The Italian Language 9780231894814

Table of contents :
PREFACE
CONTENTS
SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS MOST COMMONLY USED
I. LANGUAGE AND HISTORY
II. PHONOLOGY
III. MORPHOLOGY
IV. SYNTAX
V. VOCABULARY
VI. DIALECTOLOGY
VII. TEXTS
GENERAL BIBLIORAGPHT
SPECIAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND PRACTICE MATERIAL
INDEX NOMINUM RERUMQUE
INDEX VERBORUM

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THE

ITALIAN

LANGUAGE

THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE By M A R I O A. P E I A S S I S T A N T P R O F E S S O R OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

N E W YORK COLUMBIA U N I V E R S I T Y

I 94 I

PRESS

COPYRIGHT 1 9 4 1

COLUMBIA U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS, N E W YORK Foreign agents: OXFORD UNIVERSITY P R E S S , Humphrey Milford, Amen House, London, E.C. 4, England, AND B. I. Building, Nicol Road, Bombay, India; MAJJUZEN COMPANY, LTD., 6 Nihonbashi, Tori-Nichome, Tokyo, Japan MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO H E N R I F. MULLER, DINO BIGONGIARI AND HORATIO SMITH SCHOLARS,

PIONEERS,

WHO HAVE

MADE

CONCEPTION, PUBLICATION

POSSIBLE

PREPARATION, OF THIS

FRIENDS THE AND WORK

PREFACE of this volume is to present in condensed form and with the modifications suggested by recent research the findings of D'Ovidio, Meyer-Ltibke, Grandgent, and other linguists and to adapt them to the ends of elementary and advanced instruction for classes in Italian linguistics in the colleges and universities of English-speaking countries. To this end lengthy discussion has been avoided where possible; phonological and morphological laws of development have been simplified and presented with a minimum of exceptions; the complicated development of Greek vowel sounds which enter classical Latin, Vulgar Latin, and early Italian in different and constantly changing forms has been omitted; 1 syntactical features which owe their development primarily to literary influences rather than to popular usage have been cursorily treated. From a . phonological and morphological standpoint the Italian language appears to have been fully formed, in practically its modern state, by the thirteenth century. The vast majority of subsequent developments are either of a learned, stylistic, and literary nature or within the lexical field; the history of the language from that point has therefore not been traced, save in the case of a few exceptional features.2 Few references to other works have been given in the body of the text, although the author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to all the works listed in the general bibliography and the chapter bibliographies, to which the student is referred for anything beyond the outline here offered. In accordance with present educational tendencies an attempt has been made to place before the student a certain amount of annotated textual material, which has for its purpose to illustrate the actual change of linguistic conditions on Italian soil and the gradual unfolding of the Italian dialects out of the Vulgar Latin of the Middle Ages, the literary language of Rome, and the earlier tongues of the Italian Peninsula. While this material is necessarily limited in scope and treatment, it is

T H E PURPOSE

1 See Grandgent, Introduction to Vulgar Latin, sees. 180-93; Grandgent, From Latin to Italian, pp. 22-61. 2 See Migliorini, Lingua contemporanea, for the most recent changes.

viii

PREFACE

hoped that it may add to the classroom interest of the subject, presenting linguistic development as a series of word pictures drawn from the life of the people that contributed to the language's growth. The bibliographic and practice material in the Appendix may also prove of service from the instructional standpoint. The author is deeply indebted to all those who have given criticism or suggestions and is grateful for the opportunity of expressing his thanks to Professors Henri F. Muller and Dino Bigongiari, who carefully read all of his material and offered invaluable comments; Professor Louis H. Gray, who not only examined the entire work, but also painstakingly investigated the texts from ancient Italy and supplied several translations which appear to be an improvement over the currently accepted versions; Professor Austin P. Evans, who gave valuable suggestions in the historical field; Professor Horatio Smith, who read and criticized the initial chapter; Dr. Nicholas J. Milella and Miss Wilhelmina Milella, who examined the entire work from the standpoint of arrangement for instructional purposes and offered suggestions which led to the inclusion of a section devoted to practice material. Columbia University January 2, 1941

M. A. PEI

CONTENTS Symbols and Abbreviations

xv

I . LANGUAGE AND HISTORY, 3

Linguistics and Philology (sees. 1-4)

3

Fundamental Aspects of Language (sees. 5-10)

4

The Place of Italian among the World's Languages (sees. 11-14)

7

The Linguistic History of the Pre-Romance Period (sees. 15-41)

11

I I . PHONOLOGY, 2 8

Accented Vowels and Diphthongs (sees. 42-51)

28

Accent; Position; Diphthongization of Stressed Vowels (sees. 4246) 28 Free Accented Vowels (sec. 47)

31

Checked Accented Vowels (sees. 48-49)

32

Accented Diphthongs (sees. 50-51)

33

Unaccented Vowels and Diphthongs (sees. 52-61)

34

Vowels of the Final Syllable (sees. 53-54)

34

Vowels of the Initial Syllable (sees. 55-56)

35

Other Vowels; Syncopation; Haplogy (sees. 57-61)

37

Other Vocalic Phenomena (sees. 62-69)

39

Apheresis (sec. 62)

39

Prothesis (sec. 63)

40

Anaptyxis (Vowel Epenthesis) (sec. 64)

40

Vowel Assimilation (sec. 65)

41

Vowel Dissimilation (sec. 66)

41

Vowels in Hiatus; Development of yod (sec. 67)

42

X

CONTENTS Vocalic Sounds Developed from I (sec. 68)

42

Analogy (sec. 69)

43

Consonants (sees. 70-95)

44

Classical Latin Consonant Scheme (sees. 70-71)

44

New Italian Sounds (sec. 72)

46

General Consonantal Phenomena (sees. 73-79)

46

Sonorization (sec. 73)

46

Simplification and Gemination of Consonants (sec. 74)

47

Consonant Epenthesis (sec. 75)

49

Consonant Assimilation (sec. 76)

50

Consonant Dissimilation (sec. 77)

50

Metathesis (sec. 78)

51

Foreign Influence in Phonological Development (sec. 79)

51

Individual Consonants (sees. 80-94)

52

The Aspirate: H (sec. 80)

52

The Gutturals: C, G, QJJ, G\J, X (sees. 81-88)

53

The Semivowel: I (sec. 89)

58

The Dentals: T, D (sec. 90)

58

The Labials: P, B, F, V (sec. 91)

59

The Sibilant: 5 (sec. 92)

61

The Liquids: L, R (sec. 93)

62

The Nasals: M, N (sec. 94)

63

General Consonantal Development (sec. 95) Italian Sounds and Their Sources (sees. 96-97)

64 65

I I I . MORPHOLOGY, 6 7

Nouns (sees. 99-108)

68

The Singular of the First, Second, and Third Declensions (sees. 99-101) 68

CONTENTS

xi

The Plural of the First, Second, and Third Declensions (secs. 102-4) 71 The Fourth and Fifth Declensions (sec. 105)

74

Other Declensional Shifts (sec. 106)

74

The Neuter Gender (sec. 107)

74

Survival of Individual Cases (sec. 108)

76

Adjectives; Adverbs; Numerals; Indefinite Article (sees. 109-15)

78

Adjectives (sees. 109-11)

78

Adverbs (sec. 112)

80

Numerals (sees. 113-14)

80

The Indefinite Article (sec. 115)

81

Definite Article; Pronouns (sees. 116-26)

81

The Definite Article; Third Person Subject and Object Pronouns (sees. 116-19) 81 New Demonstrative Adjective-Pronouns (sec. 120)

86

Personal Pronouns (First and Second Persons) (sees. 121-22)

86

Possessive Pronouns (sec. 123)

88

Relative, Interrogative and Indefinite Pronouns; Pronominal and Adverbial Forms Derived from Combination (sees. 124r-26) 89 Verbs (sees. 127-46)

90

Shifts of Conjugation; The Infinitive (sec. 129)

92

Present Indicative (sees. 130-31)

93

Imperfect Indicative (sec. 132)

96

Perfect Indicative (sees. 133-35)

98

New Compound Tenses (sees. 136-38)

100

Future and Conditional (sees. 139-40)

102

Present Subjunctive (sec. 141)

104

Other Subjunctive Tenses (sec. 142)

106

Imperative (sec. 143)

107

xii

CONTENTS Supine; Gerund; Gerundive; Participles (sec. 144)

108

Passive Voice (sec. 145)

109

Deponent and Semideponent Verbs (sec. 146)

112

I V . SYNTAX, 1 1 4

Word Order (sees. 148-50)

113

Analytical and Emphatic Tendencies (sees. 151-57)

114

Subjects and Object Pronouns; Verbs; Agreement (sees. 158-64)

116

V . VOCABULARY, 119

Survival of the Individual Word (sec. 166)

120

Vocabulary Choice, Decline, and Growth; Popular, Learned, and Semi-learned Words; Doublets (sees. 167-70) 120 Derivation and Composition of New Words (sees. 171-78)

123

Semantic Change (sees. 179-82)

126

Loan-Words (sees. 183-93)

129

Earliest Borrowings (sec. 184)

129

Greek (sec. 185)

130

Phenician, Hebrew, and Kindred Semitic Languages (sec. 186)

131

Celtic (sec. 187)

131

Germanic (sec. 188)

131

Arabic, Persian, Turkish (sec. 189)

133

Other Romance Languages (sec. 190)

133

Other Languages (sec. 191)

134

Dialect and Slang (sec. 192)

134

Linguistic Nationalism (sec. 193)

135

CONTENTS

xiii

V I . DIALECTOLOGY, 136

Dialect and Language (sees. 195-97)

138

The Ancient Languages and Dialects of Italy (sec. 198)

140

Survival of the Ancient in the Modern Dialects (sees. 199-200)

142

The Modern Dialects of Italy; Classification; Non-Italian Linguistic Groups on Italian Territory; Linguistic Islands (sees. 201-4) 145 Non-Italian (?) Dialects: Sardinian, Rhaetian, Vegliote (sees. 205-9) 149 Dialects of the Italian System (sees. 210-24)

154

Gallo-Italian (sec. 210)

154

Venetian (sees. 211-12)

155

Southern Italian (sees. 213-19)

156

Central Italian (sees. 220-24)

159

V I I . TEXTS, 162

From the Languages of Ancient Italy (sees. 225-46)

162

Etruscan (sec. 225)

162

Gaulish (sec. 226)

164

Rhaetic (sec. 227)

164

Liguric (sec. 228)

164

East Italic (sec. 229)

165

Venetic (sec. 230)

165

Messapian (sec. 231)

166

Sicel (sec. 232)

166

Oscan, Umbrian, and Related Dialects (sees. 233-41)

167

The Latinian Dialects: Faliscan; Praenestine; Archaic Latin (sees. 242-46) 171 From the Vulgar Latin Period (sees. 247-55)

173

xiv

CONTENTS

From the Italian Period (sees.

256-57)

From the Older Period (sees.

258-87)

177 178

Papanti Texts (sees.

288-316)

196

Modern Texts (sees.

317-29)

207

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY, 2 1 3

SPECIAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND PRACTICE MATERIAL, 2 1 7 I N D E X NOMINUM RERUMQUE, 2 4 1

I N D E X VERBORUM, 2 5 5

CHARTS I. The Place of Italian among the World's Languages II. The Ancient Languages and Dialects of Italy i l l . Modern Dialects of Italy

9 141 146

SYMBOLS MOST Class. Lat. Vulg. Lat. It. 0 . Fr. M. Fr.

AND

ABBREVIATIONS

COMMONLY

Classical Latin Vulgar Latin Italian Old French Modern French

Sp. Eng. Ger. Ose. Umb.

USED Spanish English German or Germanic Osean Umbrian

A bar above a vowel indicates that the vowel is long: Lat. villa. A semicircle above a vowel indicates that the vowel is short: Lat. bène. A dot below a vowel indicates closed quality: It. me. A hook below a vowel indicates open quality: It. ferro. An acute accent above a Latin vowel indicates Latin tonic accent: villa, bène. A grave accent above an Italian vowel indicates Italian tonic accent: città. A double accent above a Latin vowel indicates the stress accent of Vulgar Latin: pgrta. (Latin quantities and tonic accent and Italian vowel quality and tonic accent are indicated only where relevant.) Parentheses inclosing a vowel indicate syncopation: dom(i)na. Around a consonant they indicate fall of the consonant: domina(m). A tilde above a vowel indicates full nasalization : pà. A dot above a nasal consonant indicates a lesser degree of nasalization: pan. A bar above a nasal consonant indicates guttural quality: lank (like Eng. sink). An acute accent above a consonant indicates sonant quality: S (Tuscan roSa); z (It. mezzo). After a consonant, it indicates palatalization: l (alo = It. aglio); n' [viria = It. vigna).

SYMBOLS

AND

ABBREVIATIONS

An inverted circumflex above a consonant indicates palatalization: c (It. cera, Eng. chair); g (It. giglio, Eng. jelly); f (It. sciroppo, Eng. sure); Z (Tuscan gioia, Eng. measure); c, g, indicate lesser degrees of palatalization, intermediate between c and t{, g and d{. u and i indicate the semivowel sounds of Eng. w (war) and y (year), respectively. ö and ü indicate the French or German middle vowels (Fr. keure, feu, lune); ä indicates the German middle vowel of Väter or the Eng. a of bat. 0 indicates a sound intermediate between that of closed o and that of u (see sec. 99). a indicates the sound of e-mute in Fr. me. X indicates the sound of ch in Ger. ach. d.d. indicates the high post-alveolar sonant dental of Sicilian or Sardinian cavaddu. 1 and ü in Oscan words represent the Oscan vowels which have the value, respectively, of open i and of o. 3 indicates the sonant dental spirant of Sp. amado or Eng. this. An asterisk before a word indicates that the word does not appear in classical or in recorded Vulgar Latin or that it is reconstructed by induction: venire habeo > *veniraio > vend. < indicates "comes from." > indicates "becomes." Noun and adjective derivations have been given in the traditional manner, i. e., from the Latin accusative form without final -m (porta, muru, pane), save where morphological or other factors require derivation from other case forms. However, see sees. 99-102 for an interpretation of the phenomenon of derivation which appears more exact.

THE

ITALIAN

LANGUAGE

I: LANGUAGE

AND

L I N G U I S T I C S AND

HISTORY

PHILOLOGY

§ 1. Linguistics is the ensemble of laws that govern the evolution of language and forms part of the broader realm of philology, the historical and social science that deals with the history of civilization as reflected in human speech—a science which, like its kindred sciences in the social field, is still far from perfect. While the laws of linguistics are in a general sense susceptible of formulation and arrangement, they can in no way be said to be precise, like the laws of the physical sciences, since in the development of language there enters to a large degree the unpredictable factor of the free creative power of the individual and of the social group. While this human factor deprives linguistics of a certain portion of its scientific aspect, it also contributes largely to the human interest of that subject and to its intimate connection with the historical, social, political, and religious development of civilization. § 2. Literature presents the aristocratic side of language, the spiritual contribution to human progress made by an intellectual élite ; linguistics may be said to introduce the popular side of the same progress. Literature reflects individual achievement and recounts individual, often heroic, action; linguistic development largely reflects the subconscious action of the anonymous masses, whose most fertile field of intellectual activity is precisely language. Philology supplies the connecting link between the two and interprets both literary and linguistic phenomena in the light of social and historical factors. Philology and linguistics are therefore social sciences in the highest sense of the word, having intimate connections with history, economics, sociology, religion, and psychology. Since all human progress is based upon human cooperation, and since no such cooperation is possible without mutual understanding, which can come about only through the medium of spoken or written language, it may be asserted that language is the essential vehicle of progress and of civilization. § 3. At the same time, linguistics is intimately connected with some of the physical sciences. The fact that the spoken language consists of

4

LANGUAGE

AND

HISTORY

sounds, which are produced by the human vocal apparatus, transmitted in the form of sound waves and received by the human ear, brings the phonetic aspect of language into close relationship with physiology on the one hand and with physics on the other. The influence which factors of geography and climate may exercise on the spoken tongue brings linguistics into intimate contact with other branches of physical science. § 4. The purely utilitarian aspect of linguistics, which is invariably the last to be considered by the linguistic scholar, is probably the prime factor involved in the study of individual languages by the layman. Yet this utilitarian factor ought not to be altogether disregarded even by the scientist. It has repeatedly occurred that persons equipped with linguistic training have succeeded in speaking and understanding, imperfectly, but satisfactorily, languages and dialects with which they had had no previous contact save through the general linguistic medium. F U N D A M E N T A L ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE § 5. A practically universal characteristic of all language is its tendency to change, both in time and in space. Language, as the medium of communication of human beings, is by nature not static but dynamic, and at no time does a given tongue, however firmly rooted, standardized, and fixed it may seem, represent more than a temporary stabilization, which is constantly subject to transformation. A given language spoken in a given community will with the passing of time inevitably change. If the same language is spoken in différent communities, the tendency will be not only to change but also to differentiation. Both change and differentiation, however, will not occur at random, but rather tend to follow certain definite patterns; in one community the transformation of one sound into another under given conditions will tend to appear universally, and it is this tendency to uniformity in both change and differentiation that leads linguists to speak of phonological "laws." Speaking, however, is essentially a spiritual activity which cannot be consistently reduced to a purely scientific enunciation, and the human factor often injects itself into the general working of such "laws," with the results that they frequently have to be amended or restated and that other factors beside the purely phonological ones have to be taken into consideration.

