distancing from a strict model and a common sharing of writing attitudes and habits within a social group. Social groups share common communication patterns and are inclined to use the same variation in speech and writing (where it exists). Therefore, we interpret writing as a social practice (Mancini 2014) and we regard variation in writing as a social norm rather than the product of a single writer’s skill in his literacy development (Mancini and Turchetta 2014). In the following section, we will refer to writing as a writer’s capacity to establish a relation with a reader in very functional terms and in an effort to establish a common and shared background with a symbolic or information function. As shown by Di Salvo, Mori, Muru (this volume) message content is
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more relevant than writing style and fluctuation in the choice of a sign; alternatively, according to Mion (this volume), a writers’ shift toward a new writing system shows a strong adherence to socially and culturally motivated choices. Reference to a model and a writer’s interpretation and choice are then discussed by Murgia (this volume), reflecting on the dynamics of language and writing selection as a skill of a writer in creating a text at its best, with special attention devoted to the aesthetics of style and words.
2 Writing codes and the cultural identity of writers: some critical assumptions Current literate societies have very little in common with those of the past. In the past writing systems were little used as a means of communication until the invention of printing in late 15th century strongly contributed to the spread of reading as a socially common practice. From then on, what had traditionally been a powerful instrument in the hands of very small social groups, normally distinguished by their specific role and the political power within their community, became a widespread skill and a widely used means of communication, though not always in a strict reference to a high prestige model. In using writing skills and literacy to measure the difference between the political and social roles of groups of individuals (Goody 1986) we should make the following three assumptions. Literacy and writing offer an effective tool for sharing knowledge: literate and illiterate speakers of a language are socially differentiated in terms of social rank and cultural prestige. A limited diffusion of writing and reading skills in literate societies implies a significant political strength in writing: social groups who use writing actively and passively (as it is in reading) dominate and influence the political and cultural order of a society. Since writing is a cultural practice, in those societies where it is widespread it contributes largely in spreading cultural patterns among different social groups. Evidence of diffusion dynamics is offered nowadays by all literate societies where either through traditional media or ICT new media, information is mainly spread through writing and reading. A written repertoire in a given society can be both politically and culturally motivated: bilingual and multilingual societies differentiate among written repertoires and attribute high and low prestige to different writing standards. Evidence of a culturally motivated writing shift is found in several languages, in
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bilingual and multilingual societies, where language ideology and a speaker’s self-representation may push toward a writing system shift as studied by Banfi (2015) in old Greek varieties. A writing system shift may sometimes lead to dramatic changes due to the political and cultural dominance of new models (Selvelli 2015, Mion this volume).
3 Variations and dynamics of writing systems and texts Multi-graphism and written code-mixing are dynamic processes widely used by writers. They are often part of a written repertoire commonly accepted by writers who might not belong to the same language community despite sharing common languages and writing systems. A language community stricto sensu would be defined as a national and socio-cultural entity, with a common background, where literacy might be diffused according to strict standards and would be used by public media and the political administration of the State. In those contexts of use where writing is strongly connected to specific cultural and symbolic patterns as with religion, nationalism, or cultural ideology, a strict adherence to a writing norm is strongly required from individuals joining and sharing these patterns in specific social groups and communities. Where writing is a widely diffused means of communication and loses any specific ideological value, societies share a common tendency to language variation and writing variation. Literacy brings vernacular forms of writing which are not necessarily associated with uneducated people showing their poor literacy skills. Most of the time standard spelling and grammar norms are strictly observed in formal contexts only where attention to a high prestige model is due. Writing practices among writers who often make use of written signs are characterised by rich repertories where strict adherence to a code is due in formal occasions only. Substandard writing systems are widely used and diffused in rich repertoires. We have a clear example of that in contemporary times in all substandard writing systems developed through ICT tools. Muru (2016) discusses interesting examples of language and writing fluctuations by dragomans, those translators and interpreters who were officially in charge of encoding and translating oral and written texts in the multilingual and multicultural society of the Ottoman Empire (Lucchetta 1989, 1993). Cultural and linguistic change over time may preserve some of the most common fluctuations or lose them when assigning new functions and meanings
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to writing systems. To give a clear example of this kind of change, almost all of the 14,000 abbreviations used in Latin, Late Latin and Italian romance languages up to the 14th century are lost nowadays. A complete inventory of them is offered by Cappelli ([2011] 1929) showing a rich and sophisticated technique of word shortening as a common practice amongst writers; many of the abbreviated signs show a high frequency of allographies, sometimes differentiating in a significant way in terms of graphic style and number of graphic tracts. The invention of printing in the late 15th Century CE brought new habits in handwriting, which became gradually restricted in calligraphic styles and in text length. Everyday writing in the last two centuries in highly literate Europe has brought new substandard forms of handwriting in ordinary and informal written communication. Postcards offer superb examples of modern writing variation; they used to be a widely diffused means of short communication in use in Europe’s recent past. To give an example, Brooks, Fletcher and Lund (1982) offer a printed transcription of some 200 Edwardian postcards showing several cases of word shortening, unstable written norms and strong fluctuation. The geo-morphological conditions in certain areas would favour social, commercial and cultural contacts and therefore contribute to political domination. Wherever an intensive contact among human groups is there, language contact and interference work effectively. Scholars have shown how the Mediterranean area has been one of the most interesting areas of language and cultural contact over the centuries (Abulafia 2011) where speakers and writers have traditionally shared (and still share) rich repertoires and significant variation in their language choice. Romance languages are certainly among those communication devices which have been strongly affected by language contact in their history (Banfi 2014). Some recent collections of papers by scholars working on language and writing contacts in Asia and in the Mediterranean area from cuneiform times to the late Middle Ages detail a great and intensive communication activity involving several languages and varieties over the centuries (Mancini and Lorenzetti 2013; Baglioni and Tribulato 2015). Meaningful examples from the Mediterranean past come to show how deeply radicated the use of different writings and languages was in the ancient empires where epigraphic archaeological masterpieces belong. It is the kind of public use of writing defined by Petrucci (1979) as ‘exposed’: a public and permanent way to communicate through writing. Syrian inscriptions of the Decapolis inscribed between the 2nd century BCE and the 3rd century CE are just one great example of co-existing texts ranging from Greek to Aramaic, Syriac and Latin. Those shown on the Palmyra Cardo
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columns in Syria belonging to the 2nd century CE are contextually written in Greek and Aramaic and show a widely diffused pattern of code-switching which was presumably very common both in writing and in speech (As’ad and Yon 2001; Yon and Gatier 2009). Communication practices in multilingual contexts reach significant levels of code-mixing and contact especially in non-formal contexts, where little attention is paid to self-regulation in speech and writing unlike formal communication, where speakers and writers perceive the relevance of a model to pursue. Many scholars have shown the high frequency of continuum variation and code-mixing and switching in human societies where no strict prestige is attributed to a specific language or variety, especially where there is no strict standard model as a reference in code use, in formal and public contexts of language use. Some clear examples of a high prestige model to refer to are offered by studies devoted to the Bedouin world where Classical Arabic does not show its strict symbolic relevance and is not considered in terms of prestige as relevant as Bedouin varieties of Arabic are, especially in specific linguistic expressions (Ibrahim 1986). As a clear example of that, we could mention Bedouin oral poetry where the symbolic relevance of conservative Bedouin varieties is quite strong (Abu-Lughod 2000). Multilingual dynamics in use can be observed in any context, regardless of whether they are to be ascribable in theory to monolingual societies apparently used to very restricted repertoires. Meaningful examples of multilingual communication contexts are offered at a regional level in Europe where in those countries like Italy – apparently monolingual – romance varieties, language minorities and substandards of the official language are commonly in use (Toso 2006). Language or writing interference and contact phenomena, which are observable at a textual level when effectively contributing to language mixing, are to be considered as a widely accepted communication strategy rather than a deviation from a linguistic norm. In that respect, Mori (2016) has shown in a selected corpus of documents produced between the 16th and the 18th centuries CE how both interference at a graphic-phonic level as well as lexical and morphosyntactic calques and loans are common interlinguistic devices in intercultural communication among writers and speakers of the eastern Mediterranean sharing common wide repertoires, during the Ottoman era. Interferences, codemixing and fluctuations in writing underline a diffused pattern of code-switching among speakers of different mother tongues in the same socio-historical context involving Romance languages, Semitic languages and Greek (Di Salvo 2016; Zinzi 2016).
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4 Writing variation and text production In considering a wide diffusion of writing in multilingual contexts where speakers belonging to different societies share common working activities such as traders in a harbour, officers in a colonial context or any other situation involving international and intercultural social contact, speakers and writers share a common attitude and use of several patterns of written and oral communication. Such a kind of human communication activity is better defined as a community of practice (Wenger 1998) rather than a language community, since individuals sharing written and linguistic codes do not attribute any specific and common symbolic meaning to them and do not share any common background in terms of cultural identity, group history and territorial provenance. As shown by Di Salvo, Mori and Muru (this volume), where no standards are specifically offered to a community of practice sharing written communication strategies, variation in writing becomes a common attitude. Writing is therefore an expression or result of three main forces interacting: a. The relation between the writer and the reader according to the selected code and specific variety of the language and of the writing system. b. The writer’s attitude towards a reference model in terms of prestige or as a shared choice within a community of practices. c. The symbolic and cultural meaning attributed at times to specific styles and varieties (identity oriented choices). Examples of the three forces interacting in writing switching and interference will be discussed below. a. The relation linking the writer with the reader implies a common and shared use of different oral and written codes when interacting and switching from one system to another. Frequency of shifting in language contact and in multilingual repertoires is the common background of several examples of switching in writing systems for the same language in writing code-mixing and code-switching. Multilingual and multicultural contexts of interaction, both in writing/reading and in speech, show a natural tendency to develop plurilingual texts in public contexts where the same message needs to be transmitted in different languages. Shared repertoires among speakers and writers in a multilingual context imply a distributional scale of interaction between different languages and writing systems; therefore, we need to consider language one, language two, together with writing one, writing two and so on, as distributed variably amongst different speakers and writers.
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In an attempt to transmit written information in such a kind of social setting, the writing systems might interact to let readers from different cultural backgrounds read a message. We will introduce as an example of a multicultural setting from the past, the communication through epigraphies that was quite common during the Roman Empire, especially during its later centuries when more and more Roman citizens from different and remote provinces of the Empire had different mother tongues and cultural backgrounds. In some provinces, as in the case of Palestine, different written traditions co-existed and were socially distributed in a shared continuum, as shown by Mancini (2008), mostly reflecting the competence of speakers belonging to different social groups. Co-existence of Latin, Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew was in that context distributed according to social rank, communication context and social prestige; in public writing, the choice of plurilingualism and plurigraphism was therefore controlled by the relationship between the intention of the addresser and the kind of addresee the message was directed to. Similar conditions can be seen in another example from the Latin world. When interacting with readers of different mother tongues, public Latin texts were often presented in a multilingual version. A good example of this common practice is the funeral inscription for Gordianus III (238–244 CE), one of the last emperors of Ancient Rome. Soldiers from his battalion had the following sentence on his sepulchral inscription in Latin using Latin script together with different writing systems, namely Greek, Persian, Hebrew and Coptic, to let the soldiers from several provenances read it, as stated in the text: (1)
et Graecis et Latinis et Persicis et Iudaicis et Aegyptiacis litteris ut ab omnibus lege(re)tur ‘it was written in Greek, Latin, Judaic and Aegyptic letters to let everybody read it’ (Donati 2010: 15)
b. Cultural, political and economic exchanges make language contact more frequent. Language variation and language shift are common strategies in multilingual repertoires and intercultural communities of practice are used to sharing them. In such a variable dynamic use of different languages, symbolic values are less evident in language choice. Some widespread contemporary languages, such as English, have become a functional tool in international exchanges and by the time they reached a significant number of speakers as a second language, they lost most of their symbolic force for speakers who do not identify them as part of their national or regional heritage. The same holds true for scripts. None of us would consider the Latin script in our daily use as rich in its symbolic meanings in the same way as an ancient Roman would have done. Thousands of languages use it for writing. Nevertheless, when scholars of the humanities
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share a common interest in the ancient Latin world, they still attribute to scriptae a high prestige value in terms of the cultural intensity they bring and evoke. The prestige of a model can be gradually assumed when social and cultural circumstances contribute to modifying a writers’ opinion, as it did in Renaissance Europe when some linguistic models gradually became relevant in terms of their prestige. Between the 13th and the 18th centuries, the Embassy of the Republic of Venice in Costantinopolis, and all other diplomatic missions located in strategic points of the Mediterranean Sea, gradually showed a general tendency to use the Tuscan romance variety of written language. In the middle of the 16th century, in all the documents written by registrars in the Venetian chancelleries ranging from legal depositions to notarial deeds, Venetian and southern Italian varieties became less and less used in written official texts. Renaissance Tuscany was a model to pursue by many of the courts both in Europe and in the Mediterranean area in terms of aesthetics, as in art, but also in political and international affairs, thanks to the court of the Medici in Florence. The dragomans, namely the translators who were officials at the courts in Costantinopolis and Venice at the time, had employed Tuscan lexical choices and textual styles even before that. In translating official political agreements between the Ottoman Sultan and the Venetian Doge, which were contained in Ottoman Firmani traditionally written in Persian, they used to convert texts into Romance Florentine. Because of frequent language shifts in such a multilingual context in the Mediterranean area, flexible criteria of language notation were very common in transcribing oral expressions. Language variation and multilingual competences are evident, especially in documents showing legal depositions where witnesses were speaking different languages and romance varieties; variation in writing was gradually substituted by a strict adherence to a model as demonstrated by the legal tradition of Tuscany during the Renaissance period. c. Styles and varieties of a given language may vary in their prestige over time and under certain socio-cultural and political conditions. This is very true especially when cultural and ideological dominance from external forces might involve political, cultural and social domination. Cultural patterns of shift sometimes imply a re-orientation in terms of religion and attachment to a language and to its writing system. That is the case of some well documented changes in the past as exemplified by the well known shift of three different writing systems in the history of Old, Middle and New Persian, a language that in its historical evolutionary line shifted from Cuneiform, to Avestic (Pahlavi) and then to the Arabic system after the Islamic conquest of the Iranian Highlands.
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Most of the changes we are able to document from the past, for speakers of languages shifting from one writing system to another, are actually what emerges from an already existing condition of diffused bilingualism or multilingualism within a community of speakers and writers. Communities of practice participate in language change motivated by contact, and therefore are often inclined to writing shift and fluctuation as a frequent strategy to adopt writing and use it for new functions and symbolic representations (Perri and Turchetta 2014: 325). Sometimes a shift in the writing system may occur gradually and offer interesting examples of code-mixing. An interesting case in that sense is offered by an ancient form of writing of Old Syriac: the Estrangelian, used by Nestorians by the 1st century CE. The Epheso Conciliulm in 431 CE condemned the Nestorian Christian Church and pushed the Nestorians toward Mesopotamia; they gradually migrated toward the Middle East and reached China after several centuries. Estrangelian had been a high prestige writing system up to the 6th Century CE; the traditional writing system was linked to symbolic and religious values. The migration and the intensive contact with different languages, cultures and religious cults pushed Nestorian followers to syncretism in religious practices. As a consequence, the crystallized language formula in Syriac gradually became transcribed into mixed scripts, even including Chinese writing as it is in a famous inscription dating from the 8th Century CE from Xi’an Fu, China, in a biographic Syriac text written in Estrangelian and Chinese characters (Briquel Chatonnet, Debié and Desreumaux 2004). One last example of the symbolic loss in the use of a writing system is offered by the history of the Somali language, transcribed into Arabic characters following the Islamic conquest of the Horn of Africa and the Islamization of the area. Somali intellectuals started writing Somali Oral poetry using Arabic scripts in the late 18th Century CE. The nationalist movement at the beginning of the 20th Century CE brought new idealistic principles and pushed a National movement whose expression is a tentative use of a newly invented writing system. The Osmanya script was created by Cismaan Yuusuf Keenadiid, a poet and intellectual in the 1920s and adopted for use with the Somali language until 1973 when the Latin script was officially introduced. The use of Osmanya was very limited although widely used among nationalists who struggled for the independence of Somalia during the colonial era. The Somali language has more recently re-adopted in non-formal written communication the Arabic alphabet following the civil war which began in 1991. The country is now exposed to an intensive Islamization and writers show a tendency in informal communication to use the Arabic script for Somali as a clear marked choice, which is religiously motivated.
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5 Dynamics of socially or culturally motivated code-switching and code-mixing in writing As stated in the title of this paper, in multilingual contexts where allography and multi-graphism occur, it is useful to distinguish between identity markers in graphic choices on the one side and identification marks on the other, the latter being elements useful to a researcher to point out what the competence of the writer is. Symbolically oriented language choices are very seldom an acknowledged choice of the speaker himself; most of the time these acts of identity (Le Page and Tabouret Keller 1985) are unconsciously produced in the selection of linguistic items and varieties, culturally and socially oriented but at the same time they are used by speakers to identify themselves within a group. In their words: “the identity of a group lies within the projections individuals make of the concepts each has about the group” (Le Page and Tabouret Keller 1985: 2). On the contrary, identification markers are the relevant types of language deviations from a target variety of language where no cultural motivation to direct choices is there. Substandard norms are quite common in an interlanguage process of acquisition. In an acquisition process of a second writing system with a previous literacy process completed, we find most of the reasons for free allographies. The graphic system is not yet stable in the writer’s competence nor is there a target model to pursue. In both cases, the range of choices widens and pushes the writers to fluctuate more. Allographies produced in multi-graphic contexts are the result of a wide spectrum of graphic choices that writers share; they are not necessarily attributable to a specific ideologically or culturally oriented pattern. They are only part of a range of graphic devices a community of practice shares. Linguistically and culturally heterogeneous situations constantly develop incoming communication patterns where identity is negotiated according to the social context and linguistic competence of interlocutors. Unstable, uncertain selections of different graphic signs within a single text, and for the same speech correspondence, are therefore more the result of a socially accepted free variation in the framework of a multilingual competence in a group of writers, than a specific choice culturally oriented. This holds true in social contexts where the culturally oriented attitudes of individuals are part of multicultural contexts and lose their strong value in terms of the cultural identity of the speakers. A diffused plurilingualism makes individuals choose from their linguistic repertoires, languages and varieties according to socially distinguishable sets of norms. This was, in fact, the situation of the above mentioned Tuscan variety of the written
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language which started to spread across the Mediterranean centres of cultural, political and economic exchange in the late Renaissance period. It became a linguistic norm, a socially accepted convention for all writers and readers dealing with legal and commercial affairs and entering into contact at various levels and social ranks with the economic and cultural Italian area, but in no way was it distinguished as a language choice made in reference to Florentine cultural patterns, social behaviour or lifestyle. In the framework of a socially accepted variation or norm, we will focus on some interesting conditions, which develop common attitudes in a group of writers and do not keep or gain any cultural or symbolic significance for them. Therefore, we wish to focus on identification markers rather than on acts of identity in considering the following two strategies acting in language and writing variation: a. code-switching in writing; b. interference and calques in writing. a. Since the 1990’s, scholars have made a thorough investigation of codeswitching as a communication strategy. Innovative works by Myers-Scotton (1993a, 1993b) evidenced the relevance of code-switching in understanding the dynamics of conversation strategies in bilingual communities. Written bilingual and multilingual texts have been studied ever since in Linguistics, but little attention has been paid to graphic choices. Human societies sharing different languages are used to code-switching and frequently present it in writing. Code-switching is sometimes socially or culturally motivated: the first being a more frequent condition than the latter. A very common and diffused example of socially motivated code-switching (non-identity oriented) is the Arabic/English keyboard of laptops. In websites and email addresses, Arabic script has coexisted with English script since when computer science developed a mixed pattern for most languages dealing with writing systems differing from the Latin. Keys showing computer language and punctuation cannot be transcribed in any other system of symbols, as shown in the figure below.
(Arabic-English Keyboard)
Culturally motivated code-switching instead is identity oriented. Language and script selection lets the reader perceive the cultural relevance of the specific choice and understand secondary and extra-textual symbolic meanings. An
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interesting example of identity oriented code-switching is offered by a signpost in Tanzania promoting a health campaign against HIV. We report the text here below, rendering the three lines in different languages with the use of three different fonts. The reported speech is in Kiswahili while the comment to it is rendered in English: FAITHFUL CONDOM USER : “Nilitumia kondomu kwa umaminifu” (‘I use condoms faithfully’) Human Link International On the left side of the signpost is a picture of a large skeleton standing as if listening to the conversation contained in the text. An outside voice introduces the reported speech in English, stating that it is an eager Tanzanian speaking. Being the official voice of Nationalism it speaks the official formal language, namely English. The Tanzanian reports a personal opinion on the use of condoms and does it using Kiswahili, the second official language in Tanzania. Language choice and connected script are an identity-oriented choice. A ‘real’ Tanzanian would speak and write Kiswahili and not English. b. When observing interference and calques in writing, mixing multigraphism must be attributed to a natural tendency of interlanguages to fluctuate and regularize substandard norms. The same phenomenology holds true in writing fluctuations, offering the researcher interesting hints in observing a writer coping with a writing system and sometimes a language he acquires. When working in large communities of writers where no common cultural or language patterns group them within a single language community, substandard variation in writing may become a shared norm. In this sense a widespread use of Latin script in Arabic countries has led writers of public forms of writing, such as advertisements, road signs and generic signposts along the road, use international words, (which we would define as loans) choosing the Latin script. The choice of letters as a correspondence to foreign language sounds is strongly influenced by the relation between language one (Arabic) and writing one (Arabic script) as it is in the following case where the first part of the word ‘Alitalia’, on an advertisement leaflet has been interpreted as the definite article in Arabic which is normally transcribed as : ( )ﺍﻹﻳﻄﺎﻟﻲAL'ITALIA Systematic interference is offered as an influence of L1 and W1 to L2 writing when a high prestige model constantly influences the writer. The selection of
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missionary writing for African languages is one of the best examples of the interference caused by the relation between L1 and W1 of the writer. When they started describing African languages during the 16th and 17th centuries CE, they replicated the model they had as a matrix from their mother tongue (Turchetta 2009). As a consequence, missionaries having French, rather than English or Portuguese as their mother tongue, followed the interface rules between writing and speaking in their own language. In this kind of interference among languages and writings, self-oriented interference gives the writer’s identification but does not show any act of identity in terms of the symbolic meaning of signs selected. [u]
[i]
[U]
[ʃ]
[z]
[l]
[ɲ]
[ʧ]
[ʤ]
[s]
English
u
i/e
u/o
sh
zh/z
ny
ny/ng
ch
j
s
French
ou
e
o
ch/tsh
g/j
ny/n/n
ny/ñ
tj/tch
dj
ss
Portugese
u
i
u
sh/x
zh/xj/jh
ny/ng
ng’/ñ
c/ch
j/dj
s/c
Lastly, we wish to offer some widespread and well known cases of interference in writing mixing. Some famous Italian words dealing with Italian drinks and dishes are written all around the world following the rules English has in English writing. These internationally transcribed words then follow a more diffused pattern, which is the one of an international convention oriented toward English rather than respecting the Italian norm. Therefore, Italian spaghetti becomes and Italian cappuccino becomes , where It. [g] becomes and It. [tʃ:i] becomes .
6 Some final remarks Writing systems are constantly influenced by the writers’ competence in different writing systems and their ability to mix them. Writing standards are more a model of reference than an eradicated and stable skill in writers; reference to a model is variable and due to the prestige of the latter and the competence of the writer when the writing system is not that of their first language. Fluency and variation are clearly visible in writing interference among writing codes in multilingual and multicultural contexts. All writing codes undergo interference processes when used by bilingual or multilingual societies; variation in writing is stronger where no identity-oriented influences are there such as there is in language communities.
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Communities of practice in multilingual contexts foster polymorphism and variation in writing. In multilingual contexts, communication codes either in speech and writing overflow: when writing systems fluctuate in different social and cultural contexts, writers who share common codes are regarded as social groups sharing common practices rather than speakers belonging to single language communities. When observing written codes within a single community there is a need to consider the choice of written signs and techniques as strictly related to the symbolic meaning and the cultural knowledge of writers. A writer’s identity is constantly underlined and confirmed towards the relationship with a reader in promoting and confirming his cultural identity. It is the only case where we can assume a writing system or a switching towards it as a culturally oriented choice.
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Myers-Scotton, Carol. 1993a. Social Motivations for Codeswitching: Evidence from Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Myers-Scotton, Carol. 1993b. Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ong, Walter J. 1967. The presence of the word. New Haven CT: Yale University Press. Ong, Walter J. 1982. Orality and Literacy. London: Methuen and Co. Perri, Antonio & Barbara Turchetta. 2014. Codici interferiti. In Marco Mancini & Barbara Turchetta (eds.), Etnografia della scrittura, 325–362. Roma: Carocci. Petrucci, Armando. 1979. Funzioni della scrittura e terminologia paleografica. In Scuola speciale per archivisti e bibliotecari (ed.), Palaeographica, diplomatica et archivistica: studi in onore di Giulio Battelli, 3–30. Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura. Selvelli, Giustina. 2015. Caratteri arabi per la lingua bosniaca. In Daniele Baglioni & Olga Tribulato (eds.), Contatti di lingue, contatti di scritture. Multilinguismo e multigrafismo dal Vicino Oriente Antico alla Cina contemporanea, 197–218. Venezia: Filologie Medievali e Moderne 9/8, Edizioni Ca’ Foscari. Digital Publishing. Toso, Fiorenzo. 2006. Lingue d’Europa. La pluralità linguistica dei Paesi europei fra passato e presente. Milano: Dalai. Turchetta, Barbara. 2009. Le lingue in Africa nera. In Emanuele Banfi & Nicola Grandi (eds.), Le lingue extraeuropee: Asia e Africa, 489–554. Roma: Carocci. Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Community of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yon, Jean Baptiste & Pierre Louis Gatier. 2009. Choix d’Inscriptions Grecques et Latines de la Syrie. Amman-Damas: Presses de l’Institut Français du Proche-Orient. Zinzi, Mariarosaria. 2016. Scritture pubbliche e private in greco nel Mediterraneo Moderno: Profilo sociolinguistico e fenomeni di interferenza. In Margherita Di Salvo & Cristina Muru (eds.), Dragomanni, Sovrani e Mercanti. Pratiche linguistiche nelle relazioni politiche e commerciali del Mediterraneo Moderno, 73–108. Pisa: ETS.
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17 The Mediterranean Community of Practices between Speaking and Writing in Early Modern Documents 1 Introduction1 The present study deals with the evidence of the linguistic behaviour of writers having multiple competence in different languages and graphic norms in Early Modern Mediterranean documents. Our aim is to investigate the linguistic variation in Early Modern Mediterranean documents written in a multi-faceted Italian and transcribed according to flexible writing criteria, especially when oral expressions were involved (Turchetta, this volume). In oral and written inter-ethnic communication along the Mediterranean coasts in Modern times, a continuum of Italo-Romance varieties was used with a vehicular function beyond national borders (Minervini 1996); it was referred to as ‘Colonial Italian’ (Borg 1996), ‘Mediterranean Italian’, ‘Italian as lingua franca’2 (Cremona 1998), ‘Levant Italian’ which was used for diplomatic and commercial purposes (Bruni 1999), or ‘Italian as contact variety’, resulting in Mediterranean cross-cultural communication (Mori 2016). The presence of multiple varieties of Italian (the so called italiani altri, Banfi 2014), linguistic interference from other languages, and L2 markers characterize Early Modern diplomatic documents (such as official letters, capitulation documents and treaties) as well as commercial and private letters within the Ottoman Empire and in North Africa (Baglioni 2010).
1 Though the study was jointly conceived by the three authors, the sections were written as follows: L. Mori (Sections 1–2), M. Di Salvo (Section 3), C. Muru (Sections 4–5). This research is part of the PRIN Project ‘Linguistic representations of identity. Sociolinguistic models and Historical Linguistics’ (PRIN2010, prot. 2010HXPFF2_001, http://www.mediling.eu/). We thank Emanuele Banfi, Pierluigi Cuzzolin, Gianguido Manzelli, Piera Molinelli, Barbara Turchetta and Federica Venier for their suggestions provided during the oral presentation of this work at the convention held in Bergamo on September 28th and 29th 2015. 2 The melee between the so-called Lingua Franca (see Venier 2012) and Italian as lingua franca is dealt in Mori (2016). Margherita Di Salvo and Cristina Muru, Università della Tuscia Laura Mori, Università degli Studi Internazionali di Roma – UNINT DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-017
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Literature shows the presence of Tuscan variants in the language of overseas missions together with diverging traits of Venetian, Sicilian, and Neapolitan origin (Bruni 2002) confirming the multi-faceted nature of the linguistic code in use in the Mediterranean Community of Practices as described in Turchetta (2016). In order to highlight the evidence of multilingual repertoires in Eastern Mediterranean writings (16th–18th centuries) that attest a political and commercial relationship between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, the Mediterranean Community of Practices (MediCoP) corpus was put together in the State Archives of Venice3. The MediCoP corpus comprises commercial recordings, transactions, diplomatic documents and private letters written by multilingual speakers writing in ‘Italian’ with different degrees of language competence and linguistic repertoires at their disposal. In fact, in pre-unification Italy it is possible to find evidence of a priority, even exclusiveness, of contact with the oral language, as well as evidence of the importance of a pragmatic dimension (Testa 2014). Therefore, both an endogenous multilingualism (because of concomitant traits of different varieties of Italian) and an exogenous multilingualism (due to the repertoire of non-native speakers of Italian) featuring the linguistic repertoires of Italian used by merchants, court clerks and sovereigns, have shaped Early Modern writings. In this paper a sub-corpus4 of the MediCoP has been selected and 54 texts (originals and translations) belonging to the following collections are investigated in search of cues of spoken language related to the shifting from phonetic dimension(s) to graphic representation(s): 1) Archivi Propri Ambasciatori Egitto Unico (AAEU, Personal Archives of Egyptian Ambassadors): 32 texts (15th century) 2) Documenti Greci (DG, Greek Documents): 2 texts (first half of the 16th century and the 18th century) 3) Lettere e Scritture Turchesche (LST, “Turkish” letters and writings): 15 texts (second half of the 16th century) 4) Documenti Armeni (DA, Armenian Documents): 4 texts (end of the 17th century) The corpus-based analysis is conducted on the above-mentioned representative samples comprising texts from over a four century time-span and ranging from commercial letters (AAEU, DG, LST), pleas and promises of a financial nature (DA, DG, LST), as well as private and political letters (LST).
3 See essays by Di Salvo, Mori, Muru, Turchetta and Zinzi in Di Salvo & Muru (eds.) (2016). 4 For detailed references to the sub-corpus here considered see Mori (2016).
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In the following sections, the phonetic-graphic interface will be discussed as follows: presence of speech-driven cues in writing (Section 2) as well as graphic inconsistency and fluidity due to the lack of a unique code of reference (Sections 3–4).
2 Speech-driven graphic variation Mori (2016) focused on the description of the Italo-Romance based-continuum in use in Modern Mediterranean cross-cultural communication by non-native speakers/writers of Italian (exogenous multilingualism) aiming at different target varieties of Italian, not necessarily the Tuscan one, and native speakers/writers of different Italo-Romance varieties (endogenous multilingualism). The proposed label “Modern Mediterranean Contact Italian” is an attempt to take into consideration contact dynamics developed within a community of pragma-linguistic practices aimed at political and commercial activities (see Mori 2016). Data presented by Mori were interpreted according to two main guidelines particularly relevant in language contact situations: a) interference at different levels (both lexical and structural) and b) L2 markers of linguistic development. Therefore contact-induced outputs due to interference from the writers’ L1 (especially Spanish) were outlined together with evidence of L2 acquisition processes related to structural, typological and cognitive principles. In accordance with the framework proposed in the above-mentioned research study, current focus will be on speech-driven cues, proving the priority of oral interaction and pragmatic needs in a multilingual setting where concomitant linguistic and cultural models related to different Italo-Romance varieties were simultaneously in use. In this respect, it is interesting to take into consideration the relevant presence of graphic accents on monosyllabic words. In fact, in the entire subcorpus examined here there is a widespread use of the graphic accent on à 5 ‘at’ and mà ‘but’ without any evident reason for alternation between graphically accented and unaccented variants. This seems to be due to a mere inconsistency in graphic representation, which is quite common in texts written in Italian
5 In DA_1149 doc II and DA_1149 doc III, the accented variant à (‘at’) is the only type attested, while in DA_1150 doc I, à is the variant preferred (83% compared with a). As for the variant mà (‘but’), there are no examples in either DG or AAEU, whilst in LST there is 1 occurrence out of 5 (LST 3-4 doc VI) and in DA 4 occurrences of the accented variant out of 6.
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varieties within the context of the Mediterranean Community of Practices where polymorphism and variation in writing were fostered (Turchetta, this volume). Nonetheless, data analysis has revealed a peculiar use of a graphic accent on monosyllabic words, which could convey phonetic-phonological information rather than being a sign of unstable and fluctuating writing. For instance, it is worth noting the consistent presence of the graphic accent in the DA collection, as far as the item hò6 (‘I have’) is concerned: (1)
a.
hò spedito (‘I sent’)
b.
hò incassati (‘I boxed them’)
c.
hò (‘I have got’)
d.
hò potuto fare (‘I could do’)
e.
hò fatto (‘I did’)
This could be a graphic strategy to underline specific phonetic-phonological properties and, in this specific case, it could be considered as a way to represent the quality of the mid back vowel perceived, and consequently produced, as open according to the dominant phonological systems of writers, either native speakers of a certain Italo-Romance variety of Italian or non-native speakers of L2 Italian. The same evidence is attested to for è (it. e, ‘and’), but in this case it could be interpreted either as a graphic marker signalling a phonetic-phonological value (similarly to that observed for hò) or have another speech-driven explanation: the Italian conjunction e (‘and’) is rendered with the grapheme è when followed by a consonant in the initial position undergoing a lengthening process. This graphic variant might be related to the phenomenon known as “syntactic doubling”7 occurring not only as an effect of rhythmic conditions (namely avoiding the adjacency of two lexical stresses),8 but also after monosyllabic prepositions and conjunctions which are normally considered unstressed9. According to works by Marotta, the former are due to a regular prosodically induced phenom-
6 Selected examples from DA_1149_doc II and DA_1150_doc I. 7 For an accurate description of status questionis in an historical perspective, see Loporcaro (1997). 8 According to Marotta (1983–1986: 37) “the occurrence of RS [raddoppiamento sintattico, syntactic doubling] would be determined not only by the final stress in the first word (as has often been recognized), but also by initial stress in the second word”.
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enon (also referred to as “prosodic doubling”), whilst the latter are irregular and morphologically induced since they occur only in the presence of a given set of morphological items, namely prepositions, auxiliaries and conjunctions. In these documents from the DA collection, namely letters of a financial nature, the Italian conjunction e is rendered through the variants è or et10, according to the following regular trend of distribution (confirmed by 92% of tokens): et → /_V; è → /_C. That is to say, when the following word begins with a vowel the preferred variant is the more conservative et such as:11 (2)
a.
@ Roma, et altre spese (‘in Rome, and other expenses’)
b.
et Anco del sig(n)ore Giacomo Mio fratello (‘and also of my brother Sir James’)
c.
et Io sò che fa Negotio (‘and I know he does business’)
Whereas when the following word starts with a consonant the dominant variant is è:12 (3)
a.
È da livorno (‘and from Livorno’)
b.
è sono Numerati (‘and they are numbered’)
c.
è due Cassete (‘and two boxes’)
d.
è suo nipote (‘and his nephew’)
e.
promissione è preghiere (‘promises and pleas’)
As pointed out by Marotta (1983–1986: 35) “RS (raddoppiamento sintattico, syntactic doubling) does not occur in all varieties of Italian; it is typical of Tuscan and, in different contexts, of the Italian spoken in the central and southern regions, while in the North it is not found at all.” Therefore, the interpretation of 9 Although Marotta (1983–1986: 36) refers to a longer duration of these segments that could reveal their rhythmic prominence “since duration is generally assumed to be the main cue for stress in Italian, the longer duration in monosyllables causing RS would therefore indicate a rhythmic prominence” (Marotta 1983–1986: 36). Her experimental data proved that the initial consonant is longer, being affected by the RS phenomenon, when followed by a stressed vowel, rather than by an unstressed one. 10 Et is the most widespread variant in other collections of the sub-corpus here examined. More precisely, in LST it is the exclusive variant while in DG it alternates equally with the innovative variant e, without any clear cause but simply as further evidence of graphic variation along with an ongoing process of graphic codification. 11 Selected examples from DA_1149_doc III and DA_1150_doc I. 12 Selected examples from DA_1149_doc I, DA_1149_doc III.
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this graphic cue in terms of syntactic doubling might be related to the geographic variety of pre-unification (mainly spoken) Italian assumed as reference in these Early Modern Mediterranean letters.
3 The graphic manifestation of voicing and devoicing Another way of exploring the relationship between speaking and writing consists of looking at those phonetic (oral) phenomena related to the interference among different varieties which emerge also in writing: it seems to be the case with the voicing and the devoicing of stops as specific features of the Venetian dialect (Cortelazzo 1979–1987; Stussi 1995). Their presence could be an indicator of interference from it (Turchetta, this volume). As Tomasin argues (2013a), the presence of the voiceless /k/, and /t/ is one of the main differences between Standard Italian (Tuscan-based) and the Venetian variety. Devoicing affected only ‘erudite words’ as an effect of the maintenance of the voiceless stops of Latin origin was also well attested in the Venetian variety: see, for example, Venetian forms such as patron (it. padrone, ‘master’), secreto (it. segreto, ‘secret’), well documented also in the Medieval era. Stussi (1965), for example, described this process in the production of some 13th century Venetian documents, while studies by Tomasin (2013a) gave some evidence of the same phenomenon in the Modern Age. As for the voicing of stops, previous studies on Italian dialects from the 16th and 17th century show that this process mainly affected the stops in an intervocalic position: some examples are amigo ‘it. amico’ (‘friend’), fadiche ‘it. fatiche’ (‘efforts’), which were both reported by Tomasin (2010) as outputs in the Venetian dialect. In the period considered here, voicing is present in the Venetian dialect, as Tomasin (2013a) and Sanga (1990) state when discussing the so-called Lombard language. Rohlfs ([1949] 1966) also reports this feature among those of Northern Italian dialects: /t/ can give rise to /d/ or /ð/ and the consonant is generally represented in writing as dh. As Stussi summarised (1995: 24): “the voiced stops too (frequently overlapping with the original voiceless stops later voiced) become spirant and then silent [. . .] The more complex situation is that of the dental stops. Here the ‘natural’ sequence [t] > [d, ð] > 0 has undergone various changes over time going through stops and restorations, resulting at times in today’s rather incoherent systems.” [Translated by Di Salvo].