LANGUAGE

AND

HISTORY

5

§ 6. Side by side with the natural tendency toward change and differentiation just described (which we may, with a term borrowed from the physical sciences, call "centrifugal"), language is also subject to artificial, man-made forces of the "centripetal" type. A written form of the language tends, the minute it comes into being, to arrest the development of the spoken tongue by crystallizing existing forms in the minds of the speakers, who are thenceforth torn between their normal tendency to change and their now recorded consciousness of a traditional form. A full-fledged literary tradition becomes a powerful conservative factor, which interferes with both change and differentiation of speech. An established religion, with traditions handed down in written or even in spoken form, exerts another powerful "centripetal" pull on the language, while the establishment of a central government invariably leads to a conscious or unconscious desire on that government's part to standardize the mental habits and points of view of its subjects, with the result that the "national" language is encouraged and the use of "dialects" discouraged. The growth of civilization itself brings into play a large number of conservative, "centripetal" forces: roads and other means of communication are not primarily designed for the purpose of achieving linguistic unity and stabilization; nevertheless by bringing into contact speakers of different regions they have that effect. Common institutions and laws check the natural tendency of language to change. The establishment of educational institutions, however rudimentary, immediately exerts a powerful influence for linguistic conservatism and uniformity in the community. Military service, because of the transfer of levies from one section of a country to another, where they come into contact with speakers of a different language or dialect, tends to establish the use of the "national" language as a means of mutual understanding; while the natural prestige with which the "national" tongue is endowed in the eyes of all speakers is a mighty psychological factor in the development of linguistic uniformity and conservatism. § 7. The result of this perpetual conflict between natural, "centrifugal," and man-made, "centripetal," forces is to be observed in all the spoken tongues of the world today. In contrast to the myriad local dialects and rapid rate of change in languages that possess no literary tradition, written form, or common institutions, such as those of the

6

LANGUAGE

AND

HISTORY

African Negroes and the American Indians, we see the relative stability and standardization of the civilized tongues of modern Europe, which are themselves, however, the outcome of an earlier predominance of "centrifugal" forces causing an original common Indo-European tongue to branch out into such widely divergent languages as Irish, German, Italian, and Russian. § 8. In this connection the point can hardly be overstressed that the rate of change and differentiation of language is by no means uniform, but is subject to all the changing factors of political and cultural stability. A period when these factors are generally absent may bring about the temporary triumph of natural "centrifugal" tendencies, for example, the development of the Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Slavic, and other groups from a common tongue. Then the birth of culture and strong political institutions may for a period of centuries bring about a relative crystallization in linguistic forms, as was the case with the Latin of Republican and Imperial Rome. The decay of that culture and of those institutions again brought to the fore the natural "centrifugal" forces of language, with the result that this universal, temporarily stable tongue broke down once more into the innumerable dialects of the Romance world. Again the forces of culture and political stability took sway, and again the languages of the Romance countries tended to become standardized and stabilized, one dialect predominating over the others because of political and cultural forces. With the growth of the modem highly centralized state and the extension of modern culture and education the process of the general absorption of dialects by the "national" tongue becomes again prevalent, so that Sicilian and Piedmontese bid fair today to succumb to Italian, as Oscan and Faliscan succumbed to Latin. § 9. The importance of communications and literary traditions as "centripetal" forces outstripping even governmental institutions may well be exemplified by reference to the English language. When the Teutonic invaders poured into Britain in the fifth century, they spoke a mixture of Germanic dialects of precisely the same nature as those used by the dwellers of the "Low" German areas on the North Sea coast. Within a few centuries, owing to the difficulty of communications and the lack of a literary tradition, the Anglo-Saxon of England and the Frisian of the German lowlands had developed into widely divergent

LANGUAGE

AND

HISTORY

7

languages, which today, owing also to subsequent historical and linguistic developments, have become mutually unintelligible. At a much later period the coming of English-speaking immigrants to the shores of America was attended by a somewhat similar linguistic divergence. Despite the existence of more advanced means of communication and a common literary tradition, the divergence between the English of England and the English of America increased with the passing of centuries, until the possibility of the existence of two separate languages, at least with respect to phonology and vocabulary, began to be discussed. But the latter part of the nineteenth century, with its vastly improved means of communication, the spreading of education, and the increase of literary bonds, halted the process of diversification, while in very recent years such developments as the movietone and the short-wave radio have actually tended to bring together again, in a new standardization born of linguistic compromise, the diverging phonologies and lexicons of the two English languages. § 10. It is conceivable, though not probable, that a slow process of decay in culture and civilization or the sudden breakdown of political and social institutions may once more bring the civilized nations of the world to linguistic conditions similar to those which prevailed after the fall of the Roman Empire and that the great, stabilized tongues of today may again yield to the natural "centrifugal" tendency to change and differentiation which has so often prevailed in the past. It is therefore incorrect to speak of Italian or of any other tongue as permanent and everlasting. Language, like all human activity, is subject to perpetual change of a swift and violent or of a slow and subtle nature, and it is possible that the generations of five thousand years hence may view our spoken languages as we view the Sanskrit, Akkadian, and Egyptian of ancient times. THE PLACE OF ITALIAN AMONG THE WORLD'S LANGUAGES §11. Italian is a language of the Romance or neo-Latin group, the common forefather of which is the Latin of classical times and the Vulgar Latin of the post-classical period. The sister languages of Italian are Portuguese, Spanish, French, Provençal, and Roumanian, with the pos-

8

LANGUAGE

AND

HISTORY

sibility of separate classification for Catalan, Franco-Provençal, Sardinian, Rhaetian, and Vegliote.1 Latin was itself a member of the Italic family of languages, which included many subdivisions, chief among them Faliscan, the nearest relative of Latin, Oscan, the predominant language of most of southern Italy, and Umbrian, the tongue of a large body of speakers located south of the Po from the Adriatic coast to the Apennines. § 12. The Italic family appears to have been a subdivision of a larger linguistic group, the members of which extend from northern India to the Atlantic, embracing practically all Europe and a broad sweep of southeastern Asia. Included in this vast linguistic family, variously designated as Aryan, Indo-European, and Indo-Germanic, there appear, in addition to the Italic section, the Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Illyrian, Greek, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian groups, as well as, probably, Hittite and various other little-known languages of ancient times. The Celtic family embraces Irish, Scots Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, Welsh, and Breton, as well as ancient Gaulish; the Germanic family comprises English, Low and High German, Flemish, Dutch, Icelandic, DanoNorwegian and Swedish, as well as ancient Gothic and Frisian; the Balto-Slavic family includes Lettish (Latvian), Lithuanian, and Old Prussian on the one hand, Russian, Czech, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, and Bulgarian on the other; the Illyrian family is perhaps represented by modern Albanian, and the Indo-Iranian includes many of the modern vernaculars of northern India (Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and so forth), modern Persian and Afghan, as well as the ancient Sanskrit, Pâli, and Prakrit of India and the Old Persian and Avestan of the Iranian plateau. It will therefore readily be seen that the connections of Italian are indeed far-reaching. Every literary tongue of modern Europe is its near or distant relative, with only four important exceptions: Turkish, Hungarian, Finnish, and Basque. § 13. The Indo-European family, large and rich in culture as it is, 1 For the last three, see sees. 203, 205-9. Franco-Provençal consists of a band of dialects appearing in the southeastern part of France and forming a transition between French and Provençal; in its main features it agrees partly with the former, partly with the latter, and its right to a separate classification is still disputed. Some assert that Catalan forms part of the Spanish group; others, that it belongs to the Provençal group; others maintain that it is a separate tongue intermediate between the two.

C H A R T I. T H E PLACE OF I T A L I A N AMONG T H E WORLD'S LANGUAGES This graphic sketch is not to be taken as complete or exact, but only as a rough approximation.

10

LANGUAGE

AND

HISTORY

nevertheless embraces only a fraction of the earth's languages. Northern Asia is linguistically mainly of Ural-Altaic (Finno-Ugric) stock, and it is this family which contributes to modern Europe three of its four important non-Indo-European tongues (Finnish, Turkish, Hungarian). Southern India is linguistically Dravidian. China and other regions of eastern Asia belong to the Sino-Tibetan (Monosyllabic) family. The Malayo-Polynesian tongues of southeastern Asia and the Pacific islands, the Negro tongues of Africa, the languages of the American Indians and Australian aborigines all form separate and apparently unrelated groups, while the closest neighbors of Indo-European are the Hamitic tongues of northern Africa (represented especially by ancient Egyptian, medieval Coptic, and modern Galla and Somali), and the Semitic languages (Hebrew, Arabic, Phoenician, Akkadian, and so forth). Mystery languages, of doubtful origin and affiliation, are everywhere in evidence. Modern Basque, ancient Iberian, and Etruscan may represent the linguistic forms of the aboriginal, pre-Indo-European inhabitants of Europe or the fruit of pre-Indo-European migrations. Concerning them, as well as numerous other tongues, conjecture and speculation are rife. § 14. Monogenesis (that is, single, common origin for all the earth's linguistic groups) has repeatedly been postulated. The evidence so far advanced is not convincing. Chance resemblances in vocabulary (for example, Italian donna and Japanese onna) are misleading. Equally misleading are words which have been borrowed by one language from another (for example, Italian sei resembles Basque sei, but the latter is borrowed from Spanish seis or Latin sex, and there is no direct connection between the Italian and the Basque form). When we consider that the vocabulary of languages such as Armenian, Albanian, Persian, and English contains more than 60 per cent of loan words, the fallacy of the chance resemblance and vocabulary tests becomes evident. In determining a language's affiliations linguists normally make use of two main tests—the morphological and the phonological. Indo-European morphology, based on the suffixation of declensional and conjugational endings (Latin am-d, am-o-r, am-a-bo), is, for instance, in strong contrast with Semitic morphology, based on roots of three consonants and internal flexion by means of shifting vowels (Arabic root q-t-l, "kill"; qatala, "he killed"; qutila, "he was killed"; iqtal, "causing to kill"). Phonologic

LANGUAGE

AND

HISTORY

11

correlation (not necessarily immediate resemblance) in the case of "key" words which languages do not normally borrow (names of relationship, elementary numerals, parts of the body) is also a fairly definite test (note the correlation in English foot, German Fuss, Latin ped-, Greek TOS-, Sanskrit pad-, in contrast with Arabic rijl, Hebrew regel, and in English father, German Vater, Latin pater, Greek irarrip, Sanskrit pitâr-, in contrast with Arabic ab, Hebrew 'âv.2 It is thanks to this comparative method in the study of linguistics that the affiliations of certain languages have been definitely established, and further advances on this road are likely to be made by this sound method rather than by the hit-or-miss system of examining chance vocabulary resemblances. T H E L I N G U I S T I C H I S T O R Y OF T H E PRE-ROMANCE PERIOD § 15. The history of the expansion of the Latin tongue from its original home at the mouth of the Tiber to the vast expanse of Romania3 is largely the history of Roman military, political, and cultural conquests. As Rome gradually extended her sway over the entire Italian mainland, the shifting linguistic mosaic that was ancient Italy 4 entered upon a process of unification and crystallization. It would be out of place here to go into a discussion of the causes that facilitated the linguistic expansion of Latin, both in Italy and elsewhere (linguistic kinship with Oscan and Umbrian, similarity of structure between Latin and Gaulish, the lack of a literary and cultural tradition in languages like Venetic, Liguric, Sicel, and Messapian). In the Greek cities of Sicily and the South, where there was a strong cultural non-Latin tradition, Greek continued to be employed side by side with Latin until the dawn of the Romance period, and in thé eastern portion of the later Empire, particularly in Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor, Latin never supplanted Greek save as a purely official tongue. On the other hand, languages as 2 Within the Indo-European group it is established that the Germanic equivalent of Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit p is normally/. 3 Romania—a term used by linguists to indicate that portion of the Roman Empire in which Latin became and remained the popular language and where tongues descended from Latin are spoken today. 4 See sec. 198 and Chart II.

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profoundly different in structure from Latin as the Iberian of Spain and the Etruscan of central Italy gave way. If we except Etruscan, the tongue of a culture more ancient than that of Rome, the absorption of which watf probably caused by the fact that it was geographically too close to the radiating center of Roman civilization, and if we further consider that the tongues of the later Germanic invaders easily yielded to the established Latin of the Empire, the conclusion appears to be forced upon us that some languages are absorbed and obliterated by others not so much because of structural similarity as for reasons of prestige and cultural power. The civilization^ of Greece, of which the Greek tongue was the vehicle, was too firmly established for Rome to do more than accept it, imitate it, expand it, and live side by side with it; Roman culture and the prestige of the Latin tongue experienced little difficulty in imposing themselves as supreme over lesser civilizations. § 16. Three main theories, separately formulated or mingled in various proportions, have been advanced by those who seek to place the origin of Romance dialectalization in pre-classical or classical times. The first, now to a large extent discarded, holds that it was a rapidly changing Latin that gave rise to the separate Romance tongues. According to this theory Sardinian, the most conservative of the Romance languages, would reflect the evolution of the Latin spoken at the time of the conquest of Sardinia (third century B. C.) ; Spanish, that of a later stage of Latin (second century B. C.); Provencal and French, respectively, that of the Latin of the end of the second century and of the middle of the first century B. C. ; and Roumanian, that of the Latin of the tirqe of the Dacian conquest (second century A. D.),This theory makes no allowance for Italian and its variety of dialects, some of which are infinitely more revolutionary than the conservative Sardinian, whereas in accordance with the chronology of conquest we should expect to find them generally more conservative and more archaic. The fact that present-day Sardinian retains Latin final -s after short vowels, which spoken Latin .had generally discarded by the time of the Sardinian conquest, but later restored, is additional evidence against the chronological theory, which further calls for a rapidity of change in the Latin language itself which is not attested by any of the existing records. § 17. The theory of the "ethnical substrata," or racial underlayers, in

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the Romance tongues presents more plausible features, especially in connection with vocabulary borrowings. According to this hypothesis the languages of the original inhabitants of each Romance area (Iberian in Spain, Gaulish in France and northern Italy, Oscan and Greek in southern Italy, and so forth) all contributed to peculiar local pronunciations of Imperial Latin, and these formed the foundations for the Romance tongues. Additional differentiation was later contributed by the tongues of the invaders (Frankish in northern France, Burgundian in southern France, Visigothic in Spain, Ostrogothic and Longobardic in Italy, Slavic in Roumania), with the result that each Romance tongue would appear, to be a sort of linguistic sandwich, with Latin forming the meat, but peculiar development brought about by the nether and upper slices of bread. Points adduced in support of this theory include "Celtic" phenomena (the middle vowels 6, u, and nasalization) in France and northern Italy, the former Celtic-speaking areas; phenomena peculiar to Oscan ( fid > nn, mb > mm, intervocalic Indo-European bh appearing as / instead of the Latin b) in southern Italy. There is, however, little direct evidence of the alleged "Celtic," "Iberian," and "O^can" pronunciations of Latin in classical or post-classical times. The substratum theory leaves out of account such an important element as Etruscan, of which there appears to be practically no trace in the modern central Italian dialects. Some of the peculiar sounds attributed to Celtic influence appear in languages other than Celtic (Latin decumus > decimus, maxumus > maximus, indicating a transitional «-stage 5 ; Umbrian pit corresponding to Greek irvp; Oscan tiurri, corresponding to Latin turrim; the Greek pronunciation of v, originally u, later u, ultimately i); while some of the "Italic" phenomena appear in Celtic (nd > nn in Gaulish and Irish). It consequently appears unsafe to predicate too much on resemblances which may be due ,to chance or to parallel but unrelated development (Faliscan habam for Latin fabam resembles Spanish initial / > h, but is obviously unrelated; Sanskrit pt, kt > Prakrit tt, Sanskrit intervocalic p, t > Prakrit v, d, fall of Sanskrit intervocalic g, v, d in Prakrit parallel Italian development from Latin, but there is obviously no connection between Prakrit and Italian development). Nevertheless by its very nature and because many of the substratum languages are imperfectly 5 See Sturtevant, Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, pp. 23-29.