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For the velar stop, instead, Rohlfs (1966) reports that /k/, when voiced, provides a unique result /g/ and does not mention the possible grapheme /ch/ which, as dh for the phoneme /d/ or /ð/, could indicate /g/ or /ɣ/. The instability of the phonetic rendering of stops can be taken as an indication of the interference of the Venetian dialect, and, consequently, of the influence of speech in writing by Mediterranean writers. From a quantitative perspective, the analysis conducted on the MediCoP sub-corpus (Section 1) has shown a high presence of Venetian (as opposed to Tuscan) voicing and devoicing in those documents written by Venetian writers, such as many of those from the AAUE collection or by dragomans and professional translators such as some from the LST collection. Furthermore, it is not surprising that only very few cases of both voicing and devoicing are found in the DG and DA collections, which contain more recent documents: previous studies (Di Salvo 2016) show the importance of the diachronic variation in the loss of Venetian features and the greater usage of the Tuscan variants, as already discussed. From a qualitative perspective, data on voicing confirm that this phonetic feature mainly affects stops in the intervocalic position (92.3% of all tokens). Some examples are: veludo, It. velluto (‘velvet’, AAEU, XVII, XVIII, XIX), segondo, It. secondo (‘second’, AAEU XXIII), marcado, It. mercato (‘market’, LST_1 I), fradello, It. fratello (‘brother’, LST_1 V). In some of these examples, other features of the Venetian dialect emerge: the consonant degemination in forms such as veludo, the removal of -e at the end of the word, when -e is preceded by -l-, -r-, -n-, in forms such as ambassador, It. ambasciatore (‘ambassador’ AAEU VII, XIV, XVI, XXIV), commendador, It. commendatore (‘potbelly’ AAEU VI, VII). As far as the voicing feature is concerned, the use of /d/ and /g/ instead of /t/ and /k/ and also the graphic usage of ch, dh and th were analysed. These data show the absence of the use of dh and th on one hand, and the major presence of on the other: it is possible to suppose that, according to the use of the grapheme dh or th to indicate /d/ or /ð/ (Rohlfs 1966), the grapheme ch could indicate /k/, /g/ or /ɣ/. This digraph was found in 102 items (92 in AAUE and 10 in LST), mainly in documents from the 15th and 16th centuries, where a higher percentage of Venetian features, lasting well into the second half of the 16th century, is found: manchato, It. mancato (‘missed’, AAEU V), alchuno, It. alcuno (‘someone’ AAEU III, XXIV), turcho, It. turco (‘Turkish’, AAEU XXVI, LST 3–4_XI). Because the grapheme frequently appears in those lexical items often characterized such as alcuno, it seems possible that ch could be used to indicate a voiced sound: more investigation on this topic is needed.
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As far as devoicing is concerned, these results confirmed the position summarised by Tomasin (2013a): the tendency towards devoicing in Venetian is not correlated with the phonological context since 56.1% of items are followed by a consonant and 43.9% of them are in intervocalic position; devoicing is also correlated with the lexical type, as it occurs in lexemes such as loco/luoco, It. luogo ‘place’; patron(e), It. padrone ‘master’; patre, It. padre ‘father’, all these are erudite words where the voiceless stops are due to the Latin origin of the lexical type. These lexical items also show the presence of further linguistic features typical of the Venetian variety, such as the fall of -e in final position after -n in patron, and the lack of the diphthong -uo- in loco/lochi. These Venetian features co-exist with other ones13 such as: – the treatment of the palatal consonants (see section 4) in forms such as zorno It. giorno ‘day’, zonto It. giunto ‘arrived’, rezever It. ricevere ‘to receive’, zonzer It. giungere ‘to arrive’; – the lack of the Tuscan metaphonetic diphthong, i.e. zonto It. giunto, zonzer It. giungere, loco/lochi It. luogo/luoghi; – the removal of -e when in the final position and preceded by -l-, -r-, -n- in examples such navicar It. navigare ‘to sail’, and the already mentioned patron, etc.; – the use of el instead of il for the masculine and singular determiner; – the use of -emo in the present tense of verbs in all conjugations (instead of the Tuscan variant -iamo). All these features suggest that the different percentage of the voiced/voiceless items is evidence of a major influence of the oral Venetian variety on writing, which appears to be open to dialectal and register variations within the Mediterranean Community of Practices (Turchetta, this volume).
4 Graphic alternation In this section attention is given to graphic alternation and allography which can be found in the selected sub-corpus. On one hand, the aim is to highlight the predominance of speaking on the writing system where there is the prevalence of Northern Italian varieties, in particular the Venetian one14. On the other
13 A quantitative study of the distribution of these linguistic features is given in Di Salvo (2016). 14 This tendency is also confirmed in the analysis of the more extended corpus MediCoP (see Di Salvo and Muru 2016), as well as in Baglioni (2016).
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hand, the aim is to show the widespread inconsistency in graphic representation in texts written in Italian varieties within the context of the Mediterranean Community of Practices (Turchetta, this volume) where polymorphism and variation in writing were widespread. Considering that the sub-corpus is representative of different text types (translations, diplomatic, commercial and private letters), the graphic alternation15 was analysed taking into account who the writer was, where and why the document had been written and its content. All in order to understand if the graphic alternation corresponded, to a lesser or greater degree, to the functionality of the document (see Di Salvo 2016). Special attention was paid to the graphic rendering of fricatives and affricates, according to the characteristics of the Venetian language (Stussi 1965; Alinei 1984; Tomasin 2010 and 2013b; Zamboni 1979). For this reason, two dictionaries of the Venetian language were used: Contarini (1852) and Boerio (1867). The first case concerns the alternation found in the AAAEU diplomaticcommercial texts. This register belonged to Pietro Diedo (15th cent.) and contains letters signed by different senders, and copied by at least three different writers16. The following examples show the alternation of the graphemes e : doc II (03)17 doc VIII (10)
[1] viazo [26] viaço
‘travel’
[dz], [ðz] or [z]
b.
doc III (03-04) doc VIII (10)
[24] rezever [34] recever
‘to receive’
[ts], [θs] or [s]
c.
doc III (03-04) doc XXX (30)
[26] zorno18 [8] giorno
‘day’
[dz], [ðz] or [z]
d.
doc VII (9-10) doc IX (11)
[4] zonzendo [16] zonçendo
‘to arrive’
[dz], [ðz] or [z]
(4) a.
15 For a discussion on confusion between the graphematic level and both the phonetic or phonological level, see Mion (this volume). 16 Renzo Iacobucci (‘La Sapienza’ Roma, Italy), who worked on the transcription of the whole document, informed us that at least three different hands can be recognised within the register. 17 The number in brackets refers to the numeration of the images within MediCoP. 18 In Boerio (1867: 821c) we find: ZORNO (with soft z) s.m. It. Giorno ‘day’ where the ‘soft z’ corresponds to [dz].
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e.
doc XXIV (21, 22, 23) [14] zonzer19 doc VIII (10-11) [25] (10) zonçer doc IX (09) [16] çonçer
f.
doc X (11-12) doc XII (12)
[22] dispiazuto [15] despiaçuto
‘to be sorry’ [ts], [θs] or [s]
g.
doc XV (15-16)
[10] senza [31] sença
‘without’
[ts], [θs] or [s]
h.
doc XXI (20) doc XXVIII (29)
[5] mezo [27] meço
‘half’
[dz], [ðz] or [z]
i.
doc XXIII (20) doc XXIII (20)
[27] formazi20 [25] formaçi
‘cheese’
[dz], [ðz] or [z]
l.
doc V (06, 07) doc IX (11)
[8] forzo [9] forço
‘I force’
[ts], [θs] or [s]
m. doc XXIV (21) doc XXII (20)
[33] pezo [12] peço
‘worst’ ‘piece’
[dz], [ðz] or [z] [ts], [θs] or [s(s)]
According to Zamboni (1979: 22) “the archaic phase /č, ǧ/ typical of the Tuscan variety and in part of the Lombard and Ladin languages, was brought in Old Venetian to /ts, dz/ or rather to /tθ, dð/, interdental affricates, from which derive the interdental phonemes /θ, ð/ which still characterise the Venetian spoken nowadays in central and northern rural areas; here the opposition between /θ/ and /s/ is still evident as in θénto ‘one hundred’ (tsénto in a more refined version) against sénto ‘(I) hear’, while the Venetian language had completely lost, since the early 1800s, the distinction between /s/ and /ts/ or at least a strong sibilant”21. Hence, as shown by the examples, the two alternative graphemes e are used for the rendering of both voiced and voiceless consonants. In examples (a-l) this alternation could be interpreted as a phenomenon of allography22 (see Turchetta, this volume), while in example (m) these two graphemes represent a phonological distinction. In particular, the two graphemes and might represent:
19 In Boerio (1867: 821a) we find: ZONZER (with soft z) v. to It. Giungere, Arrivare ‘to arrive’. 20 In Boerio (1867: 282b) this is considered an old form of formagio ‘cheese’. 21 Translated by Muru. 22 Where each allograph is considered as the graphemic variation of the written rendering of the same sound.
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a) the Venetian alveolar23 affricate24 [ts] and [dz]25 (Zamboni 1979: 22) rendered in Tuscan as voiceless and voiced post alveolar affricate before a mediumhigh front vowel; b) the Venetian alveolar fricative corresponding to the Tuscan voiceless alveolar affricate. Although a phonematic value has been assigned to the graphemes analysed on the basis of the existing bibliography, which describes both the phonological and the graphic rendering of the writers in Venetian, it is important to remember the social and cultural situation in which these documents were written, which was characterised by the presence of multiple varieties of Italian (italiani altri, Banfi 2014) and convergence phenomena, as well as linguistic interference from other languages. Therefore, the phonemic correspondence should be taken as a relative one, especially within those documents whose writers were in or belonged to the Levant. When looking for the same phenomena within LST documents (16th century), the same graphic alternation is found, both within documents by a single writer or in texts by different authors. Within the two folders of this collection, two documents have shown to be particularly interesting. The first one26 is a translation of a political-diplomatic text dated to 1561 written by Haydar Bassa27, Sanzacco di Chersego where the word Bassa is the Italianised version of Pascià, that is, the Turkish rendering of Hersek Ogli Pasa, and Chersego is Herzegovin (Schweickard 2012). The second one28 is a plea written by Doctor Salamòn Natan Aschanasi in favor of his nephew29. In both these documents30 the grapheme 23 The same is an interdental fricative in the dialects of the Padua, Vicenza and Plesano areas. According to Zamboni (1974: 36) this is understood to be ‘central’ Veneto. According to Zamboni (1974: 9) the Veneto dialects can be divided into: 1) ‘lagoon’ Venetian, 2) central Venetian, 3) western Venetian, 4) the dialects spoken in the Treviso, Feltre and Belluno areas, and 5) the ‘Ladin’ dialect of Veneto. 24 Regarded as a pan-northern trait, the assibilation of the palatal affricates leads to [tsento] and [dzente] in Old Venetian and to [sento] and [zente] in Modern Venetian, again by assibilation (Castellani 1952, Rohlfs 1966). 25 According to what Zamboni (1979: 22) states, we could assign the following phonetic values [dz], [ðz] or [z] and [ts] [θs] or [s] to the grapheme and as indicated next to each given example (4a–m). 26 Folder 1 LST doc I (MediCoP 01-02). 27 This term could in fact relate to either the title of Duke or the territory. 28 Folder 3_4 LST doc XII (MediCoP 12). 29 For further details about this document and its writer refer to Mori (2016). 30 In this context we are not giving all the occurrences either of the described trait or of the specific linguistic features of this whole document.
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is found in alternation both with and within the same document (5.a) and among different writers (5.b) as shown by the following examples: (5) Folder 1 doc I (01–05) a. [25] amorevoleça doc I (01)
[05] amorevolezza doc I (02)
b. [20] felizze
doc I (01)
[20] felice
doc IV (06) ‘happy’
[ts]
c. [12] apiaçer
doc I (01)
[–] piacere
doc V (10) ‘to like’
[ts]
d. [30] fazzendo
doc I (01)
[2] facendo
doc IV (08) ‘doing’
[ts]
Folder 3_4 e. [17] feliçe
doc XII (12) [8] felice
doc I (01)
‘happy’
[ts]
doc I (01)
‘happily’
[ts]
f. [19] feliçemente doc XII (13) [2] felicemente
‘amorousness’ [ts] or [ss]
The following examples are taken from the DA collection, commercial letters from the 17th century where, once again, allography is found within the same document or among different ones. In particular, in a letter written in Madrid and sent to Mr Bernardo Bonina in Venice in 1699 the alternations between Casse/Chasse [N, cases], cassette/casete [N, cases]; casseta/casetta [N, case] and Venetian traits like doi [numb, two], spechi [N, mirrors], donzene [N, dozen] are found. (6) DA_1149 doc I (01) AND [5]6Chass-e [2] n(umer) -6- Cass-e speech-i NUM cases-F. PL number NUM cases-F. PL mirror-M . PL ‘number six cases of mirrors’ ‘six cases’ [2] in
Cas-et-e n° 6 [. . .] AND [2] doi Cas-et-e cases-dim-F. PL number NUM [. . .] NUM . two cases-dim-F. PL ‘in cases (there are) number 6’ [. . .] ‘(in) two cases’ PREP
con fogli-@ [. . .] AND [6] p(er) Cas-et-a [3] Cass-ett-31 PREP case-dim-F. SG case-dim-F. SG with leaf-F. SG [. . .] ‘case with leaf’ [. . .] ‘per case’
31 The symbol @ seems to be found in Visigoth writing from the 8th–12th century. However @ was also used by Italian, Venetian or Florentine merchants in order to express a unity of measure, the ‘amphora’. For further details refer to http://www.accademiadellacrusca.it/it/linguaitaliana/consulenza-linguistica/domande-risposte/significato-origine-simbolo-denominatocomun. We would like to thank Renzo Iacobucci (‘La Sapienza’ Roma, Italy) for these suggestions.
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[7] /entrov-ai/ sono n° 8 /don(ze)n-e/ find-PASS .1SG be-PRES .3PLU number NUM dozen-PLU ‘I found to be eight dozens’ Considering that in the DG collection there are only two documents, namely a letter from Bailo Antonio Trevisan (1703) and one from Petrus Zeno (1531), one of which dates back to the very beginning of the 18th century, apart from the presence of Venetian lexemes like Doi,32 zonto, fiol, lassai 33, the lack of graphic alternation is not surprising. Therefore from the examples presented thus far it emerges that the graphic alternation seems to be a widespread practice in the analysed sub-corpus especially in those documents written by writers who were not Venetians or who were in areas outside the Italian peninsula. As Baglioni states (2016: 133) in these areas the Venetian variety was the language of commercial relationships as well as the language used by the administration of the colonies. Consequently, the who and where these texts were composed seems to be determinant in the occurrence of graphic alternation and allography, while the why (typology of text) seems not to be relevant as far as the speaking-writing relation is concerned. The writing system within these documents is evidently characterised by a phonetic status which is neither rigid nor consistently applied, as both the graphic level and the phonetic level cross and the graphic level supports the phonetic one. As Mancini asserts (1994: 7–8), orality filters through the documents of the spoken language representing a transmission channel of writing itself. In this context, writing holds a strictly pragmatic value for the transmission of the message. As a consequence, the graphic instability in writing, which does not conform to a specific reference model, reflects the complexity of the contacts that characterised the Mediterranean at the time where writers with different cultural, social and linguistic backgrounds shared the same pragma-linguistic practices.
5 Conclusions The cases herewith presented, and further analysed in essays by Di Salvo, Mori and Muru (in Di Salvo and Muru 2016), show that the traits which can be observed in the MediCoP documents are void of any systematic sociolinguistic motivation. 32 DG doc I (MediCoP 01) [10]. 33 DG doc II (MediCoP 02) [07], [10], [12].
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As already discussed elsewhere (Mori 2016, Muru 2016, Turchetta 2016), the communicative needs of the writers of the Mediterranean area prevail. Among writers with multiple competences in different languages, a continuum of ItaloRomance varieties used with a vehicular function beyond the Italian borders (see Baglioni 2016) is confirmed by the documents of the MediCoP. The Mediterranean speakers/writers are representative of an aggregation of individuals who developed a set of shared pragma-linguistic practices where the predominance of oral upon writing, led by pragma-communicative needs, is evident. Within this scenario, the Venetian variety, along with the Genoese one, played a special role due to its primary diffusion both in commercial and administrative settings. When looked at in a diachronic perspective, the selected sub-corpus shows that the predominance of the Venetian variety diminished during the 17th century allowing the spreading of the Tuscan variety, especially within diplomatic and administrative settings (Di Salvo 2016). In this scenario, the most suitable model to be applied for the interpretation of the linguistic variation observable in the texts of MediCoP seems to be that of the community of practices as proposed by Turchetta (2016)34. The community of practices, a social aggregation of individuals characterised by common behaviour because of shared practices, seems to explain the linguistic heterogeneity and fluidity as it allows us to understand the social space negotiated by the people of the Modern Mediterranean. Indeed, as Drusteler (2012: 47) notes: “early modern Mediterranean composite polities necessarily embraced practices [. . .] of linguistic pragmatism that made no attempt to efface these linguistic differences or to impose any form of monolingual homogeneity on their empires”. Consequently, the writing system, which emerges from the documents, is not one-dimensional and isomorphic toward the language (Mancini 2014) but rather pluridimensional. Consequently, speech-driven graphic variation (Section 2), the graphic manifestation of voicing and devoicing of stops (Section 3), and graphic alternation (Section 4) discussed here, can be interpreted as evidence of the polymorphism which characterized the Italian peninsula in Early Modern Times and, to a greater extent, the multilingual Mediterranean area where pragmatic needs prevailed above any writing convention. In conclusion, the linguistic variation in Modern Mediterranean writings is related to shared practices for which there is no stable reference model. Therefore the use of a writing form, more or less close to one Romance variety (e.g. Tuscan or Venetian), should not be regarded as a matter of identity but should rather be interpreted in the framework of inter-ethnic communication. 34 The ‘community of practice’ was initially devised by Lave e Wenger (1991). See also Wenger, McDermott & Snyder (2002) and Wenger (1998).
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Minervini, Laura. 1996. La lingua franca mediterranea. Plurilinguismo, mistilinguismo, pidginizzazione sulle coste del Mediterraneo tra tardo medioevo e prima età moderna. Medioevo romanzo 20. 231–301. Mion, Giuliano. Cypriot Arabic between Orality and Literacy in O typos ton Maroniton. This volume. Mori, Laura. 2016. Plurilinguismo, interferenza e marche acquisizionali in “italiano di contatto” nella comunicazione transculturale del Mediterraneo moderno. In Margherita Di Salvo & Cristina Muru (eds.), Dragomanni, Sovrani e Mercanti. Pratiche linguistiche nelle relazioni politiche e commerciali del Mediterraneo moderno, 23–72. Pisa: ETS. Muru, Cristina. 2016. La variazione linguistica nelle pratiche scrittorie dei Dragomanni. In Margherita Di Salvo & Cristina Muru (eds.), Dragomanni, Sovrani e Mercanti. Pratiche linguistiche nelle relazioni politiche e commerciali del Mediterraneo moderno, 147–201. Pisa: ETS. Rohlfs, Gerhard. 1966 [1949]. Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti. I. Fonetica. Torino: Einaudi. [or. edn. Historische Grammatik der Italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten. I. Lautlehre. Bern: A. Francke.] Sanga, Glauco. 1990. La lingua lombarda. Dalla koinè alto-italiana delle Origini alla lingua cortegiana. In Glauco Sanga (ed.), Koinè in Italia dalle origini al Cinquecento, 79–163. Bergamo: Pierluigi Lubrina Editore. Schweickard, Wolfgang. 2012. Cherzego / Chersego. Rivista Italiana di Onomastica 13 (1). 13–18. Stussi, Alfredo. 1965. Testi veneziani del Duecento e dei primi del Trecento. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi. Stussi, Alfredo. 1995. Venezien-Veneto. In Günter Holtus, Michael Metzeltin & Christian Schmit (eds.), Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik, vol. II/2. 124–34. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Testa, Enrico. 2014. L’italiano nascosto. Torino. Einaudi. Tomasin, Lorenzo. 2010. Storia linguistica di Venezia. Roma: Carocci. Tomasin, Lorenzo. 2013a. Quindici testi veneziani 1300–1310. Lingua e Stile 48. 3–48. Tomasin, Lorenzo. 2013b. Sulla tradizione grafica dei dialetti veneti. In Federico Biddau (ed.), Die geheimen Mächte hinter der Rechtschreibung /L’ortografia e i suoi poteri forti. Erfahrungen in Vergleich/Esperienze a confronto, 145–158. Frankfurt am Main & Berlin & Bern & Bruxelles & New York & Oxford & Wien: Peter Lang. Turchetta, Barbara. 2016. Comunità plurilingui fra scriventi nel Mediterraneo dei secoli XVI e XVII. In Margherita Di Salvo & Cristina Muru. 2016 (eds.), Dragomanni, Sovrani e Mercanti. Pratiche linguistiche nelle relazioni politiche e commerciali del Mediterraneo moderno, 9– 22. Pisa: ETS. Turchetta, Barbara. The Writer’s Identity and Identification Markers in Writing Code Mixing and Interference. This volume. Venier, Federica. 2012. La corrente di Humboldt. Una lettura di La lingua franca di Hugo Schuchardt. Roma: Carocci. Wenger, Etienne, Richard McDermott & William M. Snyder. 2002. Cultivating Communities of Practice. A guide to managing knowledge. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Practice. Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zamboni, Alberto. 1974. Veneto. Pisa: Pacini. Zamboni, Alberto. 1979. Le caratteristiche essenziali dei dialetti veneti. In Manlio Cortelazzo (ed.), Guida ai dialetti veneti, 9–43. Padova: Cooperativa Libraria Editrice Università di Padova.
Giuliano Mion
18 Cypriot Arabic between Orality and Literacy in O typos ton Maroniton 1 Introduction: Cypriot Arabic, or Sanna In the Mediterranean several minorities speak languages that they refer to by the expression “our language”, “our way of speaking”, like, for example, the case of the Croatian minority of Molise (a small central-southern region of Italy) whose autoglottonym is naš jezik (literally ‘our language’) or na-našu (‘our way [of speaking]’), or that of many Rom communities that usually refer to their language as romani čhib ‘Romani’ or amari čhib ‘our language’.1 One of these minorities that refer to their language in this way is the Arabic speaking Maronite community of Cyprus2 that currently seems to show an increasingly positive attitude toward its modern autoglottonym sanna (< lsān-na ‘our language’). The use of these labels inevitably highlights a large gap, in terms of culture, behavior and language, between the predominant community (i.e. the “majority”) and the minority that creates these neologisms. Furthermore this distance, marked by naming a minority language in a completely different way compared to the official language, results in a sort of paradox, especially if one considers that contact between the two groups obviously corresponds to continuous contact phenomena between their respective languages. Historically, the Maronite community of Cyprus is issued by different waves of migration started in the Middle Ages and whose origin was the Syro-Lebanese region.3 So, Cypriot Arabic (henceforth Sanna) is the Neo-Arabic variety spoken by the Maronite community, a language which is deeply interfered by Cypriot Greek at all levels.4 As for scientific literature, Sanna is not only a minority lan1 See, for example, the survey contained in Consani (2005). 2 For an introduction on the confessional history of Cyprus and on the role of the Maronites in the island, see Emilianides (2011); for a comparison between the three minorities of Maronites, Armenians and Latins, see the work edited by Varnava, Coureas, Elia (2009). 3 A first description of Cypriot Arabic is Tsiapera (1969), but currently the best resource is the grammar of Borg (1985) that one can use together with Borg (2004), a dictionary conceived as a comparative work with other Arabic dialects and Semitic languages. 4 See, for example, the synthesis of Roth (2004). Giuliano Mion, Università di Chieti-Pescara DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-018
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guage, but also a moribund one. In fact, it was originally spoken in the village of Kormakiti and its surrounding areas whose Maronite community, after the Turkish occupation of Cyprus in 1974, began to split into a real Diaspora. As a result, the Maronite community of Cyprus, aware of the slow decay of Sanna and of the risks of a complete extinction, started a series of initiatives that aim to revitalize and promote this language. The following lines of this contribution will focus on a particular form of promotion of Sanna that undoubtedly represents a very recent and innovative fact, i.e. the use of this language in journalistic contexts as well as an experiment of language teaching through the pages of one of the most popular magazines published by the Cypriot Maronite community.5
2 Written Sanna and Writing Sanna Traditionally, the Arabic dialect spoken by the Maronite community of Cyprus has always been a variety without written documentation. The only exception seems to be an ecclesiastic document found in the Propaganda Fide archive and published by Lentin (2000), a short letter from the XVII century written in karšūnī scripts that contains features belonging to Cypriot Arabic.6 It could be possible to assume that written manifestations should have been more evident and numerous in periods during which the community was bigger, but anyway we should judge these kinds of written attestations totally informal and rare. There is no doubt that one can totally agree with Borg (1994, 2004) who suggests that the almost complete absence of a written tradition is due to two main factors: 1. the essentially rural character of the Maronite community, 2. bilingualism with Greek, which represents the opposite pole of the linguistic repertoire used by Maronites in their public life. In the specific social context of Cyprus, this Arabic speaking community is not only a linguistic minority but also a confessional one, as the preponderance of 5 The analysis of linguistic tendencies and trends is the object of a short introduction in Percy (2014). 6 Karšūnī, an adapted version of the Syriac alphabet, is typically used in most of the Christian Middle Arabic texts written by Maronites, Jacobites and Nestorians. For a short description of the varieties of the so-called Middle Arabic, see Lentin (2008).
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Cypriots is Christian Orthodox and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,7 where the village of Kormakiti is located, is in its majority Muslim. Generally speaking, such a minority can only have two possible fates: the total assimilation by the mainstream culture, or the opposite attitude, namely a reluctance to assimilate and a strong feeling of self-preservation. Cypriot Maronites opted for the second route. For such a community, the reaffirmation of its own identity passes inevitably through the revitalization of its language. And in the case under examination, that is to say the case of a language of an essentially domestic use, the different planning activities which focus on the revitalization have predicted, among other things, the passage from orality to literacy, i.e. from the status of a purely oral variety to that of a new written and writable variety. Among the requirements of this new literacy, it is worth mentioning the choice of a code, an alphabet, and finally an orthography.8 The first real attempt in this way consists of an Arabic-Greek glossary compiled by Antonis Frangiskou (2000), a priest and native speaker, entitled Το λεξικό της αραβικής διαλέκτου του Κορμακίτη (‘A Dictionary of the Arabic Dialect of Kormakiti’). This work has the merit of having tried a written approach that for the first time is not an act – in Saussurian words – of spontaneous and improvised parole. With time, Antonis Frangiskou began a linguistic militancy which aimed to raise awareness among his co-religionists on the decay of language. This militancy culminated in his cooperation with the magazine Ο τύπος των Μαρονιτών (‘The Press of Maronites’), which consists of a real activity of linguistic acquisition planning. Ο τύπος των Μαρονιτών is a monthly magazine published by the Maronite community in Nicosia and consists of twenty-four pages almost entirely printed in color.9 In order to conduct our study, we collected about fifty issues published from 2006 (No. 58) to December 2012 (No. 109). Currently, the magazine results published with some discontinuity. The magazine is written almost entirely in Greek, and some fixed pages appear in English and Sanna. The English parts consist of a couple of pages with a fixed setting; the parts in Sanna were instead subject to several revisions.
7 Officially Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti. 8 For example, Sebba (2007). 9 www.typosmaroniton.com (last accessed in August 2016) was the website of the magazine which now results inactive (January 2017). In the website it was possible to download the PDF version of each edition of the magazine.
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Up to No. 87 of June 2009, it contains a fixed page entitled Γλώσσα ‘language’, written entirely in the Greek alphabet, which includes real teaching units (‘lessons’) for learning Sanna. Later, things changed: those who were behind this campaign must have felt that the time had come for the launch of entire news reports completely written in Sanna. If we frame these activities according to the so-called Catherine wheel model of Strubel (1999), we could assume that the number of competent speakers of Sanna increased or, at least, the demand for services in that language increased. In a few months, such an immediate effect is improbable so, instead of the demand for services, it is necessary to recognize that their offer to the public increased. In No. 88 of October 2009, for the first time Sanna appears entirely Romanized as the Latin alphabet definitively replaces the Greek one. Church and education are a very traditional binomial already quite clear because of the main actors of this initiative, but it becomes even more clear when the newspaper continues to publish its teaching units in a new column called symbolically ‘Pray and learn’. Finally, starting from No. 103 of December 2011, the pages in Sanna abandon their originally pedagogical mission and simply report journalistic news, by taking a decidedly secular new name, ‘What’s up’.
3 Γλώσσα The so-called Γλώσσα section opens with a title written in Greek which says: “A collaboration between Ο τύπος των Μαρονιτών and the priest and teacher Antonis Frangiskou”. This sort of title is immediately followed by a piece of text in Greek which is regularly reported in each issue of the magazine. The Arabic dialect of Kormakiti is not writable or readable, but it is transmitted by listening to it directly from the mouth of the speaker. Before the events occurred in Cyprus in 1974, the inhabitants of Kormakiti were used to speaking Arabic. The children were used to listening to it and learning it. After the events of 1974, the situation changed. The inhabitants of Kormakiti were scattered all over the island. Their neighbors today are Greek Cypriots and now the children no longer listen nor speak this Arabic dialect. It can be concluded without any doubt that the end of this dialect is getting ever closer [. . .] In February 2000, the Cultural Committee of Somatos, which is called “Kormakiti”, kindly published my work entitled A Dictionary of Arabic Dialect of Kormakiti. The work on this precious treasure belonging to Kormakiti and to its inhabitants currently present throughout Cyprus continues silently and inexorably.
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The second part of the Γλώσσα section bears a title in Greek: Μαθαίνω Αραβικά του Κορμακίτη ‘Lessons in the Arabic Dialect of Kormakiti’. Each one of these “lessons” consists of a short learning unit which reports different grammatical topics ranging from the nominal morphology to the syntax of the verb. Now, in the following paragraphs we shall observe the content of Ο τύπος των Μαρονιτών limiting ourselves to an analysis of the Greek written phase, which coincides with the learning units of Sanna. We will consequently consider the projection of the Greek model (at all levels of analysis) on the description of Arabic and also verify how the transfer of a written pattern on a traditionally oral variety has been conceived. For practical reasons of space and time, the second phase written in the Latin alphabet will not be dealt with extensively, though this new graphic choice currently looks like a habit that has now definitely emerged.10 We shall therefore examine three cases, selected from the many possible ones, in order to illustrate how some morphosyntactic topics were treated.
4 The pronominal system The unit contained in No. 61 of 2007 (p. 21) shows different pronominal systems, among them the personal pronouns. In the table below, the two left columns in grey report the original content in Greek alphabet of the magazine; the two right columns in Latin alphabet show our intervention.
Sanna
Greek
Transcription of Sanna
Translation
Άνα Ίντ Ίντη Ούο Ίε Νάχνι Ίντου Ίννεν
εγώ εσύ εσύ (Θ) αυτός αυτή εμείς εσείς αυτόι, αυτές, αυτά
ana int inti uo ie naxni intu innen
‘I’ ‘you (M )’ ‘you (F )’ ‘he’ ‘she’ ‘we’ ‘you’ ‘they’
10 See Mion (Forthc.).
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Observations: 1. Six of the pronouns contained in the series are written with a stressed vowel, according to the Greek rules. 2. The 2nd pers.sg. provides an excellent example of transfer of the Greek written model on to the Cypriot Arabic oral model. In fact, the gender opposition of int/inti is marked morphologically: the feminine pronoun ends by a /i/ and, from the graphic side, by a , whereas the other theme of the series ending with a /i/ (1st pers.pl.) ends by a . The graphic choice of must be ascribed to a Greek interference as this option usually marks feminine. 3. The 3rd pers.sg.m. and the 2nd pers.pl. present both the digraph (the 3rd sg., eventually with its variant ) that register vowel [u], on the model of the Modern Greek orthography in which → [i] and → [u]. 4. All the pronouns in the series conform to those described by Borg (1985: 133).
5 The adjective The situation of nouns as presented in No. 58 of November 2006 is very interesting, as the unit reveals the structure of the adjective morphosyntax. The categories used are clearly Greek, as the adjective is declined into the four cases of Ονομαστική ‘nominative’, Γενική ‘genitive’, Αιτιατική ‘accusative’ and Κλητική ‘vocative’. In the table below, like the previous paragraph, the two left columns in grey report the original content in Greek alphabet of the magazine; the two right columns in Latin alphabet show our intervention.
Ονομ. Γεν. Αιτ. Κλητ. Ονομ. Γεν. Αιτ. Κλητ.
Sanna
Greek
Transcription of Sanna
Translation
Λ’ ίσφετ Τελ ίσφετ Λ’ ίσφετ Ίσφετ Λ’ σούτ Τελ σούτ Λ’ σούτ σουτ
ο μαύρος του μαύρου το μαύρο μαύρε οι μαύροι των μαύρων τους μαύρους μαύροι
l-isfet tel isfet l-isfet isfet l-sut tel sut l-sut sut
‘the black’ ‘of the black’ ‘the black’ ‘oh black!’ ‘the black ones’ ‘of the black ones’ ‘the black ones’ ‘oh black ones!’
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Observations: 1. Overall, the structure of Arabic is interpreted on that of Greek, as the declensional categories that characterize the Greek nominal system are applied to the Arabic morphological one. Instead of Greek, however, which declension affects both the definite article and the nominal, the Arabic situation clearly shows that the theme isfet ‘black’ (cf. Cl.Ar. aswad) does not alter and there is no morphological variations corresponding to the different cases. 2. At the genitive, Arabic has at the singular and at the plural. Arabic, however, simply shows a literal translation of the sentence ‘of the black’ that actually consists of a preposition, a definite article, and the nominal:
3.
te-
l-
isfet
PREP.of
DET.
ADJ.black
The presence of a vocative (κλητική) is completely unrealistic for the reason that in all the Arabic varieties, Sanna included, the vocation uses the particle *yā or intonational strategies.
6 The verbal system In the learning units dedicated to the Sanna verbal morphology, the verbal system is presented on the basis of a pattern that includes the following types: Ενεστώτας ‘present’, Παρατατικός ‘imperfect’, Μέλλοντας ‘future’, Αόριστος ‘aorist’, Προστακτική ‘imperative’. The verb ‘open’, for example, appears as shown below: Type
1st PERS.SG.
Transcription
Translation
Ενεστώτας Παρατατικός Μέλλοντας Αόριστος Προστακτική
πίφταχ κουντήφταχ ττάφταχ φταχτ φταχ
píftax kuntíftax ttaftax ftaxt ftax
‘I open’ ‘I was opening’ ‘I will open’ ‘I opened’ ‘open(M )!’
Observations: 1. In the units, the verb is given in its 1st pers.sg., contrary to what happens in any Arabic variety (and typically in the Semitic languages) in which instead the 3rd pers.sg.m. of the past is preferred. A verb like ‘open’ is therefore
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presented as follows: , which corresponds to ana piftax ‘I open’. In Greek the citation form of the verb is the infinitive, but the lack of this verbal category in Sanna makes not possible a perfect correspondence between the two languages. 2. In Cypriot Arabic, as indeed in all the Arabic varieties, the imperfect (παρατατικός) is built by the juxtaposition of an auxiliary verb followed by the main verb, the first one being a verb of existence (Cyp.Ar. ken, Coll.Ar. kān, Cl.Ar. kāna). On the graphic side, we can observe that the two verbs /kunt/ and /iftax/ appear in the guise of a single lexeme corresponding to one accentual unit and therefore to a single phonological word, i.e. the type /kuntiftax/. 3. The future (μέλλοντας) is given by the preverbal morpheme tta- which is characterized by a futural value to be prefixed to the present. Similarly to the situation of the two verbs of the imperfect, the morphem tta- is subject to concretion, even graphic, with the verb /iftax/. Therefore there is also a vowel assimilation in which *tta-iftax > tta-ftax. 4. The general overview reveals a verbal system in which the subjunctive is totally neglected, although all Neo-Arabic varieties – and Sanna included – use it systematically in secondary sentences. Sanna falls within the category of those Neo-Arabic varieties that, in the general reorganization of its verbal system, introduced modal distinctions on the basis of the presence/absence of preverbal morphemes, such as in Syr.Ar. b-əftaħ ‘I open’ ≠ əftaħ ‘[that] I open’. In this respect, the following scheme draws a general picture of the verb in which the subjunctive is completely absent: πίφταχ κουντήφταχ ττάφταχ ?
píftax kuntíftax ttaftax iftax
← ← ← ←
p-iftax kunt-iftax tta-(i)ftax Ø-iftax
7 The writing system A possible classification of the writing systems used among the different world’s languages could present three fundamental categories:11 a) “classical writing systems”, used for prestigious languages, international languages and national standard languages; they have a high level of codification and a deep historical tradition; 11 This hypothesis is based on Iannàccaro, Guerini, and Dal Negro (2015).
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b) “planned writing systems”, created by cultural and/or administrative institutions for languages that at the origin did not develop a spontaneous writing; c) “spontaneous writing systems”, developed for practical reasons by speakers who are not linguists in order to record a language which is traditionally only oral. Writing is undoubtedly a social practice, especially if we consider that “literacy and writing offer an effective tool for sharing knowledge”.12 So, the passage from orality to literacy becomes crucial for the cultural development of a community. When a community begins putting down in writing its own non-standard language that is traditionally oral, there is often a tendency to record in details the phonetic surface of that spoken variety. In fact, the metalinguistic abilities used while writing are superior to those required for speech, and this is because this practice can be considered a reflected activity. Each “spontaneous” writer should have been previously alphabetized in the principal standard language of his or her community. And, as a consequence, the real risk could result in transcribing the pronunciation of that variety, depending obviously on the conventions of the most prestigious language.13 In being bilinguals with Greek, for their written transposition of Arabic, Maronites chose a Greek background and this is a very important issue for the analysis of their writing practices. Sanna definitely adheres to a phonetic strategy, and not to an etymological one, but still leans to a well-established model such as the Greek one. Aside from a purely “phonetic strategy”, we must recognize that the analysis of the written documentation displays a clear correspondence between grapheme and phoneme, but sometimes also a confusion between the graphematic level and both the phonetic or phonological level, depending on the cases. The following summary shows the correspondences between the levels: Graphematic Phonetics/ Solution Phonology
Examples
()
μπαχρ μαχλούτα ξους φκουμ μσηχτ Κορματζίτη μshαν
/b/ /u/ /ks/ (← /k/+/s/) [fk] ← /pk/ (← /p/+/k/) [xt] ← /kt/ (← /k/+/t/) /ž/ /š/
12 After the words of Turchetta (this volume). 13 See, among the others, Sebba (2007).
baxr maxluta ksus fkum ← /pkum/ msixt ← /msikt/ kormažiti mšan
‘sea’ ‘salad’ ‘priests’ ‘I wake up’ ‘I took’ ‘Kormakiti’ ‘because’
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Observations: 1. Except for the digraphic solutions, the correspondence grapheme/phoneme is quite evident. 2. In many cases, the model is undoubtedly Greek, as when the code uses digraphs to record a single phoneme (as in → /b/; → /u/; → /ž/). 3. In two cases, the digraph records the contextual allophones of the two phonemes p and k (/pk/ → [fk] → , /kt/ → [xt] → ). 4. A case of graphic code-mixing appears, because the phoneme š, which is absent from the Greek phonological inventory, is curiously recorded by a Latin digraph of a visibly Anglographic inspiration.
7.1 Stress and accentuation Another issue that appears prominently in written Cypriot Arabic consists in the presence of a graphic accent in the words. In disyllabic and polysyllabic terms the accentuation is written systematically with an acute accent, according to the orthographic rules of Modern Greek: pkyáxtop ‘he writes’, xelvín ‘sweet’. In monosyllables Modern Greek does not record the accent, except for the cases of homographs where the presence or the absence of the acute accent has a practical distinctive function. The situation of Sanna seems less consistent, since the same term alternates the accented variant and the one without accent according to no apparent reasons: and ftaxt ‘I opened’, and forn ‘oven’, and xtir ‘much’.