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known the substratum question is difficult of ultimate solution; and while arguments may be presented for and against it, it seems reasonable at least to limit its scope and not to attribute to it the paramount importance in Romance linguistic development which some scholars maintain. § 18. A third theory is based partly upon expressions such as sermo plebeius, rusticus, cotidianus, urbanus, employed by classical writers, partly upon the fact that the Romance languages display a multitude of forms which are unattested in that portion of the classical Latin of the authors which has come down to us, but which occasionally appear in inscriptions. It is that side by side with classical Latin there existed, in the Roman Empire and in the city of Rome itself, a "Vulgar Latin" radically and fundamentally different from the classical Latin of literature, to such an extent that the latter was practically a dead language even at the time of its greatest literary vogue; and that it is to this Vulgar Latin of the masses that the Romance languages go back. The claim is often made in this connection that the bulk of ignorant speakers of the Empire cannot logically be supposed to have used a language of complex declensional endings and verb forms such as classical Latin. It is perhaps forgotten by those who advance this argument that modern Russian and Lithuanian, spoken as popular languages by semi-illiterate populations, possess fully as complicated a series of declensional endings as Latin and that yet this complexity apparently never strikes the speakers of those languages; that tongues are not inherently "easy" or "difficult," but invariably normal to those who have acquired them in childhood; and that the factor of "difficulty" appears only in reference to previous linguistic habits. All the original Indo-European tongues, possessing abundant inflectional endings, appear to have been spoken at a period when culture was practically non-existent. There is consequently no good reason to suppose that the Roman peasant found more need for simplification of his tongue than the Russian moujik finds for his. As for the distinctions of sermo plebeius, cotidianus, rusticus, and urbanus, a clear parallel appears in Fénelon's and Féraud's' eighteenthcentury genre élevé, simple, vulgaire, familier and style oratoire, simple, familier; which nevertheless do not lead us to the conclusion that mutually unintelligible languages were spoken in eighteenth-century France by Frenchmen of different social layers. Linguistic differences in the same

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15

country and at the same period among different social classes have always existed. Slang was undoubtedly current in Imperial times, as it is in our own. But we are hardly justified on that account in supposing that the linguistic differences in ancient Rome were such as to establish a definite cleavage of tongues. Nor must we forget the great linguistic influence exerted by the more- upon the less-cultured segments of the population and by the written upon the spoken tongue. It is probable, all in all, that the linguistic conditions prevailing in the western portion of the Empire at the time of its greatest extent resembled not so much those of modern European countries as those of present-day United States—general linguistic standardization, a few local peculiarities in the unassimilated backwoods corresponding to our immigrant dialects, a few local differences of intonation and vocabulary corresponding to our southern, New England, and western traits, and a widespread tendency toward slang and raciness of language; rather than clear-cut "Gaulish," "Iberian," "Oscan," or "African" Latin, or a universal spoken "Vulgar Latin" in direct contrast with an artificial, literary "classical Latin" used solely by the writers. § 19. Linguistic conditions in Romania today are vastly different; each town and village has developed its own peculiar brand of dialect or patois. But this may more safely be attributed to historical, political, and social conditions arising after the fall of the Empire and to the triumph of the normal "centrifugal" tendencies of language at the period when common bonds were broken and the factors leading to uniformity (roads, governmental institutions, education, military service, the prestige and pride of being a Roman citizen) fell into decay. On the one hand this theory appears historically true in the case of certain dialects, which definitely appear within the Romance period (Norman and Francien stemming from an originally common western French dialect, Andalusian and Judaeo-Spanish stemming from an original Castilian). It is also true that we can observe in the past and in the present the reverse process (the disappearance of Mozarabic, Leonese, and Aragonese before the advance of Castilian; the gradual giving way of Italian and French dialects in modern times to the official tongue as a result of the very factors which we suppose welded into a united whole the tongues of the Roman Empire; the yielding to English of the tongues of the immigrants

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to the United States in the second or at the most in the third generation, despite the existence of cultural ties to the mother-country, a foreign literary tradition, and factors, such as foreign-language newspapers, radio broadcasts, and movietone programs, which did not exist in the case of the peoples subjugated by Rome). § 20. These general considerations, which apply to the entire western Roman domain, are of special application to Italy. While in the first century B. C. Cicero speaks of the "rustic" and "archaic" Latin of certain orators, Quintilian and Verrius Flaccus one century later refer to the "Patavinitas" of Livy and the "Praenestinitas" of Vectius as to things of the past. "Rusticitas" is by Quintilian and Flaccus cited secondhand from Varro and Cicero, and statements made concerning it are in the historical imperfect: "rustici dicebant," "rustico sermone significabat." All Italy, Quintilian specifically states, speaks the same Latin; the Italiotes may, however, be recognized by their accent, as metals by their ring. The records of subsequent centuries do not contain any reference to linguistic differences in Italy (save for the use of Greek in portions of the south and in Sicily), although references to Spanish and African intonations still appear in the second century A. D., and to Gaulish peculiarities (which, incidentally, do not coincide with later French developments) as late as the fifth century A. D. The assumption is fairly safe, under the circumstances, that linguistic differences on Italian soil had become negligible. But while the universal Latin of Rome was replacing and obliterating the ancient languages of the Peninsula, it was itself undergoing an inexorable process of transformation. § 21. The history of Indo-European linguistics is in large measure the history of a conflict between two types of accentuation, with all that this entails. These two types of accentuation are described as pitch, or musical accent, and stress, or expiratory accent. The former consists simply of raising the pitch of the voice so that the accented syllable is lifted a certain number of tones above the unstressed syllables surrounding it, without any accompanying increase in the energy of utterance. The latter consists of an increase of vocal energy at the point of accentuation,

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without any necessary heightening in the musical pitch of the voice, although the increase in energy of utterance may be, and frequently is, accompanied by such heightening, in which case a mixture of pitch and stress accent results. Certain vocalic phenomena of proto-Indo-European seem explicable only on the supposition that the accentuation was then predominantly one of stress; at the same time, it is practically certain that pitch accent was also present. While both seem to have existed side by side, as they still do in some languages, now the one, now the other became predominant in different areas and at different periods. In the oldest IndoEuropean documents in which accentuation is indicated accent appears to have been exclusively of the musical or pitch type—a rise and fall in the pitch of the voice, unaccompanied by energy of vocal utterance such as is characteristic of the accentuation of most modern tongues. The most outstanding feature of the pitch type of accent is that it is entirely independent of vowel or syllable quantity; a vowel may be short and accented, or it may be long and unaccented. The stress type of accentuation, on the other hand, almost inevitably involves quantity, since a sufficiently heavy stress upon a given syllable of the word generally causes that syllable to lengthen, while the law of the conservation of energy, which is operative in linguistics as it is in physics, just as inevitably decrees that if a vowel or syllable is stressed and lengthened, the remaining portions of the word must to some extent be slurred and shortened.6 § 22. Sanskrit, the earliest of the Indo-European tongues to make its appearance in written form, definitely displays the pitch-accent pattern. The position of the accent in the Sanskrit word is absolutely free, and totally independent of quantity. In Greek, which makes its recorded appearance at a considerably later date, the type of accentuation, while still predominantly of the pitch variety, shows signs of a growing interrelation between accent and quantity. § 23. The evidence at our disposal for Latin seems to indicate from the very outset of the written records a conflict between the two types of accentuation. In prehistoric Latin a type of stress accent similar to 6 See Vendryes, Recherches sur l'histoire et les effets de l'intensité initiale en latin, pp. 14, 63; this book is hereafter referred to as Intensité initiale.

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that of the Germanic languages, falling upon the first syllable of the word, appears to have become predominant {Annus, but biennis, later biênnis; the shift from a to e in the compound word can be attributed only to the removal of the accent from its original position to the initial syllable).7 In classical times, an unconscious compromise between the two types appears to have been attained; the position of the accent becomes to some extent dependent upon quantity (accent on the penult, if the latter is long; otherwise on the antepenult). On the other hand, favored by the spreading of Greek culture and the efforts of meticulous grammarians, accent seems to have largely abandoned its stress-features and gone over to the pitch type, particularly among the upper classes, which in times of relative political and social stability may be said to direct the community's linguistic policy. It is for this reason that Latin poetry, definitely a product of the educated classes, reveals absolute conformity with the pitch-accent languages (scansion by quantity, never by accent ; rhythmic effect obtained by regular alternation of long and short, not of stressed and unstressed syllables).8 § 24. The question, of course, remains open to what extent the pitch accent and careful distinction of quantity of the grammarians and upper classes were accepted by the lower. A pitch accent and independent quantity system are peculiarly adapted to an aristocratic, oratorical type of language, in which choice of vocabulary and ingenious word order supply the natural need for emphasis and stress felt by the speakers; on the other hand, the natural tendency of ignorant speakers, whose range of vocabulary and possession of syntactical devices are limited, will always be toward self-expression of the violent stress type. This is well reflected in modern literary French and Italian, which have to some degree gone back to the pitch type of accentuation, as against English, or some of the Italian dialects, which retain predominantly stress features (cf. French c'est moi qui l'ai fait; moi, je l'ai fait with English "I did 7 The so-called Saturnian meter of pre-classical times has also been taken to indicate a form of stress accent; but the evidence is not altogether convincing; see ibid., pp. 318-27. _ 8 Compare: ar\md vï\rumquë cà\nô Trô\jae qui \ primiis tb\ôris with this is the \ fârest pri\mêval; the \ murmuring \ pines and the | hemlocks; and see Vendryes, Intensité initiale, pp. 64, 99-104; and Bennett, American Journal of Philology, XIX, 361; XX, 412.

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it"; or Italian hello, bella, belli, belle, in which the accented vowel is relatively short and the final vowel absolutely clear, with Neapolitan bçlh, for all genders and numbers, in which heavy stress leads to a lengthening of the accented vowel and the merging of final vowels into an indefinite a-sound. There is no doubt that within the classical period itself the lower-class leaning toward stress accent tended here and there to assert itself. Besides such dialectal forms as Oscan hûrz and Umbrian poplu, corresponding to Latin hortus and populum, where the syncopation of the unstressed vowel is strongly indicative of stress accent, we have, in classical Rome itself, such doubtful forms of versification as ecce nunc Caesar triumphat qui subegit Gallias, which show, without definite disregard for the classical laws of prosody, the possibility of agreement with modern verse based on stress.9 The numerous forms displaying syncopation (caldus for calidus, domnus for dominus, etc.) which appear

sporadically in classical times are also indicative of the occasional triumph of popular tendencies. § 25. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the establishment of a strongly constituted state, the growth of education, and the cumulative efforts of writers and grammarians appear to have established or restored pitch-accent conditions to a great extent in classical times. It is as though the original hieratic discipline of Indo-European society, typified by the Hindu castes, which had been broken in the course of prehistoric migrations, had been temporarily restored and crystallized in Imperial Rome, and this temporary stabilization had been reflected in linguistic conditions. Roman society, always of the aristocratic type, had classified its huma:n material into castes—military and intellectual leaders, workers, peasants, and slaves—and had ordained that the tongue of official intercourse should be of the type best suited to the mental habits of the dominant minority. But this could not exclude the faint rumblings of linguistic revolt, typified, perhaps, by the song of Caesar's legionaries in the first century B. c. or by such forms as caldus for calidus, which despite their early appearance were still vainly condemned by the grammarian Probus in the fourth century A. D. § 26. The Pax Romana of Augustus, the single, unified, strong gov9

But see Vendryes, Intensité initiale, p. 98.

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ernment of Imperial Rome, the general prosperity of the earlier centuries of the Empire, and, lastly, Caracalla's completion, in 212 A. D., of the policy of extending Roman citizenship to all of the Empire's freeborn inhabitants were undoubtedly powerful factors in the extension and crystallization of the classical type of Latin. But side by side with these conditions that made for linguistic conformity and uniformity a new and disquieting factor made its appearance at the very moment when the power, authority, and prestige of the Empire and its language seemed boundless. This was the spreading from the East of two new religions, both of which had a democratic aspect, both of which laid stress on freedom of conscience and the ultimate power of decision of the individual, both of which advanced the assurance of definite and eternal survival beyond the grave: Mithraism, with its doctrine of perpetual conflict between the forces of good and evil, the individual ultimately swinging the balance in favor of the one or the other, and Christianity, with its doctrine of ultimate justice and equality for all, rich and poorA ..slayes and freemen alike. These religions were bound to take instant hold upon the suffering and downtrodden masses— upon the slaves, doomed to be chattels for life, and upon the millions of penniless freemen in the large cities of the Empire, leading a hand-tomouth existence on the grain distributed by the State, which corresponded in some measure to the present-day relief and dole. Both Mithraism and early Christianity possessed an essentially democratic aspect, with direct relationship between man and God, untrammeled by a hierarchy. But Mithraism was essentially a religion of struggle and conflict, a military and militant faith that made its appeal to the warlike; Christianity, with its doctrine of peace and suffering, of humility, submission, and non-resistance to evil, was bound to seize a firmer hold on the millions of hopeless ones who had long since abandoned all ideas of struggle and active revolt. To the slaves and the destitute the passive revolt of Christianity made a far more deep-rooted appeal than did the energetic, dynamic theories of Mithraism; while traditional paganism, with its glorification of the passing moment and the joys of life, could continue its appeal only to those classes that were economically able to seize the day and enjoy the fleeting instant of life; and even from the midst of those favored sections of the population recruits began to flock to Christianity,

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urged on by wonderment as to the hereafter, which their less fortunate brethren held assured, by amazement at and unwilling admiration ior the boundless courage with which the new converts, fortified by their newfdund faith in what lay beyond the grave, faced torments, persecution, and death itself. § 27. Between the second and the fourth century the Roman Empire was never in a state of active religious revolt, but it became more and more riddled with subversive cells, which undermined the structure of the Empire, not by refusing to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but by insisting upon rendering unto God the things that are God's. Against this spirit of passive resistance, this new-born hope, this assurance of eternal bliss of the new Christian masses, the mighty structure of the Empire was powerless to defend itself. Of what avail to persecute these radicals, to put them to death, when they themselves welcomed both persecution and death as opening the way to a better life? The legions of Rhaetia, which accepted decimation rather than to spill the blood of fellow human beings, are typical of this new attitude. Christian subversivism accomplished its work of destruction, an d although the Roman Empire in the person of Constantine accepted its tenets, it was foredoomed to perish, as an outworn institution whose roots lay in materialistic paganism, and to be supplanted by a new spiritual Empire whose bounds were to extend far beyond the physical frontiers of Rome. § 28. What were the effects of these vast political, social, and psychological changes upon the language of the Empire? Christianity infused hope, optimism, enthusiasm, dignity into the speech of the lower classes. Their joy at their new-found spiritual freedom sought and obtained vocal expression. But this vocal expression had perforce to result in an increase of their natural tendencies toward stress and emphasis. Their language broke the bounds of classical restraint, discarded forever the pitch accent associated with the pagan upper classes, overthrew the barriers of classical literature, and marched on to a new freedom. There appeared the earliest Latin translations of the Bible (Itala, Vetus Latino), written by anonymous proletarians for the proletarian masses. In the second and third centuries the new type

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of stress accentuation, welling up from the lower strata of society, seeped into the cultured, official tongue of the patricians. More or less unconsciously the latter, associated in the secret rites of the Catacombs with their less favored brethren, from whom they absorbed spiritual faith, tended to absorb also the linguistic habits of the slaves and the destitute. I n the fourth century secret propaganda ceased, and mass conversions became the rule. When St. Jerome p u t the Bible into Vulgar Latin for the edification of the masses; when St. Augustine devised rhyme to catch the ear of the church-going populace, and a rhythm such as that of the Contra partem Donati, in which stress predominates; when St. Ambrose composed poetry of the type Rector potens verax Deus, in which apparent respect for the rules of classical prosody is ingeniously combined with the new rules of Vulgar stress, it may be said t h a t the subjugation of the upper classes by the lower was complete and that the triumph of Vulgar tendencies was absolute. § 29. I n its written form, the language showed little change. Ciceronian periods and Virgilian verse were, of course, no longer to be expected, considering the breakdown of the more or less artificial features of classical culture. The written tongue remained substantially the same, however, in its predominant phonetic and morphological characteristics. I t was only in one paramount aspect that the language had materially changed, and that aspect was of such a nature t h a t it could not be revealed save by the use of modern phonetic symbols, which the fourth century writers did not have a t their disposal. A word of the type of dmo, with a short, accented a, raised in pitch, and a long, unaccented o, lowered in pitch, had become amd, with an a which was violently stressed and therefore prolonged, an o which was unstressed and therefore shortened and dulled. The classical system of quantities, of long and short vowels independent of the accent, had given way to the new Vulgar rule of related accentuation and quantity; all accented vowels were ipso facto long; all unaccented vowels were ipso facto short, with a tendency to become indistinct. § 30. T h e implications of this innovation, which by the very nature of the circumstances could not a t first appear in writing, soon made themselves manifest. There were minor changes, which were probably connected with the stress-accent, although the relationship has not been definitely proved (fall of n before s: mcse for mense; fall of final -m: mccu

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for mecum; prothesis of i before impure s: iscola for schola; merging of ae with e and of au with 6: celum for caelum, oricla for auricula; passage of v from a semivowel w-sound to the modern sound of a labio-dental spirant v, often indicated in orthography by b: biginti for viginti). But in addition we begin to encounter a multitude of phenomena which cannot be reasonably attributed to anything but the stress accent: syncopation of unstressed vowels (veclus for vetulus, oclus for oculus)\ the merging of certain stressed vowels (o and u, e and i, indicated by such spellings as colotnna for columna, verum for vlrum); the merging of final vowels of similar quality (murum for muro and viceversa; the interchange of pedem, pedi, pede), the transition of e and i in hiatus 10 from pure vowels to a semivowel i, with attendant palatalization of the preceding consonant (vinia for vinea, aleum for alium); signs of palatalization of c before front vowels (interchange of -tio and -cio); occasional sonorization of intervocalic surd consonants (pagare for pacare; spada for spatha). § 31. These phenomena continued, at an increasing rate, from the fifth to the eighth century. I t is difficult to localize them in time, and, considering their nature and the fact that innovations in speech often extend over a protracted period, a traditional and a new pronunciation sometimes coexisting for centuries, it is doubtful whether most of them will ever be definitely localized. At any rate, we must reject as unscientific the view that the first appearance in writing of a given innovation marks its universal triumph in speech. I t must be stressed that within this period the changes referred to were not peculiar to one section of Romania, but appeared universally and in substantially the same measure in all the future Romance countries. It is also to be noted that in the inscriptions and written documents of this period we frequently find in one country forms and words that were later to-become distinctive of other sections. Lastly, during this entire four-century period no reference is ever made, in the copious documents of all sorts which have survived to the present day, to linguistic differentiations or difficulties. The conclusion appears reasonable that between the fifth century and the eighth century the Romance countries-to-be, though no longer forming part of a physical Empire, 10 A vowel is said to be in hiatus when it immediately precedes another vowel but does not form a diphthong with it; e. g., Lat. vi\ne\a; It. mi\o; Eng. o\a\sis, as against Lat. ia\ce\re; It. mie\le; Eng. oar.