7.2 Definite article Cypriot Arabic has a prefixed and unstressed definite article, il- (Cl.Ar. al-), whose initial vowel in certain phonotactic contexts is subject to deletion. If the term which receives the article begins with coronals, the segment /l/ tends to assimilate. The article is written only using the grapheme , but one can recognize different behaviors in its writing: 1. It can appear as a prefix with an apostrophe: Misek l-kappello tel-u u xarap ‘he grabbed his hat and fled’ (No. 66, 2007, p. 21). 2. It can appear separated but with an apostrophe: l-xmar l-isfet ‘a black donkey’ (n° 58, 2006, p. 21).
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3.
It can be geminated and vocalized: baxr tel Korno u lli-knise tel An-Gyorki ‘The sea of the Corona [beach] and the church of St. George’ (No. 59, 2006, p. 21). This case is interesting because both the consonantic gemination and the epenthetic vowel i are relevant in order to avoid the accumulation of the three consonants that could result in *l-knise, and therefore it constitutes a clear case of influence of the spoken language on the phonological competence. 4. It can be suffixed to a preposition: naxni lina bayt fil-kormažīti ‘we have a house in Kormakiti’ (No. 67, 2007, p. 21). In this case, it can also be noted that the presence of a definite article in front of the name ‘Kormakiti’ is obviously caused by morphosyntactic interference with Greek.
7.3 Discrepancies In several occurrences of the same words, different graphematic solutions have been adopted. The term xops ‘bread’ (Cl.Ar. xubz), for example, appears in four different shapes: , , and . In these solutions, final /ps/ can appear by the single grapheme or by the combination of two graphemes , but, being a monosyllable, one can note that the presence of the accent may be considered unmotivated. Lastly, the plural of the same term is xpaz, written or . Here, aside from the graph(emat)ic variants,14 one can also observe that the final voiced consonant /z/ shows the restoration of an etymological sonority (Cl.Ar. ʾaxbāz) that was lost in the singular after the assimilation with /p/. The group /pk/ (< */bk/ ~ */bq/), made by the combination of two phonological segments /p/ and /k/, can sometimes be the result of morphological processes, as in verbal conjugation, but the Greek interference permits a phonetic realization [fk]. The solution appears to be most frequent, as in fkum ← /pkum/ ‘I get up’, but the occurrence of /pk/ → is not excluded, as in pkyakol ‘he eats’.
7.4 Vocalism The vowel /i/ can be realized or and, in stressed positions, or , but apparently with no precise rules: kilt ‘I have eaten’ is written or . 14 Instead of “graphematic variants”, perhaps one could also treat these phenomena as cases of “graphematic allotropy”. Murgia (this volume) seems to apply this interpretation to her work on Arborea’s Carta de Logu written in Sardinian.
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However, it is possible to observe a noticeable tendency to prefer the grapheme when /i/ is the segment belonging to a morpheme: miftáx-i ‘my key’, inti ‘yousg.fem ’ (≠ ίντ int ‘yousg.masc ’). The diphthong /ay/ is written or if the nuclear vowel receives the lexical stress otherwise, if there is no accentuation, it is written without apparent criteria or , the latter with an umlaut to avoid the phonetic realization [e] of Modern Greek: ayna → /ˈayna/ ‘which one?’, zaytune → /zayˈtune/ ‘olive tree’, zaytunat → /zaytuˈnat/ ‘olives’.
8 Towards a Romanization of Sanna No. 69 (October 2007) of the magazine contains a long interview in Greek, accompanied by an English translation, with the prominent Maltese linguist Alexander Borg. In this interview, he invites the Cypriot Maronite community to rediscover the Near Eastern antecedents of its culture. For those who are neither experts nor linguists, the identification with some prestigious ancient civilizations, such as the Akkadian and the Aramaic one, becomes very easy and immediate. Starting with this intervention, the next numbers of Ο τύπος των Μαρονιτών begin to manifest increasingly the relationships between Cypriot Maronites and the vicissitudes of Near Eastern Christianity. In some other publications that are ideologically analogue to Ο τύπος των Μαρονιτών, Maronite commentators who are not linguists even started claiming that Sanna is a form of Aramaic which survived on the island of Cyprus to the phases of Hellenization and Islamization/ Arabicization which occurred in the Near East, disregarding consequently its real Arabic origin.15 It is on this line that suddenly the magazine, starting by No. 72 (January 2008), begins to use the Latin alphabet modified according to a proposal of A. Borg. In some cases, the modified Latin alphabet is evidently inspired by both Maltese and the International Phonetic Alphabet, as it is possible to see in the following representation: . 15 This attitude is very similar to what happens in Malta, where someone still insists on the “Semitic” (and not “Arabic”!) influence on Maltese. Christian Science Monitor, for example, is an American online magazine, where some Cypriot journalists are regularly active and who openly speak about the survival of the ancient language of Jesus at Kormakiti: http://www. csmonitor.com/2004/0129/p07s02-wome.html.
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9 Some conclusive reflections In his model of language revitalization, Fishman (1991) recommends an action “from below” in order to reaffirm the minority language in informal areas and to stabilize the diglottic system of the linguistic community. And in a sense, the campaign for the revitalization of Sanna that we have described in these pages – very unique, in many ways – has pursued Fishman’s hypothesis, especially because according to him the creation of a standard orthography for non-standard languages represents an intervention which can strongly contrast dangerous processes like the so-called language substitution or language death. However, it is indeed true that teaching a minority language implies an “appropriate management [of this issue] that provides training for teachers [. . .] and the preparation of adequate and updated teaching materials”.16 From this point of view, on the purely qualitative side the material analyzed is far from adequate. From the perspective of linguistic evaluation, things can be viewed differently. It is true, as explained by Percy (2014, 202), that “newspapers can [. . .] track diachronic linguistic change”, but in a limited period of time as that taken into consideration for our case, and because of the nature of the material analyzed, it is difficult to realize diachronic conclusions.17 However, some general observations are certainly conceivable. In the process of revitalization of Sanna, the situation of bilingualism of the Cypriot community makes the Greek model appear evident at all levels. Now, the situations of linguistic contact may involve the use of different writing systems and can therefore evolve into conditions of strong variation or even digraphia.18 This is partially the case under consideration, where Sanna in a first phase presents itself written in the Greek alphabet, and in the second phase written in the Latin alphabet. And it must be remembered that even the Greek code appears interfered with. On the synchronic level, this Sanna written in Greek shows a good homogeneity. In addition, we should note that among the most common criteria for evaluating
16 Marra (2007: 177), referring to the case of Croatian in Molise. 17 Contrary, for example, to what one can conclude after the diachronic analysis of a completely different linguistic situation like that described by Di Salvo, Mori, and Muru (this volume). 18 “Digraphia” is a term coined on “diglossia” to indicate the presence of two writing systems simultaneously in the same community. For a recent analysis about the influence of bilingualism into digraphia, see for example Angermeyer (2012). For variation in writing, see for example Turchetta (this volume).
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a writing system, three factors are generally taken into consideration, i.e. transparency, regularity and simplicity.19 From this perspective, it becomes necessary to conclude that the direct correspondence between grapheme and phoneme produces solutions which are easily accessible to the linguistic community. As it is well known, in the situations of language contact, even those which involved conditions of digraphia or polygraphia, communal identity is expressed through a series of linguistic devices.20 So, one of the most relevant elements is the sudden change of the writing code, i.e. the transition to the Latin alphabet which now seems definitely imposed to the detriment of the Greek, a phenomenon that appears to be extremely attractive for further research.21
References Angermeyer, Philipp. 2012. Bilingualism Meets Digraphia. Script Alternation and Script Hybridity in Russian-American Writing and Beyond. In Mark Sebba, Shahrazad Mahootian & Carla Jonsson (eds.), Language Mixing and Code-Switching in Writing: Approaches to MixedLanguage Written Discourse, 255–272. New York: Routledge. Borg, Alexander. 1985. Cypriot Arabic. Stuttgart: Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft. Borg, Alexander. 2004. A Dictionary of Cypriot Arabic. Leiden: Brill. Brincat, Joseph. 2000. Il-Malti. Elf sena ta’ storja. Malta: Pubblikazzjonijiet Indipendenza. Cardona, Giorgio R. 1981. Antropologia della scrittura. Torino: Loescher. Consani, Carlo. 2005. Vecchie e nuove minoranze linguistiche dell’area abruzzese e molisana fra linguistica e sociolinguistica. Adriatico/Jadran 1. 289–306. Coulmas, Florian. 2013. Writing and Society. An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dal Negro, Silvia, Federica Guerini & Gabriele Iannàccaro. 2015. Esperienze spontanee di elaborazione ortografica: premesse per un’analisi (socio)linguistica. In Silvia Dal Negro, Federica Guerini & Gabriele Iannàccaro (eds.), Elaborazione ortografica delle varietà non standard. Esperienze spontanee in Italia e all’estero, 7–50. Bergamo: Sestante. Di Salvo, Margherita, Laura Mori & Cristina Muru. The Mediterranean Community of Practices between Speaking and Writing in Early Modern Documents. This volume. Emilianides, Achilles C. 2011. Religion and Law in Cyprus. Alphen aan den Rijn: Kluwer Law International. Fishman, Joshua A. 1991. Reversing Language Shift. Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
19 Sebba (2007, 110). 20 For example, in Mion (2015) the fate of some guttural consonants of Old Arabic in Cypriot Arabic is analyzed according to a possible explication based on the confessional identity. 21 The relationship between writing and identity has been largely investigated by several scholars in a vast literature: among them, see, for example, Cardona (1981), Sebba (2007), Coulmas (2013), Mancini and Turchetta (2014).
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Frangiskou, Antonis. 2000. Το λεξικό της αραβικής διαλέκτου του Κορμακίτη [The Dictionary of the Arabic Dialect of Kormakitis]. Nicosia [sic]. Lentin, Jérôme. 2000. A 17th Century Document in Cypriot Arabic. In Manwel Mifsud (ed.), Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Aida, 207–211. Malta: Salesian Press. Lentin, Jérôme. 2008. Middle Arabic. In Kees Versteegh, Mushira Eid, Alaa Elgibali, Manfred Woidich & Andrzej Zaborski (eds.), Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics, Vol. III, 215–224. Leiden: Brill. Mancini, Marco & Barbara Turchetta (eds.). 2014. Etnografia della scrittura. Rome: Carocci. Marra, Antonietta. 2007. Politiche linguistiche e piccole comunità minoritarie, tra sociolinguistica e glottodidattica. In Carlo Consani & Paola Desideri (eds.), Minoranze linguistiche. Prospettive, strumenti, territori, 161–185. Rome: Carocci. Mion, Giuliano. 2015. Sull’interferenza fonologica in arabo cipriota. In Carlo Consani (ed.), Contatto interlinguistico tra presente e passato, 359–378. Milano: LED. Mion, Giuliano. Forthc. Un arabo cipriota romanizzato? Distacchi e identità fra variazione scrittoria e confessione religiosa. Murgia, Giulia. Aspects of Polymorphism in Arborea’s Carta de Logu. This volume. Percy, Carol. 2014. Early Advertising and Newspapers as a Source of Sociolinguistic Investigation. In Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy & Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, 191–210. Malden (MA): Wiley & Blackwell. Roth, Arlette. 2004. Le parler arabe maronite de Chypre: observations à propos d’un contact linguistique pluriséculaire. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 168. 55–76. Sebba, Mark. 2007. Spelling and Society. The Culture and Politics of Orthography around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strubell, Miquel. 1999. From Language Planning to Language Policies and Language Politics. In Peter J. Weber (ed.), Contact + Confli(c)t, 237–248. Bonn: Dümmler. Tsiapera, Maria. 1969. A Descriptive Analysis of Cypriot Maronite Arabic. The Hague: Mouton De Gruyter. Turchetta, Barbara. The Writer’s Identity and Identification Markers in Writing Code Mixing and Interference. This volume. Varnava, Andrekos, Nicholas Coureas & Marina Elia (eds.). 2009. The Minorities of Cyprus: Development Patterns and the Identity of the Internal-exclusion. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars.
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19 Aspects of Polymorphism in Arborea’s Carta de Logu 1 Polymorphism in Arborea’s Carta de Logu The Carta de Logu of Arborea is a legislative code promulgated by the iuyghissa (the judge-queen) Eleonora1 in the late 1380s or early 1390s, partially modified from the one emanated by Eleonora’s father, Mariano IV, some decades before. The Carta de Logu presents profound implications regarding identity, as in it the Arborean judge-kings express a full consciousness of themselves, of their own power, and of the values that governed the community. The same revisions to Mariano’s Carta de Logu that Eleonora points out in the Proemio that opens her own Carta de Logu could have been partially due to the necessity of strengthening the sense of belonging in the Arborean populace at a time when the fight against the Catalan-Aragonese was particularly bitter (see Mele 2000: 751). From a linguistic point of view, the Carta de Logu attempts to give form to Arborean Sardinian by means of an elevated, formal register; this attempt is made possible by the interference of supralocal models, particularly Italian and Catalan ones (Murgia 2015), among other things.2 The Carta de Logu has a textual tradition that, only apparently, seems rich, with one manuscript (Cagliari, Biblioteca Universitaria, ms. 211) and ten print editions, but all of these witnesses are traceable to a bifurcated stemma (Lupinu 2010). One branch of the stemma heads the only surviving manuscript, created in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, while the other branch is represented in the print tradition, which descends from the fifteenth-century incunabulum (perhaps from 1480). Two witnesses of this incunabulum survive, one at the Biblioteca Universitaria of Cagliari (Incunaboli, 230) and the other at the Biblioteca Reale of Turin (Incunaboli, I, 44). Successive print editions are all, to some extent, dependent on the incunabulum (Lupinu 2010). Thus, from a stemmatic point of 1 The figure of the iudike corresponded to that of the sovereign of the Giudicato, that is, of each of the four kingdoms (Calari, Arborea, Torres, Gallura) in which medieval Sardinia was divided, even if Boniface VIII, in 1297, had formally conceded the kingdoms of Sardinia and Corsica to James II of Aragon and his descendents. 2 For an examination of the Sardinian social repertoire in the XI–XIV centuries, see Pinto, Paulis and Putzu (this volume). Giulia Murgia, Università di Cagliari DOI 10.1515/9783110554274-019
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view, the only evidence useful for the purpose of reconstructing the physiognomy of the Carta de Logu are the manuscript, edited by Lupinu (2010) and previously by Besta (1905), and the incunabulum, recently edited by me (Murgia 2016). The bifurcated nature of the stemma also proves the dynamism of the Carta de Logu: the manuscript contains 162 chapters, while the incunabulum has 198; among these are included Mariano IV’s Codice rurale, a normative text dedicated to the disposition of agrarian law that was conceived by the father of Eleonora. In addition, the incunabulum contains a paratextual system of titles seen in the rubrics which open the individual chapters – almost completely absent from the manuscript (Strinna 2010) – and by a general index that appears only in the print edition. The first linguistic observations regarding Carta de Logu were aimed at explaining the reasons behind its polymorphism, that is, the complex linguistic physiognomy of the manuscript and the incunabulum, which show an abundant proliferation of allotropes, geolinguistic variants and loan words. Guarnerio (1905: 70) has interpreted this linguistic variation as a conflict between two forms of speech, partly traceable to the two copyists involved in the copying of the text, while Sanna (1979: 56) proposes that it is nothing more than a reflection of the Arborean condition in the medieval period, a direct expression of the “popular” character of the language of the Carta de Logu. Blasco Ferrer (1999; 2003, 1: 145–146), instead, hypothesizes that the model from which the print edition derived was a collection of variants, a manuscript containing competing readings in the margins, meant to ease the work of the copyists in creating copies destined for the territories of the Giudicato, where the opposing forces of the Arborean diasystem were already felt by speakers to pertain to two different standards that were strongly differentiated (Blasco Ferrer 2003, 1: 146). But even assuming that this polarization in two macro-varieties (the northern variant, Logudorese, and the southern, Campidanese) was already so marked, this hypothesis does not explain why medieval Arborean texts present internal contradictions and a continual oscillation among various linguistic outcomes originating from the same etymological base. It is necessary to add two other considerations on polymorphism to those presented so far, one of a linguistic nature and the other more philological. On the one hand, the condition of linguistic dynamism which characterizes not only the Carta de Logu, but also other medieval texts from the Giudicato of Arborea, is considered to be due to the complicated status of the language: Arborense was resistant, for geo- and socio-linguistic reasons, to the creation of a defined, stable linguistic norm (Virdis 1995). However, the philological aspect must not be underestimated; the interference by the copyists of the two witnesses is evident, and they show “linguistic reactions” that are different from those that lend themselves to sociolinguistic
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evaluation. Thus it is very fruitful to return to Segre’s philological notion of the diasystem, built upon the one conceived by Weinreich in the realm of linguistics. Segre speaks of a transcription as a diasystem, or system of compromise, with mixing of forms and, especially, with interference: every transcription constitutes a sort of “creolization” of the text (Segre 1979: 65). The work of the philologist is thus to individuate the stratigraphy of the various diasystems present in the text at the same time (Segre 1979: 59). Thus it is necessary – and this is the goal of this project – to proceed to the elaboration of an explanatory hierarchy for the occurrence of the variants, which can be perceived only after having individuated the textual stratigraphy deposited in the complex “object” called the Carta de Logu. The exploration of the successive strata superimposed over the textual tradition of the Carta de Logu makes it possible to avoid the danger of attributing to medieval Arborean a polymorphism that is also – though not only – the fruit of the sedimentation of writing from various hands. Different copyists, in fact, show a discordant linguistic sensibility towards the competitive variants at play, allowing the entrance or favoring the elimination of those variants to which they attribute unequal evaluation. This consideration is also based on a banal philological datum, which is still underestimated in the analysis of the language of the two stemmatically relevant pieces of evidence for the “reconstruction” of the elusive “original”: one of the two pieces is a manuscript, probably a working copy and devoid of legal value, and therefore presumably more exposed to the oscillations toward the low end of the tone; the other, by contrast, is the first printed edition of the text, and therefore aimed at the high, formal end of the linguistic continuum. Thus, the type of variation that will mainly be considered is the diaphasic, but with one caveat: the differing levels of formality are always mitigated by the correlation of the topic which in the Carta de Logu is the object of communication, that is, the law, which therefore lends a technical, specialized aspect to the language and impedes the entrance of more colloquial registers into the text.
2 Two Morphological Phenomena of Medieval Sardinian A certain level of polymorphism is implicit in every natural language, even more so in the case of a medieval language, as it would not have yet received the standardization guaranteed by the imposition of a norm connected to a more prestigious variety. But in the language of the two Carta de Logu witnesses it is possible to highlight certain grammatically relevant oppositions within the
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nominal and verbal morphology: the expression of the plural definite article and the construction of the periphrastic future tense, with and without the connective preposition. One of the isoglosses that are today considered fundamental in the diatopic distinction between the northern and southern varieties of modern Sardinian is that of the plural definite article: while the North uses two differentiated derivatives to indicate the masculine plural definite article (sos < Lat. IPSOS) and the feminine plural definite article (sas < Lat. IPSAS), in Campidanese there is the single derivative is, which neutralizes the gender opposition because it is valid for both masculine and feminine.3 The derivative is in southern Sardinian is found in the Campidanese scripta as early as the thirteenth century: in the Carta di donazione di Guglielmo-Salusio4 (1211), the new form is is concurrent with the apheretic allomorph sus (“assolbu sus serbus et is ankillas”, ‘I absolve the servants and the maids’). If one compares this information with that emerging from a document originating from the same Arborean area as the Carta de Logu, such as the Condaghe di Santa Maria di Bonarcado (recordings of which range widely from 1110 to the middle of the thirteenth century), we do find differentiated derivatives for the masculine and feminine plural definite article, but only alternating between the full form, issos, issas, and the already apheretic forms, sos, sus, sas, while is never appears by itself (Virdis 2002). One Arborean document which does show the presence of allomorphs is the Condaghe di Santa Chiara, a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century codex from the Convent of Santa Chiara di Oristano, where we find “ssu monesterio de ssas soris” (‘the convent of the nuns’) not far from “is bidazonis” (‘cultivated lands near the village’) (Maninchedda 1987: 44–47). Chronologically, the Carta de Logu falls halfway between the two documents discussed above. The Carta de Logu manuscript’s testimony is perfectly in line with that of the Condaghe di Bonarcado: there is no occurrence of the plural definite article is. In the incunabulum text, as well, the 198 chapters of language use exclusively the differentiated forms of the plural definite article. However, this is not the case in the rubric system, which is almost completely absent from the manuscript. The rubrics of 4 chapters in the editio princeps do use the form is: § 108, De is suetoris (‘Of tanners’); §§ 116 and 117, De is pastores (‘Of shepherds’); and § 119, De is paximentos (‘Of pasture’). Considering that in the incunabulum, just as in the manuscript, is never appears within the formulation of the norm, but only in the paratext, one must 3 See Blasco Ferrer (1984: 85–87, 2003: 205–206); Putzu (2003). 4 Blasco Ferrer (2003, 1: 85–88).
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necessarily ask what weight to give the impact of this “anomaly” in the sociolinguistic evaluation of the rubrics of the Carta de Logu, which can be evaluated partly comparing the behavior of the paratext with other linguistic phenomena, such as the construction of the future tense. Modern Sardinian forms the future from the periphrasis HABĔO + AD + infinitive. In medieval Sardinian, too, the future is always periphrastic, but it uses the morphosyntactic pattern HABĔO + infinitive. The future tense of old Sardinian thus did not use the preposition AD, which constitutes a later connective between HABĔO and the infinitive of the verb. Looking at Arborean documents, the Condaghe di Bonarcado timidly initiates an occurrence of the periphrastic HABET + AD + infinitive in hat a esser (Virdis 2002: CXLIV, 41–42). However, Entry 33 of the Condaghe, being a probable late re-copying (Virdis 2002: 40), is thus unusable for the purpose of the diachronic reconstruction of the rise of the syndetic future tense of Arborean Sardinian. Another important document for the study of the Arborean linguistic area is the Brogliaccio (‘Register’) from the Convent of San Martino, whose records range from 1415 to 1579 (Atzori 1956). Though not exempt from the suspicion of being counterfeit, some pages of the Brogliaccio are without doubt antecedents of the editio princeps of the Carta de Logu. In the Brogliaccio, at Entry 63 (dated to 1515), the future tense anti a vendiri (‘they will sell’) appears (Atzori 1956: 77). These first Arborean attestations of the phenomenon demonstrate a predominance of the periphrasis HABĔO + infinitive, while the syndetic allomorph struggles to survive. From the diachronic point of view, the double possibility of the future periphrasis in Campidanese is attested at least until the seventeenth century. In the Rimas diversas spirituales (Cagliari, 1597) by Gerolamo Araolla, no less than three different periphrastic constructions of the future tense alternate: present indicative of aver + a + infinitive; present indicative of aver + adv. como (‘now’) + infinitive; abbreviated forms of the present indicative of the verb dever + infinitive (see Virdis 2006: CLII–CLIII). Still, in the Libro de comedias (1688) by Antonio Maria da Esterzili, the constructions without the preposition and with the preposition are adopted within the same text, despite an evident limitation of the contexts in which the asyndetic construction could be used (de Martini 2006: XXIII). Having finished this rapid and necessarily partial historical excursus, we may turn our attention to the Carta de Logu. In the realization of the future tense, the two witnesses of the Carta de Logu offer again a bipartite linguistic tableau. On the one hand, in the manuscript, despite the fact that the vast majority of the future verbs use the usual periphrasis HABĔO + infinitive, there are also five significant exceptions which use the syndetic future HABĔO + AD + infinitive:
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bolemus creder et dari fidi assu officiali de cussu qui ad a provari et narri 5 ‘in fact, we desire to believe and trust in that which our official will prove and assert’ (Lupinu 2010: 76, § XX)
In the corresponding section of the incunabulum, by contrast, one reads: (1b)
bolemus creder et dari fidi assu officiali de cussu qui ’nd’at provare et narri (Murgia 2016: 255, § XX)
Again in (2a), the syndetic construction of the manuscript (ant a furare, ‘they will steal’) corresponds to an asyndetic formulation of the princeps (ant furare) (2b). (2a)
ordinamus qui sos jurados siant tenudos de provare sos covallos domados et ebbas domadas [. . .] qui ss’ant ochiere a ffura o qui ss’ant a ffurare ‘we order that the jurors must collect evidence regarding the killings that took place in secret of tamed horses, tamed mares [. . .], or regarding their theft’ (Lupinu 2010: 88, § XXXVIII)
(2b)
ordinamus qui sos iuradus siant tenudos [. . .] de provare sos cavallos domados et issas ebbas [. . .] qui s’ant hochier a ffura o qui s’ant furare (Murgia 2016: 273, § XXXVIII)
In (3a) the manuscript presents the future at a ser (‘he will be’), while the incunabulum (3b) uses the asyndetic future ad esser: (3a)
illu posat maxellari et tenne ‹et› dare·llo in manu de su oficialli qui at a ser pro nos ‘he may butcher or capture such beasts and put them at the disposition of the official who will represent us’ (Lupinu 2010: 152, § CXII)
(3b)
illu possat maxedari et tenni et dare·llu in manu dessu officiali qui ad esser pro nos (Murgia 2016: 357, § CXII)
In the following excerpt from the manuscript, in (4–5), the future periphrasis occurs no less than two times with the connective a: at a seri acatado (‘he will 5 The emphases are mine here as well as in successive citations. Expansions of abbreviations are indicated by italics.
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be found’) and at a seri juigada (‘she will be judged’). In this case it is not possible to compare it with the incunabulum, because the chapter CLXII belongs to a group of four chapters (CLVIII and CLX-CLXII) found only in the manuscript: (4–5)
paguit a sa corti nostra, per dongnia volta qui ’lloi at a seri acatado, liras XV da‹e› sa die qui ’lli at a seri juigada ‘he will pay to our court, for every time that he is caught in a misdeed, 15 lire from the date of judgment’ (Lupinu 2010: 190, chapter CLXII)
If we now turn to the language of the editio princeps for an analysis of the morphology of the future tense, the linguistic landscape changes. In the formulation of the chapters (excluding a few exceptions which return in a peculiar section of the incunabulum, Mariano’s Codice rurale), there is not a single appearance of the syndetic future. This fact, along with the absence of the plural definite article is, would seem to testify to a certain homogeneity in the treatment of the text’s language, even, perhaps, at the moment of its editing before being printed. However, a different possibility emerges from an attentive reading of the paratext. As in the case of the allomorph is for the plural definite article, found exclusively in the rubrics of the incunabulum, just so in the case of the periphrastic syndetic future, two examples come from the chapter titles: in the rubric of chapter XVII “De maleficios ‹qui› sus iurados de Logu hant a chircare” (‘Of criminals that the jurors de Logu will seek’) and in the rubric of chapter LXVI “De qui s’at a clamari pro fradis ultramare” (‘Of him whom will be called as a brother beyond-the-sea’, that is ‘Of him who will be summoned [to testify in a legal suit] as a brother residing not in Sardinia’). The general index of chapters also provides some interesting data. It is not present in the manuscript and probably was not even planned, as there is no predisposition of the manuscript pages that might lend itself to such a project: it is indeed highly probable that the summary was created for the print edition, since it is the needs of the publishing industry that motivate the insertion of paratextual elements, such as tables and indices (Trovato 1991; Tavoni 2009), and these sections are frequently entrusted to the care of correctors who ‘modernize’ the grammar. This would explain, if in the case of the Carta de Logu the person who presided over the creation of the index were different from the one who assembled the text, the emergence of linguistic phenomena that are not perfectly in line with the usus scribendi in the text of the princeps. It is so in the case of the periphrastic syndetic future, absent, as we have seen, in the incunabulum, but which appears in the general index: in the rubric of chapter CXLV we can read “De qui ant a serviri in vingia” (‘Of he who will serve in the vineyard’, Murgia 2016: 471).
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As much as the data we possess are quantitatively assymetrical – the occurrences of the periphrastic asyndetic future in the formulation of the norms of the princeps are very numerous, while those with the connective a in the paratext are reduced to only two cases – nonetheless one could ask if it is possible to individuate, in the paratext, the emergence of a specific usus scribendi. This would be characterized by a linguistic behavior that presents a certain amount of internal variation, but may not be superimposed over the usus scribendi attributable to the text’s copyist, who adopts a language that represents a collection of forms in the more uniform system of choices. These hypotheses would necessitate a broader collection of records to be proven. However, it is certain that the linguistic data that seem to contrast the language of the copyist(s) of the princeps text against that of the scribe(s) of the other sections in the print exemplar do not stop at the rubrics. In fact, the incunabulum also includes the so-called Codice rurale, a section that is comprised of 27 chapters (133–159) and a brief prologue. Scholars agree unanimously that Mariano IV’s Codice rurale was eliminated from his daughter’s Carta de Logu project of the end of the thirteenth century (Era 1938: 5; Fois 1983). In the Codice rurale there are no less than five occurrences of syndetic future constructions (only one of the significant indications of variation, which is also specifically linked to the verbal morphology, and which render this section of the princeps linguistically “eccentric”): (6)
faguendo illoe scrivere sos nomenes de cussus iurados qui ant a providere·llos et recivire·llos pro cungiados ‘causing you to write the names of those jurors who will approve and receive them as fenced-off properties’ (Murgia 2016: 389, § CXXXIIII)
(7–8)
uno over multos, qui ant ad bisongiare a su castiu over vingia at pro see ad pena de pagare, cussu qui no ’llo at a ponne, soldos V. per homini ‘one or more, who will be needed in the castiu or in the isolated vineyard, to the penalty of paying, for he who will not put them, 5 soldi (Murgia 2016: 405, § CXLVI) per man’
(9)
sos venidores de alchunas dessas dittas vingias, in su tempus qui ’ll’at a guardare ‘the winemakers of the said vineyards, in the time that he will guard them (during the period established for the guard)’ (Murgia 2016: 405, § CXLVI)
(10)
si possat tenne in qualuncha loghu illos ad a plachere ‘one may keep in whatever place they like’
(Murgia 2016: 413, § CLIIII)
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3 Conclusions After having analyzed the linguistic traits of the various sections of Carta de Logu, we must ask ourselves if it is possible to formulate a hypothesis on the sociolinguistic weight to assign to the variants at play in the manuscript and in the incunabulum. From this perspective, the polymorphism of the Carta de Logu appears as a category of analysis that must be partially redefined, while the very structure of the Carta de Logu must be re-articulated into several units. In the witnesses of the Carta de Logu, in fact, the idiolects of the copyists overlap, with their peculiar linguistic habits: the manuscript certainly shows two hands, A and B; and as for the incunabulum, various clues suggest that the editor of the printed text is not the same figure who realized the paratext (particularly the general index). Among the sections that deserve particular attention, one must take into consideration the chapters that are exclusively present in the manuscript (158, 160, 161 and 162) or only in the incunabulum (131, 132, 174–182, 194– 198) or which show only a partial correspondence, not to mention those which might have been added later (the general index of the incunabulum) and the “recovery” of the recent juridical past (Mariano’s Codice rurale, 133–159). The diaphasic perspective might help in individuating an explanatory hierarchy of the occurrence of these variables: the incunabulum text, intended for a wide diffusion, “promotes” the plural definite article differentiated for the masculine and the feminine, as well as the asyndetic periphrastic future, as forms worthy of the print format. The only exceptions to the “rule” are found in the paratextual apparatus and in Mariano’s Codice rurale; in the same manuscript, which we can imagine to be more “informal”, lacking as it did the official status of the print edition, four out of five occurrences of the syndetic future are attributable to hand B, the second copyist, whom Guarnerio has already identified as the more careless (Guarnerio 1905: 70). It is true that the “anomalous” behaviors attested to in the “eccentric” sections of the princeps are quantitatively scarce, but the data collected on the plural article and on the future tend to “tie in” with other precious information on the distribution of variants (the particulars of which would be too long to explain here) perhaps bearing a different sociolinguistic weight. It is a question of “choices” which, despite not necessarily offering information on the speakers, may still represent precious clues about the producers of these texts and on the environment in which they lived. The information contained therein could also be regarded as meta-information, that is, in certain cases it might suggest a form of reflection on the language and possibly on the dynamics of standardization seen in the dialectic between oral and written emerging in the texts (see Turchetta, this volume).
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Thus it is permissible to ask if these morphological variations promoted by the official text were those seen as possessing greater prestige at the end of the 1400’s, when the incunabulum was published, and where this prestige originated. We cannot know if it came from being associated with an elevated diastratic connotation, precisely because the Carta de Logu does not provide linguistic material capable of offering direct information on the speakers. Second, it should be noted that the eccentric sections privilege phenomena – the unified plural definite article is and the future with the connective preposition – will be winning according to the diachronic perspective. Moreover, the entrance of the unified result for the plural article could perhaps be marked in diatopia, and thus represent a clue to a period in which Arborean became more attracted by the norm which was slowly being imposed on the linguistic pole of Cagliari. Instead, it might be more profitable to adopt a diaphasic perspective, because the Carta de Logu represents an essential step for the study of an elaboration, in medieval Arborense, of a juridical-administrative sub-code (see Putzu 2013). It remains to be seen if the superimposition of the linguistic choices of the incunabulum over the linguistic phenomena exclusive to or prevalent in the juridical documents originating from the Arborean area, may be ascribed to a consciouslydeveloped linguistic project (which would lead us to imagine the presence of certain phenomena of aural standardization)6 or if instead the alignment is a “product” of the socio-historical and -cultural situation, behind which it would then be possible to recognize the existence of a kind of “koinè”, perhaps with a regional character.7 Unfortunately we must remain in the realm of mere hypothesis, because in order to evaluate the impact of a possible linguistic planning in the two witnesses of the Carta de Logu which have come down to us and then in their different sections, it would be necessary to ascertain which variants are found in the antigraphs preceding the manuscript and the incunabulum and, going even further backwards in time, in the archetype that joins the two (Lupinu 2010: 6). Only thus could we know if the variants promoted by the incunabulum merely replicate those in the working copy and if in their revival or “normalization” one can recognize a specific desire to exclude the “new”, in turn responding to the desire to maintain in the text a patina probably already perceived as archaic in the late fifteenth century. Certainly it is interesting that the Codice rurale uses the periphrastic future with the preposition. This fact may still be interpreted from various points of view: it can be seen as the symptom, inasmuch as the Codice rurale should be 6 See Berruto (2007). 7 See Berruto (1989: 110); Regis (2012).
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the fruit of an interpolation, that a different hand, more tolerant towards the syndetic allomorph, could have worked on it, or as the symptom of a standardization/koineization that has not yet reached the point of maturity that we perhaps see represented in the Carta de Logu. It is thus fundamental to use a new perspective in the linguistic analysis of the Carta de Logu, one which gives due consideration to the status of the sections of which the two witnesses of the Carta de Logu are comprised, sections which are collocated in different stratigraphic heights, and thus, in different (socio)linguistic registers. This “stratigraphic” approach is not a perspective which presumes to explain everything, because some differences in the co-occurence of competing variants are found even within the sections that we would expect to be more homogeneous; but certainly it rescues us from the peril of categorizing linguistic phenomena more simply attributable to different times and sensibilities under the too-broad category of “polymorphism”.
References Berruto, Gaetano. 1989. Tra italiano e dialetto. In Günter Holtus, Michael Metzeltin & Max Pfister (eds.), La dialettologia italiana oggi. Studi offerti a Manlio Cortelazzo, 107–122. Tübingen: Narr. Berruto, Gaetano. 2007. Miserie e grandezze dello standard. Considerazioni sulla nozione di standard in linguistica e sociolinguistica. In Piera Molinelli (ed.), Standard e non standard tra scelta e norma, 13–41. Roma. Il Calamo. Blasco Ferrer, Eduardo. 1984. Storia linguistica della Sardegna. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Blasco Ferrer, Eduardo. 1999. Annotazioni ecdotiche e linguistiche sulla « Carta de Logu ». Rivista di Studi testuali 1. 29–52. Blasco Ferrer, Eduardo. 2003. Crestomazia sarda dei primi secoli. Nuoro: Ilisso. Era, Antonio. 1938. Il codice agrario di Mariano IV d’Arborea. In Antonio Era (ed.), Testi e documenti per la storia del diritto agrario in Sardegna. Sassari: Gallizzi. Fois, Barbara. 1983. Sul « Codice rurale » di Mariano IV d’Arborea. Medioevo. Saggi e rassegne 8. 41–69. Guarnerio, Pier Enea. 1905. La lingua della « Carta de Logu » secondo il manoscritto di Cagliari. In Enrico Besta & Pier Enea Guarnerio (eds.), Carta de Logu de Arborea. Testo con Prefazioni illustrative, Sez. I, fasc. 1, 69–145. Sassari: Dessì. Mele, Giampaolo. 2000. Giovanni I d’Aragona, il Musico, tra cultura “cortese”, Scisma d’Occidente e la progettata spedizione contro gli Arborea. In Giampaolo Mele (ed.), Giudicato d’Arborea e Marchesato di Oristano: proiezioni mediterranee e aspetti di storia locale (Atti del I Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Oristano, 5–8 dicembre 1997), II. 699–760. Oristano: ISTAR. Murgia, Giulia. 2015. Su alcuni catalanismi nella Carta de Logu d’Arborea: analisi sociolinguistica della variantistica tra manoscritto e editio princeps. In Piera Molinelli & Ignazio Putzu (eds.), Modelli epistemologici, metodologie della ricerca e qualità del dato. Dalla linguistica storica alla sociolinguistica storica, 242–263. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
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Pinto, Immacolata, Giulio Paulis & Ignazio Putzu. Morphological Productivity in Medieval Sardinian: Sociolinguistic Correlates. Action Nouns and Adverbs of Manner. This volume. Putzu, Ignazio. 2003. Per una tipologia dell’articolo determinativo nel sardo medioevale: il Condaghe di San Pietro di Silki. Aspetti sintattico-funzionali e prospettiva testuale. In Ines Loi Corvetto (ed.), Il testo: meccanismi linguistici e strategie retoriche, 193–220. Roma: Carocci. Putzu, Ignazio. 2013. Il problema di un sottocodice giuridico-amministrativo per il sardo: tradizione, standardizzazione e traduzione. In Nicoletta Dacrema (ed.), Tradurre è tradire un’intenzione: 231–269. Milano: Marcos y Marcos. Regis, Riccardo. 2012. Su pianificazione, standardizzazione, polinomia: due esempi. Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 128. 88–133. Sanna, Antonio. 1979. Il carattere popolare della lingua della Carta de Logu. In Giovanni Todde, Antonio Sanna, Francesco Cesare Casula, Gabriella Olla Repetto, Felice Cherchi Paba & Giorgio Farris, Il mondo della Carta de Logu, 51–70. Cagliari: Edizioni 3T. Segre, Cesare. 1979. Critica testuale, teoria degli insiemi e diasistema. In Cesare Segre, Semiotica filologica. Testo e modelli culturali, 53–70. Torino, Einaudi. Strinna, Giovanni. 2010. Il manoscritto BUC 211. In Giovanni Lupinu, Carta de Logu dell’Arborea. Nuova edizione critica secondo il manoscritto di Cagliari (BUC 211) con traduzione italiana, 27–46. Oristano: Centro di Studi Filologici Sardi – ISTAR. Tavoni, Maria Gioia. 2009. Circumnavigare il testo. Gli indici in età moderna. Napoli: Liguori. Trovato, Paolo. 1991. Con ogni diligenza corretto. La stampa e le revisioni editoriali dei testi letterari italiani (1470–1570). Bologna: il Mulino. Turchetta, Barbara. The Writer’s Identity and Identification Markers in Writing Code Mixing and Interference. This volume. Virdis, Maurizio. 1995. I dialetti dell’area arborense nell’ambito della lingua sarda medievale attraverso le attestazioni scritte. In Giampaolo Mele (ed.), Società e cultura nel giudicato d’Arborea e nella Carta de Logu (Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Oristano, 5–8 dicembre 1992), 141–153. Nuoro: La poligrafica Solinas.