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continued to possess a definite linguistic unity in which local differences, if they did arise, were vague enough to pass unnoticed. I t is more than possible that the purely physical factor of the breakdown of the political Empire has been overstressed in connection with linguistic development; and that the powerful unifying factor of the spiritual Empire of Christianity, with its boundless missionary activity, its constant movement of individuals and interchange of ideas, its desire to approach and propagandize the masses in their own tongue (which everywhere appears to be the Vulgar Latin of the period's documents), and, conversely, its powerful restraining and conservative influence upon the language of the masses (which nowhere escape contact with the Church and its emissaries) have been correspondingly underemphasized. § 32. The most prominent characteristics of what appears, to have been the common Vulgar Latin of Romania between the fifth century and the eighth century (a common Vulgar Latin which by its very nature was constantly shifting and advancing toward a proto-Romance form) are the following: In the accented vowels the classical Latin pattern of five long and five short vowels changed, under the impact of the stress accent, into the Vulgar Latin pattern of seven vowel sounds, all long. There was no trace as yet of the diphthongization which took place later, under the continued impact of the stress accent, in most Romance languages, but to a different degree and under different conditions. This Vulgar Latin pattern may briefly be described as follows: Classical Latin Vulgar & \ / a e > é \ t // i > é > 6 / ù / é >

Latin a

| „ 1 q .. 0 ' à

Examples mire > mare; pdrte > parte cam > caro; quartu > quarto péde > p§de; tèrra > t'erra véru > vero; véndo > vendo ftde > fede; pisce > pesce vita > vita; villa > villa bénu > bgno; pòrta > p§rta fière > flore; mSnstrat > mostrai . è » gula > gola; turre > torre léna > léna; jéstu > jésto

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HISTORY

25

In classical Latin no qualitative difference existed between & and a; their merger, therefore, consisted simply of the prolongation of & under the stress accent. In classical Latin 6 was not only short but also open (Eng. met); its prolongation under stress led to no change in quality. E was not only long but also closed (It. deve); I was short and open (Eng. it); i was long and closed (Eng. machine); the prolongation of the i-sound (it) led naturally to merger with e rather than with i. Short 6 was open (It. rgsa); long o was closed (It..J^re); short u was open (Eng. pull); the prolongation of the latter led naturally to merger with closed o rather than with u, (Eng .food). § 33. In the unstressed vowels there was frequent syncopation due to decrease of energy, which was used up by the stress accent in its concentration upon the accented vowel (calidu > caldo; oculu > oclo). § 34. In final vowels there was shortening of longs and a general merging of o and M-sounds on the one hand, of e and ¿-sounds on the other, due to decrease of energy in the unstressed parts of the word caused by the excesses of the stress accent in the accented syllable. This characteristic, coupled with loss of final -m and in certain sections (notably Italy and Dacia at a period not yet definitely determined) of final -5 led to a general merging of case endings: mdru(s) m&ro m4rii(m) § 35. In the consonants were widespread phenomena of sonorization, palatalization, and the emergence of i from e and i in hiatus: (pacare > pagare; spatha > spada; faba > Java; caelu > tselo or celo; habeo > av{o). § 36. In morphology the merging of classical Latin case endings brought with it for the sake of clarity an increase in the use of prepositions {ad homine for classical hominl; cum spatha for classical spatha). Innovations in the morphology of the verb were also prevalent, while demonstrative pronouns, used out of all measure because of the Vulgar tendency to stress and emphasize, slowly lost their original force and changed their function to approximate that of the modern article; whereupon new emphatic compounds were created to carry the demonstrative meaning.

26

LANGUAGE

AND

HISTORY

§ 37. In syntax a general simplification of the classical literary sentence to bring it more in line with the habits of the spoken tongue was in evidence. § 38. In the vocabulary many classical words were replaced by terms that had previously been looked upon as colloquialisms or vulgarisms (icaballus for equus; testa for caput)-, while at the same time numerous words were borrowed from the Germanic invaders, some classical words were recombined to form new expressions, and many others underwent transformation of meaning. § 39. The eighth century appears to have been a crucial period in the development of the common tongue, which had been progressing gradually and slowly for centuries, held back by the restraining hand of the Church. In one section of Romania, West Francia (corresponding roughly to modern northern France), the existing political powers, Pepin the Short and Charlemagne, did violence to the language by ordaining that first the written tongue of court and legal documents and then the spoken language employed in Church sermons be corrected and freed from their more popular aspects. The results of this linguistic reform, which in practice extended to West Francia, but not to Spain or to Italy, were far-reaching. In the course of less than a century the spoken Vulgar Latin of northern France, deprived of the conservative influence of both the written and the religious tongues, degenerated at a far swifter rate than did the kindred tongues of Italy and Spain. In 813 Charlemagne, perturbed by the linguistic havoc that had been wrought and the dissatisfaction of the masses, who saw themselves deprived of the spiritual consolation of Church sermons that were preached in a tongue which they had difficulty in understanding, ordered a return to the spoken tongue, the lingua romana rustica, which was henceforth placed on a different plane from the lingua latina. Three decades later a sample of the new lingua romana rustica appeared in the Oaths of Strasbourg. Between the beginning of the reform movement, in 750, and the Oaths, in 842, the Vulgar Latin of West Francia had gone through a swift transformation that not only placed it on a distinctive plane but also caused

LANGUAGE

AND

HISTORY

27

it to be much further removed from the original Latin, at least in the matter of phonology, than Italian or Spanish are today. § 40. The other western Romance countries proceeded in the slow, even tenor of their linguistic evolution, which did not bear full fruit until the middle of the tenth century. The continuity of the former Empire, however, already territorially broken by the Moorish invasion of Spain, was now spiritually and linguistically disrupted by the French innovations, as well as by a multitude of other social, economic, and political factors, and divergences between the spoken tongue of Italy and that of the Spanish peninsula, while originally slight, became more and more pronounced. § 41. In contrast with the clear differentiation between the Latin and the Romance tongues established in France by Charlemagne's edict of 813 and despite the first definite signs of the emergence of a new language in the documents of Monte Cassino, Italy continued to disavow a true differentiation between its new and its ancestral tongues for centuries. Dante's definition of the Volgare as "ungrammatical" Latin, in the year 1305, marked the traditional and medieval point of view; but it also opened the way to a new consciousness, achieved by France centuries earlier, that the period of transition was definitely over and that humanity must face the fact that Latin, both in its classical and its Vulgar forms, had definitely ceased to be the vernacular of the masses.

II:

PHONOLOGY

ACCENTED VOWELS AND

DIPHTHONGS

Accent ; Position ; Diphthongization of Stressed Vowels § 42. From the facts just discussed and in view of the capital role played by the stress accent in Romance linguistic change it is selfevident that the position of the accent upon a given syllable of the word must remain unchanged in the overwhelming majority of cases. The sporadic exceptions are generally due to some definite disturbing factor: An accented e or i in hiatus (that is, before another vowel) normally shifts its accent to the following vowel and is itself transformed into a semivowel i (jiliolu > *filiôlu > figliuolo) ; less frequently it disappears after shifting the accent to the following vowel (pariete > *pariéte > par été). An accented u in hiatus normally shifts its accent to the preceding vowel and itself disappears (battûere > *bâttuere > batter e). The desire to avoid hiatus, which is at variance with stressed pronunciation, is evident in these phenomena. In verbs compounded with a prefix the accentuation and vowel of the original uncompounded verb are occasionally restored (re + tenet > rêtinet > *reténet > ritienè). Here it is the analogical influence of the uncompounded verb that is at work. The shift of stress that appears in the transition from the Latin demonstrative pronoun to the Italian article (ilia > *illâ > la) is evidently due to proclitic use. I n some numerals an unexplained shift is indicated (quadraginta > *quadrâginta > quaranta).1 Other cases of shift are more apparent than real: for example, the more usual classical form fuérunt has a doublet fûërunt, occasionally attested, which gives rise to It. furono and Fr. furent, while Sp. fueron goes back to the more customary classical form. 1

Vendryes, Intensité initiale, p. 102, ascribes this phenomenon to the conservation of an older Indo-European accent as shown in Greek ttnoai, rpiânopra, etc.

PHONOLOGY

29

§ 43. An oxytonic word is one accented on the last syllable. In accordance with classical laws of accentuation oxytones in Latin could normally be only monosyllabic words (rés, sài); forms like istic, illéc, are due to the fall of an originally final e. In Italian, oxytones may arise from apocopation or haplogy {virtù, città, from earlier virtute, cittade). A paroxytone is a word accented on the penult (Lat. maritus; It. marito). A proparoxytone is a word accented on the third syllable from the end (Lat. fàbula, It. favola). § 44. The accented vowel may be in the "free" or in the "checked" position. It is free if it comes at the end of the syllable; that is, if it is followed by a single consonant which goes with the following vowel (ca\ru) or by a mute (p, b, c, g, t, or d) followed by a liquid (I or r: pa\tre). It is checked if followed by a double consonant (cabal\lu) or by any consonant group of which / or r is not the second element (tem\pus, sep\tem). The free position permits the accented vowel to develop more fully under the stress accent; the checked position normally tends to hamper its development. § 45. The stress accent, which in the Vulgar Latin period led to the lengthening of all stressed vowels, free and checked, continued to operate in the early Romance period, but with different intensity and under different conditions in the various countries. The intensification of the stress accent, bearing upon an already lengthened vowel, leads to a "breaking" of the latter into a diphthong. This process of diphthongization was effective in different measure in the various regions of Romania. Its earliest recorded appearance as a regular phenomenon is toward the end of the ninth century in France (previous occurrences are sporadic and considerable doubt attaches to them). Diphthongs from stressed vowels appear in the earliest document of Spanish (lueco < iScu; uemne < hSm(i)ne; buena mientre < bòna ménte—Glosses of San Millan, ca. 950). It is of interest to note that they do not appear in the earliest Italian documents (contene—Monte Cassino, 960). Among the literary languages diphthongization goes furthest in French (CI. Lat. S, t > ci, oi vs. Sp. and It. e; CI. Lat. 6, u > on, cu vs. Sp.

30

PHONOLOGY

and It. o). In Spanish and Italian normally only the original t and S break into diphthongs (e > Vul. Lat. f > It., Sp., and Fr. ie; S > Vul. Lat. g > It. uo, Sp. ue, Old Fr. uo, ue, Mod. Fr. eu). Diphthongization of e and S takes place in literary Italian only if these vowels are free; if they are checked, there is no diphthong, but only the open vowel (compare It. t$rra, sqnte, fgrte with Sp. tierra, siente, fuerte). Some Italian dialects, however, in which the strongly conservative tendencies of the standard language are not operative, indicate diphthongization even in the checked position (Mod. Umbrian tierra; N e a p o l i t a n siendd, f.uortd; A p u l i a n

fuerts).

The conservatism of the Italian literary language is typified by the following facts: (a) only two of the stressed vowels diphthongize; (b) such diphthongization occurs only in the free position; (c) it does not always take place even in the free position. § 46. These facts, coupled with other conservative traits of literary Italian (resistance to sonorization of intervocalic surd consonants, retention of double consonants, retention of final vowels, and so forth), definitely indicate that popular tendencies slowed up and that a cultured, linguistically conservative class arose in Italy earlier than elsewhere. While Spanish and French, notably the latter, evolve phonologically far beyond the Vulgar Latin stage, Italian phonology shows no such marked advance. Considering that there is no definite evidence of such deeprooted phonetic differences in the Romance world prior to the ninth century, the conclusion appears reasonable that from that century conservative forces to some extent regained control over the language in Italy. This would appear to be in accordance with the historical situation, which indicates a somewhat larger degree of political and cultural stabilization in Italy as against the more unstable condition of France, beset by Norman raids and feudal wars, and of Spain, ravaged by the struggles between Moors and Christians; a greater measure of urban life, as against the widespread ruralization of France; and a longer continuance of the Latin and the Roman tradition, which was quite natural, considering that Italy was the home soil of that tradition and the seat of the conservative papal power. This comparative stability and predominance of conservative forces may well, however, be responsible for the lack of growth in Italy of a

PHONOLOGY

31

vernacular and popular literature comparable to that of France in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. 2 That this conservative force was not uniformly distributed, either territorially or socially, but rather was restricted to certain sections (notably the central part of the country) and to certain social classes (urban as opposed to rural dwellers; aristocrats and clerics as opposed to proletarians) is indicated b y the abundance and variety of the Italian dialects and by the revolutionary features displayed by some of them.

Free Accented Vowels § 47. The evolution of stressed vowels in the free position is the following: CI. Lat.

a > It. a: mi\re

CI. Lat. e > pé\tra >

pietra;

> mare, pd\tre > padre; cd\ru >

It. ie, g:3 pt\de

>

but be\ne >

piede, fé\ru

b$ne, me\lius

>

caro.

> fiero, té\net >

tiene,

maglio, lè\git >

legge,

fi\bre > febbre, ge\neru > genero, le\pore > hpre, e\rat > %ra. CI. Lat. é, Ì >

It. e: mé >

f$de, pt\lu > p$lo, pi\ra CI. Lat. i > It. i: fi\lu

>

me, dé\bet > dfve, vé\ru > vero; ft\de

>

p$ra. > filo, m\ta > vita, fi\lia

> figlia, parti\re

>

partire. 'CI. Lat. Ò > It. uo, q : 3 nÒ\vu > nuovo, rÒ\ta > ruota, mS\vet > fS\cu > fuoco; but nS\vem > ngve, ré\sa >

rgsa, fS\lia

> fgglia,

muove, pS\pulu

> pQpolo, S\pera > gpera, gpra, gvra. CI. Lat. è, u > It. o: hé\ra > ora, fi6\re > fiore, só\lu > solo, v6\tu > voto; gé\la > gola, cru\ce > croce, su\pra > CI. Lat. u > lé\na > 2

It. u: du\ru

>

sopra and sovra, u\bi > ove.

duro, mu\ru

>

muro, mé\la

>

mula,

luna.

In this connection see L. Russo, "Le origini della civiltà e della lingua italiana," in Remano., II (3-4,1938), 143-165; and A. Monteverdi, "L'Italia e la cultura medievale," in Romana, II (9-10, 1938), 395-404. 1 The distinction between the two developments of I and 6 is variously described as "popular" and "learned" or as "normal" and "exceptional." The first distinction appears in part artificial, when we consider the "popular" character of a good many of the words that have g and g instead of ie and uo. The second distinction, based on proclitic use (bene, nove; but note Fr. and Sp. bien, Fr. nuej, neuf, Sp. nueve) ; influx of special consonant groups (meglio and foglia) ; or proparoxytonic position (genero and popolo), leaves other words (era, febbre, rosa, etc.) out of consideration. It would appear that the two classes of words represent rather two different outcomes, one more definitely popular, the other more conservative, but not "learned" in the sense in which the word is commonly used by linguists.

32

PHONOLOGY

Checked Accented Vowels § 48. The stressed vowels in the checked position evolve as follows: CI. Lat. d, a > It. a: p&r\te > parte, &r\bore > albero, cAr\ru > carro; ár\det > arde, quar\tu > quarto. CI. Lat. é > It. g:4 tér\ra > tgrra, sén\tit > sprite, f¿r\ru > faro, sép\tem > s$tte, tem\pus > tqmpo, vSn\tu > Dgwfo. CI. Lat. S, t > It. e:6 vén\do > vendo, téc\tu > tetto; vtr(i)\de pts\ce

>

Vfrde,

>

CI. Lat. í > It. i:6 scrip\tu > scritto, vtl\la > w//a,

> woto,

> wi/Ze.

CI. Lat. S > It. £>:¡7 cSr\pus > cgrpo, pSr\ta > pgrta, cSr\nu > cgrno, cSl\lu > cg//o, > mgrte, dSm(i)\na > dgnna, CI. Lat. 6,ü> It. o: > conosco, prémp\tu > pronto, m6ns\trat > mostra; tür\re > torre, wr¡íM > orío,

> sordo.

Cl. Lat. ú > It. u: strúc\tu > strutto, frúc\tu > frutto, jús\tu > giusto. § 49. The following important exceptions are to be noted: Before n or I combined with a guttural, palatal, or i there is a tendency, far from universal, for t to become i instead of ?, for á to become u instead of o, and, very exceptionally, for S to become u instead of Q: vtncit > vince, lingua > lingua, tinea > *tin{a > tigna, familia > * familia > famiglia; füngu > fungo, úngula > *ung'la > unghia and ugna, pugnu > pugno; lóngu > lungo. In hiatus, é tends to become u or, exceptionally, uo, instead of o; ¿ to become i instead of ie; and Í to become i instead of e: fái > fui, cài > cui, duae > due, tuu > tuo; tui > tuoi, sèi > suoi; mSu > mio, Diu > Dio, égo > eo > io; vía > via, sit > *siat > sia. . 4 Diphthongization is completely checked by position in literary Italian, but in many dialects, particularly of the south and center, this does not occur (tiempo, tierra, cuorpo,/norie, etc.). •The hidden quantity of classical Latin vowels, which is not revealed by Latin prosody (a syllable ending in a consonant is long, whether the vowel is long or short), is clearly brought out by Italian development: vfnde vs. sente, tetto vs. letto. This indicates: (a) that classical Latin vowel quantity, independent of syllabic quantity, was a common possession of Latin speakers, not merely an artificial device of Latin poets; (b) that classical and even Indo-European linguistics may on occasion be aided and clarified by Romance development. ® Again the contrast between It. dftto and scritto informs us that dictu had a short i, scriplu a long one. 7 See footnote 4.

PHONOLOGY

33

In a few cases proparoxytonic position or a following double consonant or consonant group appear to favor the passage of é and t to g instead of e, and of .S and à to q instead of o: mtnimu > menomo, tunica > tgnaca, n&meru > ngvero (but cébitu > gomito, fulgure > folgore, and so forth) ; cuppa > cqppa, fenuculu > fingcchio, genuculu > ginocchio; cantstru > canestro (note t > i in sintstru > sinistro, possibly a learned variant of the archaic sinestro). Final 6 tends to become q instead of o: nSn > nq, stS > stq, dò > dq. Before the group -nt-, & tends to become o instead of q. In some cases this may be due to confusion caused by original differences in quantity between nominative and oblique forms (mons, but mdntis, mónti, móntem, mónte): ménte > monte, pónte > ponte, fónte > fonte, cÓm(i)te > conte. Several exceptions appear for which the explanation is missing or doubtful: dito < dtgitu (influence of dico?)-, bue < béve, uovo < óvu; lupo < lupu (a popular or dialectal *lupus side by side with classical lépus may account for this form; cf. Fr. loup, leu, Sp. lobo, and the rare archaic It. low); fulmine < félmine, instead of *folmine, or *folme < fulmen (the assertion that the latter word, as well as lupo, is of learned origin is unsatisfactory; Ascoli suggests *fulgmen > *fulmen, side by side with fùlmen); tutto < tStu (the form tutti, appearing in a French eighth-century document, indicates that side by side with totus there existed a Vulgar form *tùttus, *tuttus). Nqno, dqte, glqria, nqme < nónu, dòte, glòria, nòmen, and dubbio, subito, curvo, numero < dubiu, subitu, cérvu, numeru are somewhat doubtfully accounted for as learned (note Tuscan nome < nòmen, which displays normal phonological development in contrast with the more widespread nqme). S$ < si is probably due to a Vulgar shortening to si, caused by proclitic use, which appears even in classical si quidem and quasi. < néc is also probably due to proclitic use, and -m$nt- < -mint- (in morite, facilmente, monumento, and so forth) is unaccounted for, save pbssibly by confusion between nominative mens and oblique méntis, ménti, méntem, ménte. Accented Diphthongs § 50. CI. Lat. at > It. ie (if free); g (if checked): caé\lu > cielo, caé\cu > cieco, quaé\rere > chiedere; praés\tat > presta, maés\tu > m$sto. CI. Lat. oé > It. poéna > p$na.

34

PHONOLOGY

CI. L a t . au > I t . Q: ailru > gro, aiidit > gde, cailsa > cgsa, fraude frgde, claustru > chigstro.

>

CI. Lat. eu does not survive, save in learned words (Europe) and in a few other doubtful cases. § 51. As seen from the foregoing table, derivation supplies a fairly general basis for differentiation between the open and the closed sounds of It. e and o in the accented syllable. It. $ regularly goes back to Lat. i, -ai; It. g to Lat. S, au; on the other hand, It. ? goes back to Lat. ¿, t, oe, and It. o to Lat. 6, A. This means that if we are in doubt concerning the pronunciation of an Italian e or o, but know the Latin derivation, we can generally achieve the correct pronunciation by applying our phonological "law" in reverse. U N A C C E N T E D VOWELS AND D I P H T H O N G S § 52. When such vowels and diphthongs are not completely discarded, considerable hesitation and merging take place, indicative of the weakening of all unstressed vocalic sounds caused by the concentration of energy upon the stressed vowel. Generally speaking, e, e, f, i, ae, and oe tend to" merge and to be represented, more or less indifferently, by either $ or i. Also, 6, o, u, u, and au tend to merge and to be represented by either o or u. The clear, open sounds of g, g never appear in the unstressed syllables, save dialectally. Vowels of the Final Syllable § 53. With few and sporadic exceptions the vowels that were final in classical Latin or that became final by reason of the loss of a final consonant remain in Italian, though undergoing modifications such as those discussed in the preceding paragraph. CI. L a t . &, a > I t . a: cant&t > canta, the fusion of corond (nom.), corond(m) (acc.), a n d corona (abl.) > corona, triginta > trenta. CI. L a t . S, e, 1, ae > I t . g: lumSn > lumq, placet > piacf, septum, > sett$, benS > ben$; pure > pure; currit > corr$, ubl > ovf, amatis > amatq; lunae > lunq (in lunae die > lunedi), Florentiae (locative) > FirenZf. CI. L a t . i > I t . i: canta(vi)sti > cantasti, veni > (locative) > Rimini, viginti > venti.

venni,

Arimini

35

PHONOLOGY CI. L a t . 6, o, u,u

> I t . o: plangdr > *plango > piango, de retro (with

long or short quantity in final -o) > dietro; amo > amo, odd > otto; tempùs > tempo, corpiis > corpp; cornù > corno, t h e fusion of

( n o m ) , f r u c t u ( m ) (acc.), and fructù (abl.) >

jriictù(s)

frutto.

§ 54. The fall of the Italian final vowels e, o (seldom a, i), and occasionally of the entire final syllable in words used in phonetic groups is due to a use which is really intertonic (that is, in an unstressed syllable between two stressed ones) rather than final; this phenomenon, however, sometimes affects the form even when independently used : potest > *potet > puote > può, b y use in such g r o u p s as puote fare,

puot'fare,

può fare; frate Marco > fra M'arco; grande cosa > gran cosa; bello tempo > bel tempo; buono giorno > buon giorno; fare venire > far venire. T h i s

phenomenon explains the apocopated variants of bello, quello, buono, grande, signore, and so forth, and is more fully described under Syncopation (sec. 60). An entire series of words and forms in which i appears instead of e gives rise to the supposition that i may also be a normal outcome of CI. Lat. e, è, I in the final syllable; attempts to explain such forms by analogy, assimilation, and so forth are not altogether convincing. A few such forms are: dieci (for an older diece < decern; by analogy with venti ?); undid,

dodici, tredici,

a n d so f o r t h < undecim,

duodedm,

tredecim

(as-

similation by the preceding i and analogy of dieci are asserted) ; amassi < ama(vi)ssém

(influence of dissi

< dixi

archaic L a t i n heri ?); oggi < hodie; lungi

?); ieri < heri (or f r o m a n < longé; avanti

< ab antè;

and so forth. For the controversy concerning the outcome of final -as and -es see sees. 92, 104, 130. Vowels of the Initial Syllable § 55. With few exceptions (see Apheresis, sec. 62) these vowels remain in Italian, though they have undèrgone some modification. The reason for this survival appears to be the initial stress of pre-classical Latin (see sec. 23), which, though shifted in the classical period, seenjis to have left a definite clearness of enunciation-in the initial syllable. Position (free or checked) exerts no influence upon the survival or modification of these vowels.

36

PHONOLOGY

CI. Lat. à, à > It. a: Amore > amore, màritu > marito, hàbere > avere; màjale > maiale, narrare > narrare, pastore > pastore, pacare > pagare. CI. Lat. è, e, ì, ae, oe > It. i, f.'8 mèliore > migliore, nipote > nipote, séniore > signore; sècuru > sicuro, remittere > rimettere';'minore > minore; coemeteriu > cimitero. CI. Lat. « > It. i: finire > finire, civitate > città, *filare > filare. CI. Lat. d, d, ù > It. p, m:9 còrona > corona, sònare > sonare,10 c condurre, dóctore > dottore; donare > donare, colare > colare; sitò inde > sovente, ruina > rovina, sitòtrahere > sottrarre. CI. Lat. « > It. « (occasionally p) : lucente > lucente, frùmentu > frumento (but Old It. fromento), rumore > rumore (but Old It. romore), unire > unire, nutrire > nudrire and nutrire. CI. Lat. a« > It. m.-11 audire > «¿¿re, avicellu > *aucellu > uccello. § 56. The following exceptions should be noted: By the assimilative influence of a preceding or following labial consonant è, è, ì, i, ae are sometimes changed to the labial o, u: demandai > domanda, debere > dovere, in divinare > indovinare, officina > fucina, de mane > domani, aequale > uguale; note also Tuscan dementare for diventare. Disappearance of the vowel of the initial syllable occurs sporadically (see Syncopation, sees. 58-59) : directu > dritto, quìritare > gridare, sicure > scure, séxtariu > staio. 8 While i appears to be the more normal development, there are many ( developments, some of which may be caused by analogy, others, seemingly, by the influence of a following r, while dialectal influence is claimed for others: vUnire > vfnire, Mere > vedere, vigilare > vegliare, cìrcare > cercare (by analogy with vlnio > vengo, Meo > vedo, and so forth); pérfeclu > perfetto, périculu > periglio (influx of r ?); inimicu > nemico (dissimilation ?); aetate > ftà, lìgumen > legume, vlnenu > veleno. Note also the double development in cadeste > cilestre, celeste, and in caesellu > cisello, cesello. 8 The more normal development appears to be t; the u outcome occurs more frequently, it seems, when i appears in the next syllable: bStellu > budello, còchleariu > cucchiaio, cóquina > cucina, miSlinu > mulino, ÌSlivu > ulivo (but also QUVO), riigire > ruggire. 10 Suonare, giuocare, and so forth, side by side with striare, gifcare, are due to analogy with forms in which the i is stressed: joco > giuoco, sino > suono. 11 CI. Lat. au > a if there is a stressed u in the following syllable (dissimilation) : augustu > agosto, auscultai > ascolta. CI. Lat. au > p in infinitive forms, by analogy with forms in which the au is stressed: audere > *ausare > gsare, laudare > Igdare, gaudere > gfdere. Note also auricula > precchia.

PHONOLOGY

37

Other Vowels; Syncopation; Haplogy § 57. If we assume the ideal scheme - - - - - for the syllables of a classical Latin word we find that it is customary for the vowels of the second and fourth syllables to drop out: - (-) - (-) -. This is a natural consequence of Vulgar Latin stress accentuation, which tends to concentrate vocal energy upon the stressed vowel to the detriment of other parts of the word, particularly of the vowels of the adjoining syllables. In four- and three-syllable words, which are far more numerous, a similar development appears: - - - - > - - ( - ) - ; >-(-)--;---> - (-) but - - > - -. In other words, while the stressed, initial, and final vowels tend to remain, pre-tonic non-initial and post-tonic non-final vowels are normally syncopated. The reason for the survival of the initial vowel has already been offered (see sees. 22, 55). The survival of the final vowel may perhaps be connected with a desire on the part of the more cultured element of the population to preserve distinctions of gender and number. Note, however, that in France and parts of northern Italy, where the cultured element was seemingly weaker, all final vowels save a have been dropped and that in many southern Italian dialects, where heavy stress leads to a drawled pronunciation of the stressed vowel, the final vowels have largely merged into an indistinct sound (Neapolitan b§lfo, representing indifferently bello, bella, belli, belle). If the stress accent process were to continue, Neapolitan would eventually achieve a form b§l, similar to some of the Old French or Piedmontese forms. § 58. Cases of syncopation in the initial and final syllables occur sporadically in Italian. In the case of the final syllable usually the entire syllable is lost. The phenomenon is then called haplogy (loss of a syllable), generally due to repetition of the same syllable in the next word, as in cittade de Roma > città di Roma, or apocopation (loss either of the final vowel or of the final syllable). § 59. Syncopation may then be defined as the loss of an unstressed vowel, brought about by heavy stress accent on the accented syllable. It is definitely a popular phenomenon and goes much further in French and Spanish than it does in Italian, where cultured and urban influences in pre-Romance times appear to have been fairly strong. The phe-

38

PHONOLOGY

nomenon is to be observed sporadically even in the pre-classical (*retetuli > rettuli; *quinque-decem > quindecim; nominative *mortis > mors) and classical (calidus-caldus; surrigo-surgo) periods, as well as in the ancient Italic dialects (Umbrian poplu, Oscan hurz for Latin populum and hortus, respectively. I t underwent vast extension in the Vulgar Latin period (dominus > domnus; vetulus > veclus; posita > posta), but met strong resistance in Italy thereafter. Examples of syncopation are: - - (-) - - *cum-initiare > cominciare, facili mente > facilmente (-) -(-)-*cum-rotulare > crollare - - (-) - (-) humilitate > umiltà - (-) (-) - - *de-excitare > destare - (-) ' (-) cintate > città, bonitate > bontà (-) quiritare > gridare --(-)maritima > maremma -(-)-matutinu > mattino, cerebellu > cervello - (-) viride > verde, comite > conte, oculu > occhio, erigit > erge, alteru > altro, positu > posto, porrigo > porgo § 60. The loss of an entire syllable or of several sounds is comparatively rare in Italian and is generally caused by proclitic use : seniore > signore, signor, sor; *ma domina > madonna, monna; frater > frate, fra. Haplogy in the final syllable (civitate > città) has been attributed to the dissimilative force of such uses as cittate (or cittade) de Roma and bontate (bontade) de Deo, in which the desire to avoid repetition of the same or a similar syllable leads to the dropping of the first. § 61. The following are to be noted: Strong resistance to syncopation appears in many words which cannot properly be described as learned: ultimu > ultimo, sedecim > sedici, arbore > albero, cubitu > gomito, robure > rovere, homines > uomini, tabula > tavola, pecora > pecora, facile > facile, soceru > suocero, juvene > giovane and giovine. I t will be observed, however, that the unsyncopated vowel usually undergoes some change which is indicative of weakening (U > o is quite common). Frequently the clash between popular and learned tendencies gives rise to double forms (see sec. 170), one of which remains fairly close to the Latin original: rapidu > rapido

PHONOLOGY

39

and ratio; nitidu > nitido and netto; frigidu > frigido and freddo. An example of triple development, showing various proportions of "popular" and "learned" influence, is fabula > favola, fiaba (through *fab'la, *flaba) and fola (through *favula, *faula). Sometimes the learned word survives to the detriment of the popular one (capitanu > capitano and cattano > modern capitano). In the future and conditional forms of verbs, compounded of the infinitive + kabeo, habui (see sees. 139, 140), syncopation is common: ponere habeo > *poneraio, *pon'rao, *pon'rò, porrò. But restoration (or retention) of vowels by analogy with other forms frequently occurs: currere habeo > correrò, as well as corrò. In the first conjugation it is to be noted that this restored or retained vowel is e where we should expect a: amare habeo > *amaraio > *amarò > amerò. Inasmuch as the same phenomenon is to be observed in other words where r follows (comparare > comprare and comperare, separare > scemare and sceverare, smaragdu > smeraldo, margarita > margherita), a general rule that pre tonic a tends to become e before r has been suggested. Before other consonants the change seems to be in the direction of i (collocare > colcare, corcare and coricare, oboedire > ubbidire, blasphemare > biasmare and biasimare). Other Vocalic Phenomena APHERESIS