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Murgia, Giulia. 2016. Carta de Logu d’Arborea. Edizione critica secondo l’editio princeps (BUC, Inc. 230). Milano: FrancoAngeli. Virdis, Maurizio. 2002. Il Condaghe di Santa Maria di Bonarcado. Cagliari: Centro di studi filologici sardi – CUEC. Virdis, Maurizio. 2006. Gerolamo Araolla. Rimas diversas spirituales. Cagliari: Centro di Studi Filologici Sardi – CUEC.
Author index Abbate, Lucia 226, 240 Abulafia, David 296, 306 Abu-Lughod, Lila 297, 306 Adams, James N. 3, 5, 9, 10, 12, 14, 26, 40, 43, 46, 92, 93, 95, 109, 127, 129, 157, 168, 203, 205, 214, 216, 269, 271, 273, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 282, 285, 286 Agius, Dionisius A. 225, 226, 227, 229, 240 Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 214, 216 Alessio, Giovanni 227, 233, 235, 240 Alexiou, Margaret 83, 84, 85, 88, 91, 93 Alfieri, Luca 121, 130 Alinei, Mario 317, 323 Alkım, U. Bahadır 174, 175, 176, 180 Allan, Rutger J. 188, 197 Alvaro, Ettore 146, 151 Amari, Michele 225, 226, 227, 240 Ammann, Andreas 142, 151 Angermeyer, Philipp 337, 338 Anipa, Kormi 11, 26, 211, 216 Anselmo, Vincenzo 231, 240 Antel, Nazime 180 Anttila, Raimo 277, 286 Aquilina, Joseph 176, 180 As'ad, Khaled 297, 306 Assenza, Elvira 141, 146, 151 Atzori, Maria Teresa 345, 352 Auer, Anita 8, 26, 209, 216 Auer, Peter 250, 259, 264 Avery, Robert 180 Babiniotis, Georgios D. 174, 177, 180, 232, 240 Bach, Kent 69, 89 Baglioni, Daniele 296, 306, 319, 316, 321, 322, 323 Bakker, Stephanie J. 188, 197 Baldi, Philip 6, 26, 42, 46, 128, 131 Bamberg, Micheal G. W. 3, 26, 27 Banfi, Emanuele 172, 173, 180, 295, 296, 306, 309, 319, 323 Barbera, D. Giuseppe 172, 180, 233, 240 Bartlett, Lesley 307
Barton, David 293, 306 Battaglia, Marco 270, 286 Battaglia, Salvatore 175, 180 Bauer, Brigitte L.M. 188, 197 Bazzanella, Carla 69, 79 Beck, Hans-Georg 83, 93 Becker, Julia 223, 240 Beeching, Kate 69, 80 Behnstedt, Peter 175, 180 Beihammer, Alexander D. 181 Benedetti, Marina 3, 6, 18, 122, 123, 129, 157, 168, 190, 198, 278, 286 Bennett-Kastor, Tina 95, 109 Benveniste, Émile 41, 51, 52, 53, 60, 62 Benvenuto, Maria Carmela 13, 26, 120, 130, 211, 213, 214, 216 Bergs, Alexander 6, 26, 40, 46, 209, 216 Berruto, Gaetano 35, 46, 117, 129, 130, 209, 217, 235, 236, 240, 245, 249, 250, 259, 264, 350, 351 Bertocci, Davide 137, 145, 147, 151 Besta, Enrico 342, 352 Bezmez, Serap 174, 175, 176, 179, 180 Birley, Anthony 270, 271, 286 Bisetto, Antonietta 258, 262, 264 Biville, Frédérique 125, 130 Blakney, Richard 174, 175, 176, 179, 180 Blasco Ferrer, Eduardo 252, 264, 342, 344, 351 Block, David 3, 26 Blom, Jan-Petter 106, 109 Bock, Zannie 105, 107, 109 Boerio, Giuseppe 176, 177, 180, 317, 318, 323 Bohas, Georges 158, 169 Bonelli, Luigi 172, 180 Borg, Alexander 309, 323, 325, 326, 330, 336, 338 Bowman, Alan K. 269, 270, 271, 272, 274, 276, 277, 279, 280, 285, 286 Bozarslan, Hamit 172, 180 Bresc, Henri 225, 226, 240 Brincat, Joseph 226, 240, 338
356
Author index
Briquel Chatonnet, Françoise 301, 306 Brixhe, Claude 202, 217 Briz Gómez, Antonio 67, 80 Brock, Sebastian 159, 160, 169 Brooks, Andrew 296, 306 Brown, C. H. 174, 175, 176, 179, 180 Browning, Robert 87, 89, 94 Bruni, Francesco 172, 179, 180, 309, 310, 323 Bruno, Carla 3, 6, 10, 11, 15, 16, 34, 35, 40, 45, 46, 49, 51, 54, 62, 67, 80, 99, 109, 211, 217 Bucholtz, Mary 1, 26, 65, 80 Buridant, Claude 248, 250, 267 Burkhadt, Stefan 181 Buzzoni, Marina 280, 281, 288 Cabrillana, Concepción 76, 80 Calabrese, Andrea 139, 144, 151 Calboli, Gualtiero 282, 286 Camodeca, Giuseppe 278, 287 Campbell, Lyle 135, 151, 153 Cantos, Pascual 7, 26 Cappelli, Adriano 296, 306 Caracausi, Girolamo 223, 225, 226, 227, 229, 232, 233, 238, 240, 241 Cardona, Giorgio R. 293, 306, 338 Caridi, Giuseppe 235, 241 Casciu, Giovanni 176, 181 Castagneto, Marina 173, 181 Castellani, Arrigo 319, 323 Casu, Pietro 251, 257, 264 Casula, Francesco Cesare 264 Cavarra, Giuseppe 148, 152 Celìa, Gori 142, 152 Cercignani, Fausto 280, 281, 287 Cerruti, Massimo 211, 213, 217 Chiarelli, Leonard Charles 226, 241 Chillà, Leonida 144, 152 Christ, Georg 172, 181 Ciancaglini, Claudia A. 121, 130 Çiçek, Kemal 172, 181 Citraro, Cinzia 144, 152 Clackson, James 203, 208, 217, 271, 278, 282, 285, 287 Cockburn, Olivia C. 124, 130 Cohen, Marcel 292, 306
Colvin, Stephen 9, 26 Comrie, Bernard 212, 217 Conde-Silvestre, Juan Camilo 7, 26, 127, 132, 211, 214, 217, 218, 250, 265 Consani, Carlo 3, 5, 6, 13, 14, 16, 26, 27, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 125, 130, 202, 203, 204, 206, 208, 210, 211, 214, 217, 235, 236, 241, 325, 338 Contarini, Pietro 317, 323 Contini, Riccardo 159, 169 Cooley, Alison E. 186, 191, 192, 194, 196, 198 Cortelazzo, Manlio 175, 176, 177, 178, 181, 314, 323 Coseriu, Eugenio 250, 264 Cossu, Giuseppe 251, 257, 264 Costa, Maria 142, 152 Costantini, Francesco 140, 152 Cotton, Hannah M. 127, 131, 157, 169 Cotugno, Francesca 3, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 15, 23, 203, 206, 208, 210, 211, 217, 270, 271, 272, 287 Coulmas, Florian 209, 215, 217, 291, 307, 338 Coureas, Nicholas 325, 339 Cremona, Joseph 309, 323 Cristofaro, Sonia 138, 152 Crucitti, Pasquale 139, 152 Csató, Éva Á. 171, 181 Culpeper, Jonathan 7, 27, 66, 67, 80, 101, 109 Curnow, Timothy J. 255, 264 Cusa, Salvatore 224, 225, 229, 231, 232, 233, 238, 241 Cuzzolin, Pierluigi 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 16, 26, 27, 42, 46, 47, 66, 67, 80, 119, 128, 131, 201, 213, 215, 217, 272, 287 D’Amora, Rosita 173, 181 Dal Negro, Silvia 117, 131, 332, 338 Damonte, Federico 137, 138, 145, 146, 147, 151, 152 Dandolo, Vincenzo 176, 181 Dardano, Paola 126, 131 Dauzat, Albert 176, 181 Davis, Norman 99, 109 De Amicis, Edmondo 178, 181
Author index
De Angelis, Alessandro 3, 6, 8, 15, 19, 116, 120, 131, 136, 137, 138, 152, 203, 206, 213, 217 De Felice, Irene 7, 27, 207, 210, 218 De Fina, Anna 3, 26, 27 De Gasperis, Attilio 178, 181 De Mauro, Tullio 85, 86, 92, 94 de Melo, Wolfgang 5, 27, 68 De Simone, Adalgisa 225, 227, 241 Debié, Muriel 301, 306 Delogu, Ignazio 247, 264 Desreumaux, Alaine 301, 306 Detges, Ulrich 69, 80 Dettori, Antonietta 246, 249, 257, 260, 264 Devine, Andrew M. 188, 189, 198 Di Giovanni, Vincenzo 225, 229, 231, 232, 234, 241 Di Giovine, Paolo 3, 6, 18, 41, 47, 118, 119, 131, 157, 168, 198 Di Salvo, Margherita 3, 6, 7, 14, 15, 24, 27, 293, 297, 298, 307, 310, 315, 316, 317, 321, 322, 323, 337, 338 Dickey, Eleanor 9, 27 Dik, Helma 188, 198 Dilçin, Cem 175, 183 Dinçoğlu, Onur 173, 174, 181 Dixon, Robert M. W. 214, 216 Donati, Angela 299, 307 Donati, Margherita 3, 6, 7, 21, 27, 203, 205, 208, 210, 218 Drusteler, Eric R. 322, 323 Dubois, Jean 176, 181 Duranti, Alessandro 34, 35, 47 Eckmann, Janos 180 Edwards, John 3, 27, 33, 47 Elia, Marina 325, 339 Elspass, Stephan 9, 10, 27, 40, 47, 211, 218 Emilianides, Achilles C. 325, 338 Enzensberger, Horst 225, 226, 237, 241 Era, Antonio 348, 351 Eren, Hasan 173, 174, 181 Erikson, Erik H. 33, 47 Evans, David 3, 27, 33, 47 Evans, Trevor 40, 41, 47, 54, 62 Exler, Francis X. J. 54, 62
357
Fabre, Paul 83, 84, 85, 87, 90, 91, 93, 94 Falkenhausen, Vera von 223, 226, 228, 238, 242 Fanciullo, Franco 136, 137, 143, 147, 152, 153 Fani, Sara 160, 169 Farina, Margherita 3, 6, 12, 15, 20, 121, 131, 132, 159, 160, 161, 166, 167, 169 Farkas, Donka 140, 153 Fearon, James D. 33, 47 Fedriani, Chiara 3, 6,7,10, 11, 15, 17, 27, 34, 35, 38, 47, 56, 62, 66, 76, 80, 98, 101, 109, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207, 208, 210, 213, 218, 271, 287 Ferrazza, Roberta 178, 181 Ferri, Rolando 9, 11, 27 Fiorelli, Piero 249, 264 Fiorentini, Ilaria 117, 131 Fischer, Iancu 259, 264 Fishman, Joshua A. 35, 47, 337, 338 Fitzmaurice, Susan M. 210, 218 Flandina, Antonino 231, 242 Fletcher, Fred 296, 306 Fois, Barbara 348, 351 Fontaine, Michael 11, 27 Fortson, Benjamin 278, 287 Fox, Anthony 209, 218 Frangiskou, Antonis 327, 339 Fruyt, Michèle 262, 264 Gaeng, Paul A. 205, 218 Gaeta, Livio 259, 264 García, Ofelia 307 Garrisi, Antonio 143, 153 Garufi, Carlo Alberto 225, 229, 231, 242 Gasbarra, Valentina 12, 27, 41, 126, 132, 133, 214, 215, 218 Gatier, Pierre Louis 297, 308 Gelb, Ignace J. 292, 307 Ghezzi, Chiara 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 15, 17, 27, 34, 35, 38, 43, 47, 56, 58, 62, 66, 76, 80, 98, 101, 109, 204, 207, 208, 213, 218 Giambruno, Salvatore 231, 232, 234, 242 Giannini, Stefania 278, 287 Gibbons, John 104, 109 Goody, Jack 294, 307 Granger, Penny 100, 109
358
Author index
Griselini, Francesco 176, 181 Grossmann, Maria 259, 265 Grzega, Johachim 209, 218 Guarnerio, Pier Enea 268, 342, 349, 351 Guerini, Federica 8, 28, 128, 132, 332, 338 Guidetti Bacilieri, Floriana 177, 183 Gumperz, John J. 105, 106, 109 Gusmani, Roberto 258, 265 Güzel, Hasan Celâl 172, 181
Jaberg, Karl 151 Jakobson, Roman 135, 150, 153 Johanson, Lars 171, 181 Johns, Jeremy 224, 225, 242 Joseph, John E. 33, 40, 47 Jucker, Andreas H. 9, 28, 67, 69, 79, 80, 81, 209, 210, 219 Jud, Jakob 151 Julien, Florence 157, 169
Hall, Jon 9, 28 Hall, Kira 1, 26, 65, 80 Halla-aho, Hilla 14, 28, 270, 271, 285, 287 Halliday, Michael 33, 47 Halmari, Helena 105, 109 Harbert, Wayne 281, 287 Harnish, Robert M. 69, 79 Harré, Rom 62, 63 Harris, Alice C. 135, 153 Harris, Max 36, 47 Harris, Roy 293, 307 Haspelmath, Martin 251, 255, 265 Havelock Eric 291, 307 Haverling, Gerd 5, 8, 9, 10, 27, 67, 80 Havertake, Henk 73, 80 Heine, Bernd 44, 47, 150, 153 Heinold, Simone 258, 265 Herman, József 205, 218 Hernández-Campoy, Juan Manuel 7, 8, 26, 28, 127, 132, 218, 250, 265 Herzfeld, Michael 85, 94 Herzog, Marvin I. 127, 134 Hinrichs, Lars 105, 107, 108, 109 Hoadley, Cristopher 6, 28 Honeybone, Patrick 2019, 219 Hony, H.C. 174, 176, 177, 181 Horner, Patrick J. 98, 109 Horrocks, Geoffrey 87, 89, 94, 278, 282, 287 Hoyland, Robert G. 131 Huri, Sofi 180
Kahane, Henry 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 215, 219 Kahane, Renée 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181 Kaiser, Wolfgang 181 Kaufman, Terrence 127, 134, 135, 155 Kawerau, Peter 157, 169 Kellermann, Anja 104, 109 Kerestedjian, Bedros 174, 181 Kiełkiewicz-Janowiak, Agnieszka 211, 219 Kilpert, Diana 33, 47 Kirkwood, Alexander 47 Klauck, Hans-Josef 40, 48, 51, 54, 62 Kleigfen, Joanne 307 Kloss, Heinz 246, 265 Koca, Salim 172, 181 Koch, Peter 10, 28 Kölligan, Daniel 126, 132 König, Ekkehard 281, 287 Korhonen, Kalle 136, 153, 226, 230, 236, 242 Kouloughli, Djamel Eddin 165, 169 Krumbacher, Karl 85, 93, 94 Kruschwitz, Peter 202, 219 Kuteva, Tania 44, 47, 150, 153 Kytö, Merja 7, 27, 66, 67, 80
Iannàccaro, Gabriele 173, 180, 332, 338 Ibrahim, Muhammad H. 297, 307 Ihalainen, Ossi 267 İz, Fahir 180
La Corte, Giorgio 237, 242 La Fauci, Nunzio 51, 53, 62 Labov, William 2, 5, 28, 127, 128, 129, 132, 134, 201, 219, 236, 242 Landau, Idan 140, 153 Langslow, David R. 157, 169 Lave, Jean 322, 323 Le Page Robert B. 65, 80, 302, 307
Author index
Leach, Peter 275, 282, 287 Ledgeway, Adam 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 142, 143, 145, 151, 153 Lehmann, Christian 10, 28 Lehmann, Winfred 281, 287 Leiwo, Martti 125, 132 Lentin, Jérôme 326, 339 Leonardi, Simona 281, 288 Leone, Alfonso 139, 140, 141, 153 Lepri, Luigi 177, 183 Leumann, Manu 278, 287 Li, David C.S. 107, 109 Lillis, Theresa 215, 219 Lindsay, Mark 245, 265 Lobina, Benvenuto 257, 265 Loi Corvetto, Ines 246, 265 Lombardi, Alessandra 138, 154 Loporcaro, Michele 138, 154, 278, 287, 312, 323 Lorenzetti, Luca 3, 6, 11, 15, 17, 18, 34, 35, 36, 37, 48, 85, 86, 92, 94, 123, 132, 213, 214, 219, 296, 307 Lucchetta, Francesca 295, 307 Lucidi, Lavinia 26, 120, 130, 211, 213, 214, 216 Lund, Brian 296, 306 Lupinu, Giovanni 262, 265, 268, 341, 342, 346, 347, 350, 352 Maas, Paul 84, 85, 88, 89, 91, 93, 94 Machan, Tim William 96, 100, 109 Magni, Elisabetta 124, 132 Maltby, Robert 70, 80 Mancini, Marco 9, 12, 28, 86, 94, 128, 132, 202, 203, 208, 219, 293, 296, 299, 307, 321, 322, 323, 338, 339 Mandalà, Giuseppe 228, 242 Maninchedda, Paolo 344, 352 Mann, John 271, 287 Manolessou, Io 136, 154 Mansuroğlu, Mecdut 180 Manzelli, Gianguido 3, 6, 15, 20, 126, 132, 176, 181 Manzini, Maria Rita 138, 144, 145, 147, 154 Marasigan, Elizabeth M. 104, 105, 106, 109 Marchand, Hans 258, 265
359
Marichal, Robert 282, 284, 287 Marnette, Sophie 51, 63 Marotta, Giovanna 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 21, 23, 27, 28, 41, 48, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 217, 219, 278, 285, 286, 287, 288, 312, 313, 323 Marra, Antonietta 337, 339 Martín Arista, Javier 258, 265 Martin, James Robert 47 Martin, Jean-Pierre-Paul 162, 164, 165, 166, 169 Martini, A. Luca de 345, 352 Martino, Paolo 3, 6, 14, 15, 22, 116, 132, 137, 154, 210, 214, 215, 219 Matić, Dejan 188, 198 Matras, Yaron 214, 220 Mayser, Edwin 49, 63 Mazzon, Gabriella 3, 6, 11, 18, 28, 34, 35, 37, 38, 44, 45, 48, 58, 63, 100, 110, 211, 220, 245, 266 McColl Millar, Robert 96, 109 McDermott, Richard 322, 324 McGillivray, Barbara 66, 80, 213, 220 McKinney, Carolyn 215, 219 Meillet, Antoine 250, 265 Mele, Giampaolo 341, 351 Mendicino, Antonio 137, 154 Merci, Paolo 252, 268 Merx, Adalbertus 158, 159, 169 Metcalfe, Alex 224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 233, 237, 238, 239, 242, 243 Meyer, Gustav 172, 174, 176, 181 Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm 252, 265 Migliorini, Bruno 256, 258, 265 Milizia, Paolo 213, 215, 220 Minervini, Laura 173, 182, 309, 324 Minkova, Donka 209, 211, 220 Mion, Giuliano 3, 6, 8, 15, 24, 212, 215, 220, 245, 265, 294, 295, 307, 317, 324, 329, 338, 339 Mitterand, Henri 176, 181 Moberg, Axel 163, 165, 169 Molinelli, Piera 9, 11, 14, 27, 28, 29, 33, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 48, 61, 62, 63, 66, 67, 80, 127, 128, 132, 210, 213, 220, Montes-Alcalá, Cecilia 104, 106, 107, 110 Morche, Franz‒Julius 181
360
Author index