§ 62. This phenomenon may be described as the fall of a vowel, or of a vowel preceded by h, at the beginning of a word. This is due in part to elision with the article or with the final vowel of the preceding word, but is more fundamentally another aspect of the effect of stress accent, which, while strengthening and developing the accented vowel, tends to weaken all other sounds in the word. Apheresis by reason of elision with the preceding article seems to have taken place by the following process : ilia *abbatia > illd 'badia > la badia. I t is of interest to note the apheresis in the article itself, following a transposition of accent. All vowels appear to be subject to this phenomenon, which, while fairly frequent, is by no means universal: alauda, *alaudula > lodola (but also allodola), apotheka > bottega, *acucula > guglia; ecclesia > chiesa, eleemosyne > limosina

40

PHONOLOGY

(but also elemosina), episcopu > vescovo, examen > sciame, eremita > romito; inimicu > nemico, kirundine > rondine, historia > storia, ista node > stanotte; occasione > cagione, obscuro > scuro (but also oscuro), hospitale > spedale (but also ospedale); *upupula > bubbola; aeramen > rame; auscultate > scoltare (but also ascottare). Occasionally erroneous replacement of prefixes after apheresis appears: ebriacu > briaco > imbriaco and ubbriaco; hibernu > verno > inverno. PROTHESIS

§ 63. In certain respects this phenomenon is the opposite of the preceding one, though due to the same fundamental cause. Before words beginning with "impure s" (sc-, st-, sp-, and so forth) there appears in early Vulgar Latin a tendency to prefix the vowel i-, in order to facilitate pronunciation, rendered more difficult by the stress-accent concentration on the accented vowel. This tendency grew with the growth of the stress accent, and became universal in languages less conservative than Italian (for example, French and Spanish, where the prothetic vowel also weakens from i- to e-). Italian resists the prothetic tendency to a remarkable degree, normally using the prothetic i- only after a word ending in a consonant (per istrada, in iscuola). A large number of apparent cases of resistance may in reality be illusory, however, and due to the phenomenon of apheresis described above (strata > Hstrata > istrada; but ilia Hstrata > ilia 'strata > la strada). This alternation of the two opposite phenomena is particularly apparent in forms where the iis not prothetic, but original: Hispania > Spagna, but in Ispagna; instrumentu > stromento, istrumento; istu ipsu > stesso, istesso. ANAPTYXIS (VOWEL EPENTHESIS)

§ 64. This phenomenon consists of the insertion of a vowel within troublesome consonant groups in the interior of a word for the sake of facilitating pronunciation. I t is the exact opposite of syncopation, and is comparatively rare in Italian, since troublesome consonant groups are more often disposed of in other ways (see Assimilation, sec. 76 and Metathesis, sec. 78). I t appears somewhat more frequently in certain southern dialects, where it has been suggested that it may be a survival of a wide-

PHONOLOGY

41

spread Oscan tendency. Examples in literary Italian are: spasmu > spasimo, Cosmu > Cosimo, asthma > ansima (but also asma), lucrari > lucrare > logorare, supplere > supplire > sopperire, Ger. Landsknecht > lanzichetiecco; and in the dialects: Abbruzzian bdfdhchd for bifolco, aht&rd for altare, Neapolitan grazejuso for grazioso. VOWEL ASSIMILATION

§ 65. This phenomenon, which may be described as the making alike of two unlike sounds, is common to both vowels and consonants, but far more general in the latter (see sec. 76). In the case of vowels the general tendency is for unstressed vowels to take on the quality of the stressed vowel, pointing to the relative importance of the latter under the stress accent: metaxa > matassa, denariu > danaro (but also denaro), pepone > popone, *rinione > rognone, silvaticu > salvatico (but also selvatico, selvaggio). Cases such as debere > dovere, demandat > domanda, de mane > domani, de post > dopo, aequale > uguale, are also of an assimilative nature, the attraction being exerted by the following labial consonant, which pulls the vowel into the labial orbit. VOWEL DISSIMILATION

§ 66. This is the exact opposite of the preceding phenomenon, two like sounds being differentiated. Like assimilation, dissimilation occurs more frequently in the case of consonants than of vowels, where it is comparatively rare: bubulcu, *bufidcu > bifolco, inimicu > nemico, januariu > gennaio. In the case of debere > dovere, divinare > (in)dovinare, and so forth, dissimilation of the vowels, as well as the assimilative pull of the labial consonant, may play a part in the change. The contradictory tendency to assimilation and dissimilation, as well as other similarly contrasting tendencies (syncopation vs. anaptyxis, consonant gemination vs. sonorization, apheresis vs. pro thesis) are indicative of the psychological, individualistic nature of linguistic change, which precludes the formulation of absolutely rigid phonological laws, having the same characteristics of inflexibility and predictability as have the laws that are operative in the domain of the physical sciences.

42

PHONOLOGY

VOWELS IN HIATUS; DEVELOPMENT OF yod

§ 67. Classical Latin, with its system of quantities and semi-pitch accent, experienced little difficulty in pronouncing, a vowel coming directly before another vowel but not forming a diphthong with it (the e of video, for example, is said to be in hiatus). The stress accent of Vulgar Latin, concentrating vocal energy upon a single vowel in the word, removed the possibility of carefully articulating two successive vowels not separated by a consonant. The result was that in many cases the vowel in hiatus was altogether dropped: mortuu > morto, battuo > batto, quietu > cheto, pariete > parete, audio > odo. More generally, however, if the vowel in hiatus was e or i, its value changed from that of a pure vowel to that of the semivowel j (English y in yes). The name yod, taken from the letter of the Hebrew alphabet that almost invariably has this value, is generally applied to this new sound developed out of an originally pure vowel. The change has a double significance. On the one hand, it shortens the number of syllables in the word, and thereby acts as a sort of secondary syncopation; on the other hand, the yod tends to combine with adjoining consonants and vowels and produce new sound groups. The combination of yod with various consonants will be taken up in detail under consonantal headings, but a few illustrations may be given/here: vi\ne\a > *vi\nj,a > vigna, a\li\u > *a\lj,u > aglio, pa\le\a > *pa\l{a > paglia. It is to be noted that Latin i ( j ) had, on occasion, a yod value (iam or jam, iaceo or jaceo, maior or major, pronounced iam, iakeo, mai-ior). This original Latin j was joined by the new formation and underwent the same various developments (iam > già, like di\urnu > *diurnu, *iurnu, giorno). VOCALIC SOUNDS DEVELOPED FROM I (VOCALIZATION)

§ 68. In certain positions I has the tendency to pass into a front vowel or semivowel (i, {) or a lateral vowel or semivowel (u, u). The latter is infrequent in Italian and is probably due to dialectal influences. It occurs when the I follows a vowel and precedes a consonant: talpa > *taupa > topa and topo, maltha > *mauta > mota.12 12

An occasional inverse phenomenon (u > /) also appears: lauda > laida.

43

PHONOLOGY

This phenomenon, which is normal in French and occasional in Spanish (alteru > F r . altre, autre, Sp. *autro, otro) occurs q u i t e f r e q u e n t l y in

certain dialects (cal{i)du > Sicilian caudu). A phenomenon which is universal in Italian is the vocalization of I to i after a consonant and before a vowel: Ger. blank > bianco, clatnare > chiamare, flamma > fiatnma, flore > fiore, glande > ghianda, ungula

>

unghia, planu

>

> piano,

planta

> pianta,

placere

> piacere,

plicare

piegare. ANALOGY

§ 69. This is a popular phenomenon of imitation whereby a word or form is pulled out of its normal development to be made to resemble another word with which it has a real or fancied connection. Analogy is very widespread and may appear in all sorts of words, influencing morphological forms as well as phonetic development. It is particularly noticeable in verbs, where the multiplicity of forms with stress sometimes on the stem, sometimes on the ending, and the consequent possibility of different phonetic development, clash with an unconscious desire to keep the forms within a "regular" scheme. A few cases have already been p r e s e n t e d : suonare,

muovete,

i n s t e a d of sonare,

movete
vedo, instead of the normal p h o n e t i c veggio, b y a n a l o g y w i t h vedi, vede < vides,

videt.

Analogy may appear as a form of imitation of another existing word, with which there is a real or fancied resemblance or contrast :frigidu> *frtgidu, by analogy with rtgidu, then > freddo. In the case of verbs the analogy is sometimes due not so much to similarity as to the fact that in the unaccented forms the pronunciation is the same: ftndit > f$nde, by a n a l o g y w i t h pr$nde of similarity

in fqndiamo,

(
, and f, for which there were no exact Latin equivalents, were transliterated ch, th, ph, and z. The original Greek pronunciation of the first three was k + h (blockhouse), t + h {hothouse), p + h {uphill). The Romans, not accustomed to pronouncing aspirates, apparently treated these sounds as ordinary c, t, p. At a later period, when Greek pronunciation had changed from the values indicated above to kh (German ach), th (Eng. thing), and / , the first two letters appeared in Latin orthography variously as ch, c; th, t, with the pronunciation c, t; while came to appear, both in spelling and in pronunciation, as / (compare early Topiftbpa > purpura > It. porpora with the later Qaaifkos > faseolus > I t . fagiuolo). Greek f, transliterated as z and pronounced by closure of the lips (labial nasal m) or of the tongue and upper teeth (dental nasal n) or of the soft palate and the root of the tongue (guttural nasal n + c or g). The labialized guttural (or labialized velar) is a guttural stop followed by a labial semivowel (w): qy ( = k + w), gV (= g + w). The sibilant is a spirant, produced by allowing the breath to escape gradually between the tip of the tongue and the junction of the teeth and hard palate. In modern Italian

it may be surd or sonant (casa, roSa).

Semivowels partake of the quality of both vowels and consonants, having a vocalic point of articulation, but being handled as noncontinuative sounds (stops) in conjunction with a following vowel.

46

PHONOLOGY

dz, sometimes retains this pronunciation, sometimes passes to di and thence to g (frjXos [whence *zelosus] > It. zelo, but geloso). For the development of Germanic sounds see sees. 80, 88.

New Italian Sounds § 72. None of the classical Latin sounds disappeared in Italian. New sounds, however, were created, the development of which will be described at length in the discussion, of the individual consonants. They are: Palatal affricates: 14 1, g (as in cielo, gelo) Palatal fricatives: i, I (as in sciame, gioiello, with Tuscan pronunciation, = French j) Sonant den to-labial spirant: v (as in Italian v ado) Palatal nasal: n' (as in agnello) Palatal liquid: I (as in aglio) Sonant sibilant: f (as in Italian roSa) Sibilant affricates (surd and sonant): z, i (as in pozzo, razio)

General Consonantal Phenomena SONORIZATION

§ 73. In passing from the vocalic to the consonantal field, we again have occasion to refer to the effects of the stress accent. As this increases, bringing the stressed vowel into greater and greater prominence, there is a corresponding weakening of all other parts of the word, with the exception of the initial syllable (see sees. 23, 55). While pretonic and post-tonic vowels are syncopated and other unstressed vowels undergo a certain amount of merging, the consonants suffer in similar manner. There is a tendency on the part of the entire word to bring itself into line with the stressed vowel. Unstressed vowels obey this tendency by effacing themselves outright or by merging into less clearly determined vocalic sounds than they possessed at the outset. Consonants obey it by approaching, within the limits of their possibility, the nature of the stressed vowel. Vowels are invariably voiced (that is, accompanied by vibration of the vocal chords). Sonant, or voiced consonants (d, b, g) are also accompanied by this vibration, while surd, or unvoiced, conso14

d

+

An affricate is a stop followed by a spirant element: c = I + s (Eng. z).

s; It. z = t +

s, or

PHONOLOGY

47

nants (t, p, c) are not. Therefore unprotected surds, particularly in the intervocalic position,16 tend to come into line with the stressed vowel by turning into the corresponding sonants (t > d, p > b, c > g), making the vibration more continuous. Original unprotected sonants, on the other hand, already possessing the vibration, tend to approach the nature of the stressed vowel either by turning into spirants, thus making the vibration altogether continuous instead of partly plosive (b > v, g > j), or by vanishing altogether. In languages in which the stress accent is stronger, the process is far more drastic than it is in Italian, the surds themselves vanishing after first becoming sonants and then spirants (cf. Latin amata

>

I t . amata,

b u t Sp. amada, pronounced

amafia;

Old French amede, pronounced amefie, Modern French aimée). Italian, by reason of cultured, conservative and urban influences which hold the stress accent within reasonable bounds, presents a considerable amount of resistance to the sonorization of intervocalic consonants: nepote > nipote, b u t apotheka > bottega, ripa > ripa and riva; amata > amata, but strata > strada, scutu > scudo, matre > madre; arnica > arnica, but pacare > pagare; debitu > debito, b u t habere > avere; fide > Je,

pede > pie (but the phenomenon here may be rather one of haplogy); plaga > piaga, b u t regale > reale, magistru rim > rio, bove > bue.

> *ma\estro

>

maestro;

The phenomenon of sonorization and fall of intervocalic consonants will be taken up in detail in the discussion of the individual consonants. Theories have been advanced to the effect that sonorization is favored by position before the accent and in proparoxytonic words, but they have not met with signal success. SIMPLIFICATION AND GEMINATION OF CONSONANTS

§ 74. Consonants which are double in Latin obey the general tendency by weakening to a single consonant (simplification). Italian not only 16 Position, which plays such an important role in the development of vowels, is also paramount in consonantal development. I t may be stated at this point that initial consonants, for reasons already stated (see sec. 23, 55) tend to remain intact; final consonants, on Italian territory, tend to fall; within the word, a single consonant between two vowels is subjected to the full weakening tendencies caused by the stress accent; if the consonant is doubled, it will generally remain on Italian territory, though it tends to be simplified in languages where the stress accent was stronger; if protected by a preceding consonant (-ni-, -si-, -rt-, etc.) it will generally remain. See sec. 95.

48

PHONOLOGY

shows a strong resistance to this tendency, retaining the majority of Latin double consonants, but also indulges to a large degree in the opposite phenomenon (doubling an originally single consonant), known as gemination. The following facts are to be noted in this connection: a) Italian is practically the only Romance language which resists simplification and favors gemination. This may indicate a stronger cultural influence in Italy than in other parts of the Romanic world.16 b) Both gemination and resistance to sonorization and simplification are common in central and southern Italy, but practically unknown in the north, where normal Romance tendencies hold full sway. The implications of this feature are as yet doubtful. The theory has been advanced that it may be due to the Celtic substratum of the Po Valley, but there is also the possibility that the close political and cultural relations of northern Italy with France rather than with the rest of the peninsula during the formative period of the individual Romance languages may have had some share in the process; also that cultured, or at least conservative, influences may have been less operative in the north than in the center and the south. Examples of the rare phenomenon of simplification in the literary language are: commune > comune, ballista > balestra (but an alternative though rare balista also appears in classical Latin). Examples of the retention of Latin double consonants: siccu > secco, villa > villa, flamma > fiamma, *cappa > cappa, curro > corro, mittere > mettere. Examples of gemination of Latin single consonants are: brutu > brutto, Luca > Lucca, aqua > acqua, totu > tutto, capone > cappone, apud > appo, legit > legge, fuimus > fummo, febre > febbre. Dialectal cases of gemination, in central Italy and the south, are even more widespread: Luccan debbole for debole (< debile), Roman doppo for dopo (< de post), Basilicatan amammo for amiamo (< amamus), Neapolitan iammo (< eamus). Gemination is especially common in groups of intervocalic consonant 18 Another- possible interpretation of the phenomenon of gemination is that it represents a form of stress accent bearing on the consonant instead of on the vowel, the geminated consonant being really a prolonged consonant.

PHONOLOGY

49

+ j: simia > scimmia, habeat > abbia, oc(u)lu > occhio, laqueu > *laceu > laccio, Sicilian figghiu < filiu. Gemination also accounts for double consonants such as those in dammi, fallo, vattene, stassera (< ista sera), frattanto (< infra tantu); as well as the current double pronunciation of the initial consonant of a word when preceded by a word ending in a vowel (tu sei, pronounced tu ssei). When the consonant is preceded by another unlike consonant, it normally not only remains but also assimilates the preceding consonant if the latter is a plosive (see Retrogressive Assimilation, sec. 76), thus giving rise to another lengthy series of double consonants: factu > fatto, ipsu > esso, and so forth. CONSONANT EPENTHESIS

§ 75. As has already been seen (sec. 67), Vulgar Latin abhors hiatus, eliminating it in various ways: (a) by simply dropping the vowel in hiatus (battuo > batto)] (b) by changing an e or i in hiatus into a yod (vi\ne\a > *vi\n{a > vigna); (c) by inserting a consonant between the two contiguous vowels (a rather rare device). Such a consonant is called "epenthetic." This phenomenon frequently occurs when u is the vowel in hiatus : ruina > rovina; manuale > manovale; vidua > vedova; Genua > Genova. Consonant epenthesis between consonants, which is common in other Romance languages to repair the ravages of syncopation, is quite rare in Italian, in which either syncopation is avoided or retrogressive assimilation after syncopation is preferred: compare camera > It. camera with Fr. *cham're, chambre; or venire habeo > *veniraio, *ven'rao, verrò with Sp. *ven'rai, *ven'ré, vendré. A few cases of such epenthesis appear in Italian: simulare > *sem'lare, * sem'rare, sembrare,11 memorare > *memorar e, membrare. With these go a few cases in which the epenthesis appears unnecessary and is perhaps due to some doubtful analogy: caeleste > cilestre, redder e 17 Some doubt attaches to this development. Old Italian assemprare, assembrare, from which sembrare may be derived, with apheresis, seem to go back to a form *exemplare (cf. CI. Lat. exemplatus, adjective, "copied," "imitated"), with interchange of prefixes (ad for ex).

50

PHONOLOGY

> rendere, strabu > strambo. Cubitu > *gombito > gomito seems to indicate epenthesis of m followed by fall of the original consonant. CONSONANT ASSIMILATION

§ 76. Two unlike sounds are occasionally made alike when the consonants are not contiguous: *sucina > susina, juliu > luglio (f > I by influence of li), mulgere > mungere (I > n by influence of m), Celtic (?) *multone > montone (I > n by influence of m and n). When two consonants are contiguous, by origin or because of the syncopation of the intervening vowel, there may be assimilation of two kinds: progressive (when the first consonant influences the second) or retrogressive (when the second attracts the first). Progressive assimilation, favored by other languages (cf. hom(i)ne > Fr. homme, fem(i)na > femme) is rare in Italian (nit{i)du > netto). Retrogressive assimilation is, on the other hand, practically normal in Italian and leads to a large number of double consonants. It is to be noted that the process had already begun in classical Latin, in which the final consonant of a prepositional prefix is normally assimilated to the initial consonant of the root (in-lustris > illustris, ad-flare > afflare, sub-ficere > sufficere). A few Italian examples are: septem > setie, dixi (pronounced diksi) > dissi, scripsi > scrissi, somnu > sonno, damnu > danno, dom{i)na > donna, factu > fatto, spath{u)la > spalla, spin(u)la > spilla, venire habeo > *veniraio, *ven'rao, verrd. In cases such as die mihi > dimmi and fac illu > fallo it is difficult to determine whether we are faced with true retrogressive assimilation or with gemination of the consonant following fall of Latin final -c in die, fac. The latter would seem more probable in view of da mihi > dammi and da illu > dallo. In forms like rapidu > *rap'du > ratio a double assimilation may be said to have taken place between the p and the d, the resulting It possessing the dental nature of the d, but the surd quality of the p. In *duodecina > *duod'eina > dozzina the d seems to impart the sonant quality, the c the assibilation. CONSONANT DISSIMILATION

§ 77. This is a sporadic phenomenon, of infrequent occurrence, designed to prevent the repetition of the same consonant vyithin the word;

PHONOLOGY

51

r-r > l-r or r-l arbore > albero, peregrinu > pellegrino, mercuri die > mercoledì r-r > d-r quaerere > chiedere r-r > r-d raru > rado, prora > proda n-n > l-n veneriti > veleno l-l > r-l ululare > urlare l-l > g-l liliu > giglio Avoidance of repetition of the liquids {I, r) and of the nasals (m, n) seems to be most commonly sought, though other sounds occasionally undergo dissimilation (quinque > cinque, jejunu > digiuno, instead of the *gigiuno we should expect). METATHESIS

§ 78. This is the transposition of a consonant from one part of the word to another or the exchanging of position of two consonants (double metathesis). As compared with other languages, notably Spanish, it is only sporadic in Italian, though frequent in the dialects: frumentu > fomento, interpraete > interpetre, favula > *fab'la > *flaba or *fabia > fiaba, populu > *pop'lu > *plopu or *popiu > pioppo, Agrigenti (locative) > Girgenti, fracidu > fradicio, sucidu > sudicio, palude > padtde, latrociniu > ladroneccio, Roman drento for dentro, Calabrian crapa for capra, Sicilian vispicu for vescovo (< episcopu). FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN PHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

§ 79. Two suffixes in the development of which a foreign influence seems probable may be mentioned here: -aticu, normally developed according to the "laws" of Italian phonology, should give *-acco, by syncopatioa and retrogressive assimilation. Its regular outcome is, on the contrary, -aggio: viaticu > viaggio, villaticu > villaggio, *formaticu > formaggio. The suffix -aticu is accompanied, in its abnormal palatalized development, by the verb mangiare < manducare or mandicare (note the archaic manicare), replacing a phonologically normal *mancare. The suffix -ariu, the normal Italian development of which is -aio, -aro (marinariu > marinaro and marinaio, denariu > denaro; see sec. 93) appears-in a large number of words with the French development -iere,

52

PHONOLOGY

-ier.o: caballariu > cavaliere-o (but also cavallaro), panariu > paniere. It is to be noted, however, that this phenomenon affects only individual words, which may have been borrowed, not the entire phonological development of a given group like the -aticu mentioned above. Together with the tendency, appearing in northern Italy, to simplify rather than to double consonants, the weakening of a into e in first conjugation future and conditiofial forms (amare kabeo > amerd; but see sec. 61), and the development of several individual, but highly popular words, running counter to phonological "laws" (habeo > ho, instead of > *abbio and aggio, sapio > so, instead of > *sappio and saccio, etc.), 18 these developments may point to close political and cultural relations between northern and central Italy and France during the formative period of the two languages. If so, they would also be indicative of the rare phenomenon of phonological borrowing by one language from another.

Individual Consonants THE ASPIRATE: H

§ 80. As already stated (sec. 71), the burden of evidence appears to be in favor of the disappearance or extreme weakening of h in classical times. 19 In Italian it also disappears from spelling, but is reintroduced to indicate the hard sound of c and g before e and i, as well as in the present forms of avere {ho, hai, ha, hanno), probably to distinguish them from words of similar pronunciation and different meaning. The earliest documents of written Italian make no use of this silent orthographic h (Monte Cassino, 960—kelle, kella; Umbrian Confession Formula, end of eleventh century—ket, k'io, k'illi, ke, eke, I'ai, tu ai; Tuscan Ritmo Giullaresco, 1150—c'umque, ce, cericato); while, on the other hand, they show erroneous uses of h (he for e, "and"). Germanic h, entering Vulgar Latin at a period when Latin h had long been silent, is also rejected by Italian (though retained by French, in the form of aspirate h): *haunipa > Fr. honte, It. onta; *hanka > Fr. hanche, It. gecchire; but spehdn > spiare). In the group ht it undergoes retrogressive assimilation: slahta (Mod. Ger. Geschlecht) > schiatta. THE GUTTURALS: C, G, QU,

GJJ,

X

Gutturals before Front Vowels; X; Groups Producing Italian $ (sc + e, i) § 81. Most linguists favor the theory that in the pre-classical and classical periods c and g were universally pronounced hard and that the arising of the traditional Italian 1, g pronunciations for the ce, ci, ge, gi groups is a phenomenon which must be placed in the transitional epoch from Latin to Romance. The point can hardly be described as definitely settled, and certainly considerable doubt exists as to precisely when within that transitional period and in what manner the change from the guttural to the palatal pronunciation occurred. Linguists who still favor the "Italian" pronunciation for Latin c and g before front vowels present the following facts as evidence: (1) The Italian pronunciation of the c and g is traditional in the conservative Roman Catholic Church; (2) Pre-classical Latin uses K before a, C before e and i, Q before o and u, indicating a differentiation of sounds; (3) Statements of some grammarians and the orthography of certain inscriptions from the classical period indicate a palatalized pronunciation of c and g before e and i; (4) Ancient Italic dialects, particularly Umbrian, show definite signs of palatalization. To this it is objected that: (1) The Catholic Church is conservative, not of classical, but of Vulgar Latin pronunciation (consider the loss of quantity in the vowels); (2) C, Q, and K indicate different points of articulation within the guttural domain, not different quality of consonants as represented by the shift from the guttural to the palatal series; (3) The statements of grammarians cited are extremely ambiguous; the majority of grammarians either do not indicate any difference in pronunciation or state specifically that there is none; the inscriptions cited (none of which are definitely dated before the end of the third century) offer very rare and very doubtful examples of possible palatalization, while the overwhelming bulk of inscriptional material feveals.no sign of early palatalization; (4) Umbrian is not Latin; (5) Transliterations of Latin words into Greek show the gutturals tc and 7 to have been used for c and g in all positions; (6) Early borrowings from Latin by the Germanic languages indicate a guttural pronunciation

54

PHONOLOGY

(.Keller < cellarium, Kaiser < Caesar, Kirsch < cerasum), while borrowings which definitely occurred in the transitional period show an assibilated or palatalized pronunciation (Zins < census); (7) Conservative Romance dialects show a guttural pronunciation (Sardinian kerbu < cervu; Vegliote akait < acetu). A secondary controversial point arises over the exact nature of the shift. Granted that a guttural c (k) before e or i would normally tend to shift its point of articulation forward to anticipate the point of articulation of the following vowel, was this shift originally in the direction of c (as Italian and Roumanian would seem to indicate), or of ts (as indicated by Old French and Old Spanish)? If the Vulgar Latin shift was uniform at first in all countries, at what point did it begin to diverge? Such double orthographies and pronunciations as It. ufficio, uffizio; annuncio, attnunzio, for the c{, t{ groups, appearing as they do in learned words, are but doubtful evidence for a k > k' {fy or l{) > ts > I development in Italy. What is certain is that an original pre-classical or classical Latin k (represented by c), before e or i, ultimately reached, in most parts of Italy, the palatalized pronunciation of c. This phenomenon of palatalization (the bringing forward of an original guttural from the soft to the hard palate in preparation for a front vowel to follow) may possibly be referred to the stress accent. As the vocal energy is more and more centered upon the stressed vowel, less energy remains for the other sounds in the word, especially for combinations requiring arduous shifts of the vocal organs; and it takes less energy to bring the organs from the c to the e and i positions than from the k to the e and i. G before e and i apparently progressed from guttural g > i, which was normally palatalized to g in the initial position or after consonants and intervocalically was sometimes palatalized and geminated to gg, sometimes retained as i, but later dropped, or rather absorbed by the following vowel. Examples of the transition of Lat. c (k) to It. c (¿) before e and i: initially, centum > cento, cervu > cervo, cera > cera, cibu > cibo, caelu > cielo; internally, pace > pace, mercede > merce, sedecim > sedici, vicinu > vicino, cicer > cece. Examples of the passing of Lat. g (hard) to It. g (g) before e, i: initially,

PHONOLOGY

55

gelare > gelare, generu > genero, gente > gente; after a consonant, ingeniu > ingegno, argentu > argento; intervocalically, lege > legge, sigillu > suggello, regere > reggere. Examples of intervocalic g > i, with subsequent disappearance of {: magistru > *ma{estro > maestro, *pagense > * palese > paese, digitu > dito, sagitta > *sa{etta > saetta, triginta > trenta. Classical Latin sc (sk) before e and i normally palatalizes to sc ($) :20 florescit > fiorisce, pisce > pesce, scintilla > scintilla. § 82. Latin x appears to have two equally possible outcomes in Italian, sc (i) and ss (s initially): examen > sciame, ex-opere > sciopero, coxa > coscia, laxare > lasciare, maxilla > mascella; but exagiu > saggio, saxu > sasso, dixi > dissi, sexaginta > sessanta. Latin xt loses the ¿-element and becomes si: dextru > destro, sextu > sesto. Gutturals before Back Vowels § 83. Initially or after a consonant c, g + a, o, u normally remain: carru > carro, calidu > caldo, corpus > corpo, corona > corona, cunula > culla; piscari > piscare > pescare, mercatu > mercato, furca > forca, iucca > bocca; gaudere > godere, gula > gola, gutta > gotta; virga > verga, purgare > purgare. A certain number of cases of sonorization of initial c a, o,u appear, which may be due to intervocalic use in syntactical combination. This explanation appears fairly satisfactory in the case of nouns, which are generally used in close union with a preceding article, but is doubtful in the case of verbs: catu > gatto (illu catu > *illû catu > lo gatto, il gatto), cavea > gabbia, cubitu > gomito, conflare > gonfiare. Intervocalically the normal Romance movement is c > g > i or complete disappearance. The resistance offered by Italian to this process of sonorization is very marked: pacare > pagare, ad-necare > annegare, lactuca > lattuga, lacu > lago, acu > ago; but amica > arnica, securu > sicuro, jocare > giuocare, paucu > poco, pecora > pecora; regale > reale, legale > leale;21 but plaga > piaga, régula > regola, augustu > agosto. 20 The same sc (S) development appears for the Latin slj group: angustia > angoscia, posiea > poscia. 21 Reale and leale are sometimes attributed to Provençal influence.

56

PHONOLOGY

Final Gutturals § 84. Among the gutturals only c could be final in Latin (for final x, see sec. 92). Final c regularly falls in Italian: iliac > là, nec > ne, eccum hac > qua. Gutturals in Consonant Groups § 85. Initial cr, gr stay: credere > credere, cruce > croce, granu > grano, grave > grave. Sonorization of initial cr > gr occasionally appears: crypta > grotta, q(ui)ritare > gridare, Ger. krattan > grattare. Intervocalically the tendency is toward sonorization (cr > gr > r) : sacra > sagra, lacrima > lagrima, acre > agro, macru > magro; nigru > nero, integru > intiero. But the customary resistance appears here also: sacru > sacro, peregrinu > pellegrino. CI, gl, original or brought about by syncopation of the intervening vowel, normally retain the guttural unchanged, but vocalize the I to j: 22 claru > chiaro, claudere > chiudere; glacie > *glacia > ghiaccia and ghiaccio, glutto > ghiotto; ung(u)la > unghia, cing(u)la > cinghia. Ct, g'd > tt, dd (by retrogressive assimilation): factu > fatto, lectu > letto, tectu > tetto, nocte > notte, frig(i)du > freddo. Net > nt: sanctu > santo, punctu > punto, cinctu > cinto. Gn, while retaining its orthography, turns from a double (g + n) to a palatalized («0 sound: agnellu > agnello, regnu > regno, lignu > legno, pugnu > pugno, cognatu > cognato. Gutturals + { § 86. The interchange of ci and ti, indicating palatalization of both groups, appears fairly early in the inscriptions of the Vulgar Latin period, and it is probable that such palatalization preceded by a considerable period that of ce and ci. The interchange between the guttural 22 Intervocalically, the guttural is doubled: oc{u)lu > occhio, auric(u)la > orecchia, mac{u)la > macchia. It is of interest to note here some of the numerous cases of Italian resistance to syncopation in these groups, with consequent "learned" instead of "popular" development, as compared with the popular or semilearned development of other Romance languages: saeculu > secolo (ct. Fr. semilearned siede, Sp. siglo); regtda > regola (Fr. règie, Sp. regia); miraculu > miracolo (Fr. miracle, Sp. milagro). Note also double developments: circuiti > circolo, cerchio; tegula > tegola, tegghia, teglia; macula > macchia, maglia.

PHONOLOGY

57

+ i and the dental + j still appears today in a few learned words (ufficio, uffizio; annuncio, annunzio). It is therefore hardly surprising that both groups should have had similar outcomes. While c{ normally developed into It. cc (c after consonants), and ti into It. surd z (ts), cases of interchange are not rare (cf. ti; sec. 90) :23 facie > * facia > faccia, glacie > *glacia > ghiaccia, brachiu > braccio; but *calcea > calza (vs. calceu > calcio), *luncea > lonza. Gi merges with the dental sonant + i (di) to an even greater degree, normally producing i or gg, as does d%: regione > rione; but regia > reggia, fageu > faggio, exagiu > saggio. Labialized Gutturals: qu, gif § 87. Initial gu does not occur in Latin. Initial qu loses the labial element, save before a: quale > quale, quantu > quanto, quattuor > quattro; but quern, quid > che, qui > chi, quaerere > chiedere, quietu > cheto, quomodo > come. Intervocalic qu has two tendencies; one is to lose the labial: antiquu > antico, coquu > cuoco; the other is to sonorize: aequale > uguale, sequi > *sequire > seguire. Internal gu normally remains unchanged: lingua > lingua, sangue > sangue, anguilla > anguilla. Certain words indicate early fall of the labial element in the qu group, followed by palatalization of the guttural before front vowels: quinque > cinque (dissimilation ?), torquere > torcere, laqueu > laccio. gU < Germanic w § 88. Germanic w, entering Vulgar Latin at a period when Latin v had already lost its bilabial semivowel value to assume that of the modern dentolabial spirant, took a sonant guttural sound before it: warddn > guardare, werra > guerra, warjan > guarire, wisa > guisa, triuwa > tregua. By analogy this ¿«-sound entered the pronunciation of a few Latin words beginning with v: vadu > guado, vastare > guastare (linguistic crossing between Lat. vadu, vastare and Germanic wadan, wastan are also claimed). 23 The z is favored by some southern dialects: lancea > It. lancia, but Sicilian lama, brachiu > Sic. vrazzu.