Mori, Laura 3, 6, 7, 14, 15, 24, 293, 297, 298, 307, 309, 30, 311, 319, 321, 322, 324, 337, 338 Morlicchio, Elda 281, 288 Mosino, Franco 85, 89, 94 Mühläusler, Peter 62, 63 Mullen, Alex 282, 286, 288 Muller, Peter O. 259, 265 Murgia, Giulia 3, 6, 14, 15, 16, 25, 45, 48, 118, 132, 213, 220, 253, 260, 262, 266, 268, 294, 307, 335, 339, 341, 342, 346, 347, 348, 351, 353 Muru, Cristina 3, 6, 7, 14, 15, 24, 27, 293, 295, 298, 307, 310, 316, 318, 321, 322, 323, 324, 337, 338 Muysken, Pieter 214, 220 Myers-Scotton, Carol 303, 308 Nau, François 160, 169 Nef, Annliese 225, 226, 240, 243 Nevalainen, Terttu 6, 7, 29, 40, 48, 66, 81, 129, 132, 267 Nöldeke, Theodor 163, 165, 169 Nurmi, Arja 98, 101, 110 O’Donnell, Matthew 50, 63 Obbink, Dirk 41, 47 Oesterreicher, Wulf 10, 28 Ohnheiser, Ingeborg 265 Olsen, Susan 265 Omoniyi, Tope 3, 4, 29, 66, 81 Ong, Walter J. 291, 308 Ong, Hugson T. 3, 29 Ortega, Stephen 172, 182 Öztuna, Yılmaz 172, 182 Pahta, Päivi 98, 101, 110 Palmer, Frank R. 57, 63 Panhuis, Dirk G.J. 189, 198 Pannuti, Alessandro 178, 182 Papaconstantinou, Arietta 127, 132 Parlangèli, Oronzo 147, 154 Patala, Zoe 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91, 94 Patota, Giuseppe 256, 266 Paulis, Giulio 3, 6, 14, 15, 22, 29, 118, 132, 133, 210, 212, 215, 220, 245, 246, 249, 251, 263, 266, 341, 352
Pedani, Maria Pia 172, 182 Peersman, Catharina 26 Pellegrini, Giovan Battista 226, 227, 229, 232, 233, 243 Percy, Carol 326, 337, 339 Peri, Illuminato 235, 243 Perri Antonio 301, 308 Person, Raymond F. 11, 29 Perta, Carmela 117, 133 Petrucci, Armando 296, 308 Pfister, Raimund 278, 288 Pickl, Simon 26 Pieroni, Silvia 51, 53, 61, 63 Pighi, Giovan Battista 40, 48 Pinkster, Harm 69, 81 Pinto, Immacolata 3, 6, 14, 15, 22, 118, 133, 210, 212, 220 250, 251, 257, 258, 266, 341, 352 Plag, Ingo 246, 266 Pompeo, Flavia 3, 6, 13, 18, 26, 29, 119, 120, 130, 133, 157, 168, 198, 211, 213, 214, 216, 220 Pons Bordería, Salvador 67, 81 Porru, Vissentu 251, 257, 266 Porter, Stanley 50, 63 Pozza, Marianna 12, 27, 120, 126, 130, 132, 133, 214, 215, 218 Prantera, Nadia 137, 154 Price, Jonathan J. 131, 169 Prokosch, Eduard 281, 288 Puddu, Nicoletta 7, 29, 210, 213, 220 Purvis, J. S. 103, 110 Püsküllüoğlu, Ali 173, 174, 182 Putter, Ad 98, 100, 110 Putzu, Ignazio 3, 6, 14, 15, 21, 22, 29, 39, 41, 48, 118, 127, 128, 132, 133, 134, 212, 213, 214, 220, 221, 245, 246, 247, 249, 266, 341, 344, 350, 352 Questa, Cesare 76, 81 Rainer, Franz 248, 250, 251, 259, 261, 265, 266, 267 Ramat, Paolo 202, 203, 206, 207, 208, 210, 213, 218, 253, 255, 267, 271, 281, 287, 288
Author index
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena 6, 7, 29, 40, 48, 66, 81, 129, 132 Redhouse, Sir James W. 174, 176, 182 Regetz, Timothy 105, 109 Regis, Riccardo 350, 352 Reinheimer Rîpeanu, Sanda 258, 267 Ricca, Davide 253, 254, 255, 267 Rich Joseph W. 194, 198 Ridolfi, Alberto 177, 183 Rissanen, Matti 250, 267 Risselada, Rodie 69, 81 Rizgar, Baran 176, 182 Rizzi, Luigi 138, 155 Roberts, Ian 138, 145, 147, 154 Rocchi, Luciano 175, 177, 182 Rocco, Benedetto 228, 243 Rohlfs, Gerhard 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 151, 154, 155, 232, 235, 243, 314, 315, 319, 324 Romagno, Domenica 9, 11, 30, 204, 207, 210, 221 Romaine, Susanne 95, 110, 127, 134, 245, 250, 267 Ronzitti, Rosa 126, 134 Roth, Arlette 325, 339 Roussou, Anne 138, 145, 147, 154 Rovai, Francesco 13, 30, 41, 48, 119, 123, 134, 203, 204, 206, 208, 210, 214, 221 Rutten, Gijsbert 26 Saibene, Maria Grazia 280, 281, 288 Säily, Tanja 259, 267 Salminger, Irmengard 138, 139, 155 Salmons, Joseph 209, 219 Salvi, Giampaolo 141, 155 Sanga, Glauco 314, 324 Sanna, Antonio 342, 352 Sansterre, Jean-Marie 85, 87, 91, 92, 94 Savoia, Leonardo Maria 138, 144, 145, 147, 154, 236, 243 Scafuro, Adele C. 11, 27 Schendl, Herbert 96, 97, 100, 108, 110 Scheppers, Frank 188, 198 Scherer, Carmen 259, 267 Schiffrin, Deborah 3, 26, 27, 30 Schilling, Natalie 8, 28 Schippers, Arie 163, 170
361
Schirru, Giancarlo 213, 214, 219 Schmid, Hans-Jörg 262, 267 Schrijver, Peter 281, 288 Schweickard, Wolfgang 171, 182, 319, 324 Scobar, L. Chriſtophorus 177, 182 Searle, John R. 69, 71, 81 Sebba, Mark 45, 48, 96, 110, 327, 333, 338, 339 Segre, Cesare 343, 352 Seidl, Christian 118, 134 Selvelli, Giustina 295, 308 Serianni, Luca 179, 182 Serra, Patrizia 211, 215, 221, 247, 249, 252, 267 Sezgin, Fatin 179, 182 Sgroi, S. Claudio 232, 243 Siewierska, Anna 52, 63 Sihler, Andrew 280, 288 Silvestri, Domenico 250, 267 Slotty, Friedrich 49, 63 Snyder, William M. 322, 324 Solin, Heikki 10, 30, 209, 221 Sommer, Friedrich 278, 288 Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides 88, 94, 232, 243 Sornicola, Rosanna 136, 142, 155 Sorrento, Luigi 142, 155 Sottile, Roberto 225, 243 Spata, Giuseppe 225, 226, 238, 243 Spevak, Olga 188, 189, 198 Stein, Dieter 11, 30 Stephens, Laurence D. 188, 189, 198 Strinna, Giovanni 268, 342, 352 Strubell, Miquel 339 Strumbo, Maria Chiara 145, 147, 155 Sturtevant, Edward 277, 288 Stussi, Alfredo 314, 317, 324 Taavitsainen, Irma 9, 11, 28, 30, 67, 69, 79, 80, 81, 209, 210, 218, 267 Tabouret-Keller, Andrée 65, 80, 302, 307 Tagliavini, Carlo 172, 182, 246, 267 Takahashi, Hidemi 158, 160, 161, 169 Talamo, Luigi 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 15, 17, 34, 35, 38, 47, 56, 62, 98, 101, 109 Talmon, Rafi 159, 170 Tavoni, Maria Gioia 347, 352
362
Author index
Taylor, David G.K. 157, 170 Testa, Enrico 310, 324 Teule, Hermann G. B. 160, 170 Theunissen, H. P. A. 172, 182 Thomas, John D. 269, 270, 271, 272, 274, 276, 277, 279, 280, 285, 286 Thomason, Sarah 127, 134, 135, 155, 214, 221 Thornton, Anna M. 259, 267 Tietze, Andreas 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183 Tomasin, Lorenzo 173, 177, 183, 314, 316, 317, 324 Tomlin, Roger S.O. 270, 271, 274, 286, 288 Tommasini, Vincenzo 84, 85, 93, 94 Torrego, María Esperanza 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 119, 134, 187, 194, 198 Toso, Fiorenzo 297, 308 Trapp, Erich 88, 94 Tronci, Liana 3, 6, 18, 51, 53, 63, 124, 134, 157, 168, 198 Tropea, Giovanni 140, 147, 155 Trotter, David 96, 110 Trovato, Paolo 347, 352 Trovato, Salvatore 232, 243 Trumper, John 138, 155 Tsiapera, Maria 325, 339 Turchetta, Barbara 3, 6, 26, 46, 48, 65, 81, 93, 94, 95, 110, 271, 281, 288, 293, 301, 305, 307, 308, 309, 310, 312, 314, 316, 317, 318, 322, 324, 333, 337, 338, 339, 349, 352 Unceta Gómez, Luis 11, 30 Väänänen, Veikko 271, 288 van der Auwera, Johan 142, 151, 281, 287 Vanderveken, Daniel 69, 81 Vanotti, Gabriella 190, 196, 198 Vardarlı, Emel 175, 183 Varnava, Andrekos 325, 339 Vàrvaro, Alberto 136, 155, 177, 183, 223, 226, 244
Venier, Federica 115, 134, 309, 324 Vidos, Benedek Elemér 176, 183 Vierros, Marja 41, 48 Villa, Jesús de la 3, 6, 13, 15, 21, 119, 134, 187, 189, 198 Vincenzi, Luigi 177, 183 Vineis, Edoardo 223, 244 Virdis, Maurizio 14, 30, 210, 221, 247, 249, 267, 268, 342, 344, 345, 352, 353 Vitali, Daniele 177, 183 Voeste, Anja 209, 216 Vold Lexander, Kristin 106, 110 Vosters, Rik 26 Wagner, Max Leopold 251, 252, 257, 260, 263, 268 Wallace, Rex 285, 288 Wasserstein, David J. 131, 169 Weinreich, Uriel 44, 127, 134, 135, 149, 155, 216, 221, 343 Weinrich, Harald 60, 63 Weiss, Michael 274, 277, 280, 288 Weltecke, Dorothea 158, 170 Wenger, Etienne 298, 308, 322, 323, 324 Wenzel, Siegfried 97, 111 White, Goodith 29, 66, 81 White, John L. 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63 Wigtil, David N. 186, 187, 190, 198 Willi, Andreas 45, 48 Windelband, Wilhelm 128, 202, 221 Woidich, Manfred 175, 180 Woodward, Ann 275, 282, 287 Wright, Laura Charlotte 96, 97, 110, 111 Yon, Jean-Baptiste 297, 306, 308 Zack, Liesbeth 163, 170 Zamboni, Alberto 317, 318, 319, 324 Zaugg, Robert 181 Zilliacus, Henrik 49, 63 Zinzi, Mariarosaria 297, 308, 310
Subject index Accommodation 38 Action noun 256–262 Adverb 252–256 Agency 16, 33–35 Agent 166–167, 260 Allocutives 34 Allography 24, 86, 93, 276, 292, 296, 302, 316–321 – Graeco-Latin 11, 13 Arabic 121–122, 175, 297 – Cypriot 15, 24–25, 212, 325–338 – ḥandaq 229, 232, 233, 236 – in Medieval Sicily 22, 223–239 – Syro-Arabic 20, 157–168 – writing system 301, 303–304 Aramaic 296, 297, 299, 336 Archaism 23, 203, 205, 277, 278, 280, 285 Bar Shakko 159, 160, 167 Bar Zo‘bi 159, 160 Barhebraeus 12, 20, 121, 157–168 Borrowing 13, 20, 70, 118, 124, 126, 135, 137, 150, 172, 174, 177, 179–180, 255 Catherine wheel model 328 Code-mixing 13, 24, 66, 70, 96, 98, 99, 104, 106, 230, 235, 291, 297, 334 Code-switching 14, 37, 38, 66, 96, 100, 101– 103, 106–108 – metaphorical 106 – in formulas 106–107 Community of Practice 24, 298, 302 – in the Mediterranean 309–310, 316–317, 322 Complementiser 137–151 Completive sentences 137–140 Competing variants 203, 351 Control, obligatory/non-obligatory 19, 138, 148–151 Coptic 215, 299 Culture language 118, 120 Cyprus 25, 125, 171, 204, 325–328, 336
Daniel of Mardin 20, 160–168 Definite article 25, 136, 304, 331, 334–335, 344, 347, 349, 350 Degemination 278, 279, 282, 284, 315 Deixis 51, 62 Diatopic variation 88, 116, 125, 137, 139, 204, 344, 350 Diglossia 12, 42, 119, 121, 129, 136, 157, 215, 223, 272, 337 Drama 18, 98–106, 204, 207 Dynamics of standardization 249, 251, 343, 349–350 – koineization 351 English 7, 10, 11, 18, 37–38, 40, 66, 95 – GloWbE 108 – Late Medieval English 97–103 – Contemporary English 104–107 Enunciation/statement 51, 57, 59, 60–62 Epigraphic documents 9–10, 12–13, 136, 202, 204–206, 296, 299 Epistolary formulas 16, 51, 58, 61 Future tense 25, 57, 59, 61, 72, 331, 332, 344–348, 350 Gemination 23, 89, 206, 269, 273–286, 335 Genoese 20, 171, 172, 178, 179, 248, 322 Goldoni 11, 17, 38, 39, 67, 70, 71, 75–78 Grammatical model 122–123 Grammaticalization 137, 145, 148, 150 Greek 3, 5, 12, 70, 88, 119–20, 163, 185, 215 – alphabet 25, 206, 328–329 – Ancient Greek 11, 125 – Byzantine Greek 22, 91, 136, 224, 247, 263 – in Egypt 11, 16, 40, 41, 42, 49 – in Italy 13, 19, 135, 137, 223 – in Latin alphabet 36 – in Medieval Rome 11, 17, 21, 36, 83–86, 89–90, 93 – Medieval Greek 36, 87, 136
364
Subject index
– Modern Greek 173, 174, 177, 326, 329–337 – Σκανδάλη 235 – χανδάκι 232, 233, 236 Habar 166 Heterolinguistic transcriptions 238 Idiolects of the copyists 211, 349 Illocutionary force 11, 56, 76, 79 Imaginary speech 7, 17, 34, 35, 39–40, 44, 65, 67, 68 Infinitive – loss of the 19, 135, 137–140, 150–151 – inflected infinitive 151 Interaction 6, 11, 14, 66, 204, 298, 311 – between sender and recipient 55, 61, 62 Inter-ethnic communication 309, 322 Interference 12, 13, 19, 24, 37, 116, 119, 124, 136, 137, 148, 150, 171, 206, 238, 281, 286, 291, 292, 296–298, 303–305, 309, 311, 314–315, 319, 330, 335, 341–343 Ir‘āb 167 Italian 213, 247–249, 303, 305 – Early Modern documents 24, 309, 309, 322 – loanwords in Turkish 171–177, 179–180 – Levant Italian 178–179, 309, 311–313 Italo-romance varieties 116, 309, 311, 322 Language contact 44, 117, 120, 126, 150, 216, 281, 296, 298–299, 311, 338 – between Greek and Latin 93, 123–125, 135–136, 139, 186, 188–189, 194, 204, 208, 236 – between Italian and Turkish 171–172 – between Latin and Germanic varieties in Vindolanda 280–281 – in Arabic Medieval Sicily 223–226 – in Medieval Sardinia 118, 246–248 – in Cyprus 325–327 – in the Mediterranean Community of Practice 309–310 Language revitalization 337 Latin – alphabet 36, 83, 92, 328–330, 336–338
– and multilingualism 37, 41, 42, 83, 90, 92, 97, 100–103, 116, 118–121, 135–137, 186, 223–225, 233–234, 299 – Scandali 32, 231, 233–235, 239 – varieties 5, 10, 43, 214, 236, 247, 249, 269, 279, 281–282, 285 Lingua franca 3, 173–174, 176, 178, 227, 309 – Bureaucratic lingua franca 229 Literacy 8, 97, 269, 279, 292–294, 295, 302, 327, 333 Maronites 25, 325–327, 333, 336 Mitigation 56, 59, 76, 77, 78, 107 Mixed-language 38, 95, 108 Monumentum Ancyranum 186 Mozarabic 22, 226 Mubtada’ 166 Multilingualism – in writing 45, 96, 98, 104, 295, 301, 302 – vertical bilingualism/multilingualism 117 Patient 167, 260 Person marking 16, 40–41, 49–62 Phatic marker 79 Phonetic-graphic interface 311 Plautus 17, 38, 39, 67–79 Plural – inclusive/exclusive 52 – non-canonical 16, 40, 49–62 – sociative 49 Politeness 11, 17, 55, 56, 58, 61, 68, 76, 78, 79, 100, 102, 107 Politics (in language) 21, 104–106, 119, 120, 185–186, 190–197, 236, 263, 294, 295 Polymorphism 25, 306, 317, 322, 341–343, 349, 351 Predications, actual/non-actual 41, 57, 61 Prestige variety 19, 117, 118, 119, 120–126, 157, 212, 215, 237, 292, 294, 297–305, 332, 343 Private letters 7, 10, 13, 16, 34, 40–41, 49, 206, 207, 309–310, 317 Productivity, morphological 22, 23, 118, 212–213, 245–246, 250–263 Prosodic information 66, 92, 174, 232, 269, 275, 277, 278, 280–281, 312
Subject index
Reconstructed words 176–178 Repertoire 14, 16, 18, 21–25, 34, 44, 66, 117–126, 136, 178, 202, 211–215, 246– 250, 294, 295–302, 310, 326 Sanna 325–337 Sardinian, medieval 22, 25, 118, 212, 246– 249, 251–263, 345 Self-reference 16, 49, 61 Semantic domains 179 Sicilian 22, 140–141, 149, 177, 226–228 Siculo-Arabic Alcastani 22, 231, 233 Situation 34–35, 39, 51, 59 Speech Acts 7, 17, 65, 67, 71, 71–79, 101, 106, 209, 254 – Directive 17, 39, 68–79 Spelling 21, 23, 203, 205–206, 269, 271, 276–281, 284–285 Sprachbund 44, 125 – Balkanic Sprachbund 119, 139, 142 Synchrony/diachrony 42, 43, 45 Syriac – grammar 12, 158–160 – morphology 162–163, 165 – Syriac-Arabic bilingualism 20, 121–122, 157–158, 161
365
Text-types 97–99, 104–108 – Juridical-administrative 350 – Non-literary texts 14, 21, 203–207, 270– 271, 278, 285 Textual stratigraphy 343 Toponyms 14, 224, 228–239 Translation (in Antiquity) 21, 83, 119, 121, 161–166, 185–186, 190, 233, 237, 238 Turkish 20, 135, 158–159, 171–180, 310, 315, 319, 326, 327 Uniformitarian principle 5, 6, 42, 127, 128, 201, 203 Venetian 7, 20, 126, 171–172, 175–179, 233, 300, 310, 314–322 Vindolanda tablets 3, 13, 23, 206–207, 270– 272, 280–282, 285 Voicing-devoicing 24, 89, 314–316, 322 Word order 21, 119, 185, 188–189, 190, 196, 197 Writing system(s) 5, 16, 24, 36, 46, 202, 203, 209, 215, 291–294, 295–306, 316, 321–322, 332–336, 337–338