58

PHONOLOGY

THE SEMIVOWEL: I

§ 89. Classical Latin i, partly joined in its development by the groups ge, gi, gi, d{ ( see sees. 81, 86, 90), normally becomes g initially : jam > già, jugu > giogo, jocare > giuocare, jungere > giungere, jacere > giacere. Intervocalically it normally became gg, but occasionally it .remains unchanged: majore > maggiore, pejus > peggio, maju > maggio; but majale > maiale. THE DENTALS : T,

D

§ 90. Initially t, d, as well as tr, dr, remain unchanged: tabula > tavola, terra > terra, tormentu > tormento; dare > dare, dente > dente, donu > dono; triginta > trenta, traxi > trassi, truncu > tronco; dracone > dragone, *drappu > drappo. Intervocalically the customary tendency to sonorization (t > d > complete effacement) appears, as well as the normal Italian resistance. Examples of these tendencies for t are: posse > *potere > podere (but also potere, with differentiation of meaning and function), quiritare > gridare, spatha > spada, scutu > scudo, patella > padella, sculetta > scodella, *met-ipsimu > medesimo; virtute > virtude, virtù, civitate > cittade, città; but dubitai > dubita, perdita > perdita, vita > vita, nativu > nativo, natio, maturu > maturo. For d, fide > fe, pede > pie, *ma dom(i)na > madonna, monna, modo > mò, dedit > diè;u but cauda > coda, sudare > sudare, laudare > lodare. For tr, patre > padre, matre > madre, latrone > ladrone; but petra > pietra, vitru > vetro. For dr, quadraginta > quaranta; but quadru > quadro, cathedra > cattedra. If t, d, tr, dr are protected by a preceding consonant, they remain unchanged, absorbing the preceding consonant by retrogressive assimilation if such consonant is a plosive or spirant: festa > festa, cantare > cantare, bon(i)tate > bontà; vectura > vettura, rupta > rotta, civ(i)tate > città; ardore > ardore, tardare > tardare, frig{i)du > freddo; fenestra > finestra, ultra > oltre, alt{e)ru > altro, mandra > mandra. Sporadic and unexplained cases of d > I are: hedera > ellera, traduce > troice and tralcio, cicada > cicala. M For a somewhat doubtful explanation of these forms, in which sonorization and haplogy are confused, see Grandgent, From Latin to Italian, sec. 52.

PHONOLOGY

59

Final t and d normally fall, but in monosyllabic, proclitic words, before words beginning with vowels, they are often retained in the sonant form d: amat > ama, apud > appo; but et > e, ed, aut > o, od, ad > a, ad. The group t'l, brought about by early syncopation, passed to cl and later developed to echi; but if the syncopation occurred at a later period, the t'l and also the d'l groups-were subjected to retrogressive assimilation, with the outcome II: vettdu > *vet'lu > veclu > vecchio, sit(u)la > secchia; but spathula > *spat'la > spalla, *cum-rotulare > crollare, stridula > strillo. For the confusion of the dental + j groups with the guttural + i groups see sec. 86. Ti, like ci, has two normal outcomes: cc and surd z or zz (ts), of which the latter appears preferred: *captiare > cacciare, *cum-initiare > cominciare; but cantione > canzone, tertiu > terzo, palatiu > palazzo, puteu > pozzo, platea > piazza, pretiu > prezzo, -itia > -ezza. Sonorization of ti > g occasionally appears, seemingly favored by original intervocalic position or possibly due to confusion with the si group (for which see sec. 92): ratione > ragione (note also the learned razione), pretiare > pregiare (but note apprezzare, disprezzare), palatiu > palagio (but note palazzo), statione > stagione, *cupiditia > cupidigia. The development ti > zi appears semilearned: lectione > lezione, justitia > giustizia (popular giustezza). Initial di joins i and gi and forms g: diurnu > iorno > giorno. Internally, three possible developments appear: gg, i, and sonant é, i& (dz); the first development seems to be the favorite intervocalically: hodie > oggi, modiu > moggio, podiu > poggio; adjutat > aiuta; hordeu > orzo, mediu > mezzo, prandiu > pranzo. Occasionally both the gg and the éé developments appear in the same word, with semantic differentiation: radiu > raggio, razzo. THE LABIALS : P, B, F,

V

§ 91. In the initial position26 or after a protecting consonant there is normally no change in the labials or in the groups they form with r (pr, 25 In the Vulgar Latin inscriptions of Italy, and in the earliest Italian documents, great confusion between 6 and v appears, with a strong preference for b, especially in the initial position {biginti for viginti, bobe < vobis, boce < voce; ci. also modem serbare < servare). This state of affairs, which closely resembles that of modern Spanish, has

60

PHONOLOGY

br, a n d fr; vr d o e s n o t o c c u r i n classical L a t i n ) ; w h i l e g r o u p s w i t h I {pi, bl, fi) u n d e r g o v o c a l i z a t i o n of I > >

pozzo,

vespa

>

alba > alba;filiu

>

>

freno;

bonu

>

figliolame

pacare

> pagare,

buono,

bene >

> fame,focu

b u t placet

>

piace,

pira

> pera,

bene, basiu

> fuoco; vigilare

> vino, salvu > salvo;26 primu

villa > villa, vinu frenu

vespa;

> primo,

Ger. blank

>

puteu

> >

bacio, vegliare,

breve >

bianco,

breve,

fiumen

>

b >

>

fiume. I n t e r v o c a l i c a l l y t h e n o r m a l s o n o r i z a t i o n t e n d e n c y {p complete

effacement)

appears,

together

with

resistance. 2 7 E x a m p l e s for p are: apotheka befana,

ripa

>

povero,

>

uopo;

scrivere,

>

*riba

recipere

>

for b, habere tabula

>

> riva ( b u t a l s o ripa),

debito.

paone,

bottega?*

episcopu

b u t nepote

>

nipote,

>

/a&a > fava,

labore

presbyter

s i b l y b y a n a l o g y w i t h frate), fabula >

>

ricevere;

tavola,

>

> favola;2*

E x a m p l e s for » are: eira >

boves > òmoì, nativu

> natio;

*prebiter

>

> >

> favore,

epiphania >

lavoro,

prevete >

v

Italian >

vescovo, pauper e

caput

b u t dubitat

rio, pavore

b u t favore

>

the customary

>

ca^o, scribere

> dubita, paura, devorat

>

^reie (posdebitu

pavone >

>

divora.

I n t h e g r o u p s w i t h r a c e r t a i n a m o u n t of s o n o r i z a t i o n a p p e a r s for been explained in various ways (see D'Ovidio and Meyer-Liibke, Grammatica storica, p. 110; Grandgent, From Latin to Italian, sec. 83, 1; Kieckers, Historische lateiniscke Grammatik, I, 95, 120; Bourciez, Eléments de linguistique romane, sec. 586). The supposition that, a t a period when the vowel sound u and the new spirant v were represented by the same orthographic symbol (F), an a t t e m p t may have been made to represent the spirant sound by another symbol, even at the cost of confusing it with the symbol for the sonant labial (B), may also be taken into consideration (cf. Fr. huit, huttre, huile and Sp. huele, huerta, where the h is not etymological, but probably prefixed to avoid confusion between the semivowel if and the spirant v sounds). 26 During the Vulgar Latin period the semivowel v ( = w) changed to the modern sonant spirant v Lat. villa (pronounced willa) > I t . villa. 27 Occasional interchange of intervocalic and internal b, v, and g appears: rivulu > rivolo, rigalo, uvula > ugola, parvulu > pargolo; sebu > sego, robur > rovo, rogo, nubihi > nuvolo, nugolo; fraga > *fragula > fragola, fravola. 28 I n bottega and befana apparently the b stage is reached; but the initial vowel falls by apheresis before the v stage can be attained. The possibility of apheresis apotheka), followed by sonorization by reason of intervocalic position with the article (*illd 'potheka) may also be considered. Sturtevant (Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, pp. 97-101) suggests t h a t in the case of Greek loan words the apparent initial sonorization may be due to a difference in the energy of utterance between the Greek and the Latin mutes. 29 Observe the threefold development of this word: favola, with semilearned conservation of post-tonic vowel, b u t popular modification of ù into o and of b into v; fiaba, with syncopation, metathesis of I, and vocalization of I into j ; fola, with complete fall of the intervocalic labial and merging of au into o.

PHONOLOGY

61

pr, while br and fr rather tend to strengthen the labial. Examples for pr are: supra > sopra and sovra, * superanu > sovrano, but capra > capra, for ir, febre > febbre, ebriacu > ubbriaco (but note libra > lira as well as > libbra)-, for fr, Africa > Africa and Africa. Intervocalic / does not appear in pure Latin words, save where they are compounded, in which case it is treated as in the initial position (profundu > profondo). However, a certain number of words apparently borrowed from Oscan, in which intervocalic / = Latin b, enter Latin, sometimes supplanting their Latin cognates, sometimes running side by side with them and giving rise to double Italian forms; in such words, intervocalic/ stays unchanged: Lat. bubulcu, Ose. *bufulcu > It. bifolco; Lat. bubalu, Ose. *bufalu > It. bufalo; Lat. sibilare > It. sibilare, but Ose. *sifilare > It. zufolare; Lat. scarabeu > It. scarabeo, but Ose. *scarafaiu > It. scarafaggio. In the case of labials followed by {, the normal development was a strengthening movement which led pi > ppi {pi after a consonant) and bi, vi > bbi (bi after a consonant): sepia > seppia, sapiat > sappia, impiu > empio; cavea > gabbia, triviu > trébbio, cambit > *cambiat > cambia, rabie > *rabia > rabbia, habeat > abbia. A certain number of cases in which pi > cc and bi, vi > gg may be due to words of foreign or dialectal origin or may represent a double development: pipione > piccione, sapiente > saccente; rubeu > roggio, fovea > foggia, pluvia > pioggia. The only final labial appearing in Latin (b) falls: de ab > da. the sibilant: S

§ 92. Classical Latin s, which had the sound of a surd sibilant in all positions, remains unchanged initially: sudare > sudare, sal > sale, sex > sei. Occasional change to se (S) appears due either to the influence of a following front vowel (simia > scimmia) or to confusion with the prefix ex- (see sec. 82) : separat > scevera, simplu > scempio. Occasional changes to surd s (ts) or sonant i (dz) are unexplained, though the hypothesis of an ancient Italic dialectal influence has been advanced : socculu > zoccolo, sulfur > zolfo, *sifilare > zufolare, saburra > zavorra.

62

PHONOLOGY

For prothesis before initial j followed by consonant, see sec. 63. initial si not of Latin origin tends to insert k: Germanic slahta > *sclatta > schiatta, sliht > schietto, Slavic slava > *sclavu > schiavo; but Old High German slito > slitta. Intervocalic s has a tendency to sonorize to the sound of i (Eng. 2). This tendency is almost universal in the north; strongly resisted in the south; and shows confused results in central Italy, particularly in Tuscany, which is the meeting ground of the two tendencies: casa > casa, causa > cosa (but also > cauSa), rosa > roSa, uti > * usare > uSare, risu > riso (but derisu > deriio). Final s is generally claimed to have fallen, save in monosyllabic words, where it turns to i:30 tempus > tempo, latus > lato, habetis > avete; but post > *pos > poi, sex > *ses > sei, nos > noi, das > dai, stas > stai. Internal 5 in combination with another consonant not only remains, but also normally protects the following consonant from sonorization :31 testa > testa, musca > mosca. Pretonic s{ > g; post-tonic sj, > c: pensione > pigione, prehensione > prigione, mansione > magione, occasione > cagione; but basiu > bacio, caseu > cacio, camisia > camicia. the liquids: L, R § 93. These normally remain intact in all positions; initially: luna > luna, lege > legge, lumen > lume; ramu > ramo, raucu > roco; intervocalicaìlly: caelu > cielo, pilu > pelo; mare > mare, flore > fiore, muru > muro; internally (where they normally protect a following consonant from sonorization): altu > alto, stdcu > solco, alba > alba, pulvere > polvere; porcu > porco, porta > porta, tardu > tardo, virga > verga; doubled: caballu > cavallo, villa > villa; ferru > ferro, terra > terra. For occasional vocalization of / > u before a consonant and for regular 30 See D'Ovidio and Meyer-Liibke, Grammatica storica, p. 90, for the theory that in the endings -as and -is the i influenced the change of a, e > i; and Grandgent, From Latin to Italian, sec. 55, for contrary opinions; see also sees. 104, 130. The problem of final s in Italian (and also in Roumanian) calls for further investigation. There appears to be no connection between the early Latin fall of final i after short vowels and the later Romance phenomena; see Sturtevant, Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, pp. 76-77. n But note se + e, i, and sti > sc (i) ; see sec. 81.

PHONOLOGY

63

vocalization of I > j after a consonant (with doubling of preceding consonant if intervocalic) see sees. 68, 85, 90, 91: clave > chiave, plaga > piaga, masc(u)lu > maschio, ung(u)la > unghia, fib (u)la > fibbia, duplu > doppio. A series of words with original c'l and g'l appears, in which the outcome is gl {t), instead of the normal cchi and ggh{; this abnormal development has been ascribed to pretonic position or to a difference in the period of syncopation (the same word undergoing syncopation both before and after sonorization: mac(u)la > macchia, but *mag(u)la > maglia; the normal outcome in the second case, however, should be *magghia, not maglia). The possibility of foreign influence in the gl development may also be advanced: * auricolare > origliare (vs. auricula > orecchia), *acuc{u)la > guglia (vs. *acuc(u)lat > agucchia), mac{u)la > maglia and macchia, teg(u)la > teglia and tegghia. In polysyllabic words final I and r fall, but e is added in monosyllables: bacchanal > baccano, tribunal > tribuna; mulier > moglie, piper > pepe, marmor > marmo; but mei > miele, sal > sale, cor > cuore. Li > gl (0 : filiu > figlio, melius > meglio, palea > paglia. The r{ group tends to lose either the r or the j; the former development is asserted to be from the singular, the latter from the plural; verb forms do not bear out this contention, but seem to indicate double development: -ariu > -aro and -aio, area > aia, -toriu > -toio, coriu > cuoio, februariu > febbraio, denariu > danaro (but salvadanaio), coemeteriu > cimitero, moriatur > *moriat > muoia or muora. THE NASALS: M,

N

§ 94. No change appears in m or n, initial or intervocalic, single or doubled: mirat > mira, multu > molto; nasu > naso, novu > nuovo; amare > amare, remu > remo; lana > lana, bene > bene; fiamma > fiamma, summu ^ sommo; pinna > penna, annu > anno. The group mn or m'n brought about by syncopation is subject to normal retrogressive assimilation: damnu > danno, somnu > sonno, dom(i)na > donna. Likewise the groups n'l and n'r, brought about by syncopation:32 spin(u)la > spilla, cun(u)la > culla, ven{i)re habeo > verrò. 32 But note widespread resistance to syncopation that would produce n'r: numeru > novero and numero, generu > genero, teneru > tenero, veneris die > venerdì.

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PHONOLOGY

Before other consonants, m and n tend not only to be retained but also to protect the following consonant from sonorization :33 infernu inferno,

centum

> cento, tempus

>

tempo.

Final m and n both fall; the former, it seems, was dropped at an earlier period: 3 4 centum M% > mmi: simia

> cento, examen

> scimmia,

Nj. > gn (n•): castanea

>

cases of mni, ln{, ng{: somniu spongia

>

> sciame, aeramen

vindemia

castagna,

>

vinea

> sogno, omnia

>

rame.

vendemmia. > vigna.

So also t h e rare

> ogna, balneu >

bagno,

spugna.

General Consonantal Development § 95. The following general rules for the development of consonants from Latin to Italian may here be offered. The groups used as examples are imaginary: a) Initial stop, or stop + r, stays: pa- > pa-, bra- > bra-. b) Initial stop + I > stop + {: pla- > pia-. c) Intervocalic surd, or surd + r, stays: -ata- > -ata-, -atra- > -atra-; or sonorizes: -ata- > -ada-, -atra- >

-adra-.

d) Intervocalic sonant, or sonant + r, stays: -ada- > -ada-, -adra- > -adra-;

or t u r n s t o s p i r a n t : -aba- > -ava-, -abra- > -aura-; or falls

( r a r e ) : -ivo- > -io-, -egro- >

-ero-.

e) Intervocalic stop + I > doubled stop + {: -abla- > -abbia-. f ) T h e l e t t e r s s, I, r, m,n > -arta, -ampa

+ s t o p s t a y : -asta > -asta, -alta > -alta,

> -ampa,

-anta >

-aria

-anta.

g) Double consonant stays: -atta > -atta. h) Two dissimilar stops > retrogressive assimilation: -apta > -atta. i) Guttural stop + front vowel > palatalization: ce- > ce-, gi- > gi-. j) Consonant + j > frequent palatalization, with frequent doubling of consonant in intervocalic position: -ci- > -cc-, -ti- > -zz-, -n{- > -ri-, etc. k) Final consonant falls: -pam > -pa. 33 Exception: in the group ns the n was dropped during the Vulgar Latin period (sporadically even in archaic and classical Latin): mense > mese, sponsu > sposo. 84 In monosyllabic words ending in m ¿r n there is occasional retention of the nasal (in > in, non > non and no), with transition from m to n (cum > con); or addition of e or o (possibly a paragogic vowel, reflecting the vowel of the stem): spem > speme, sunt > son > sono.

PHONOLOGY

65

Italian Sounds and Their Sources § 96. For general review purposes and to aid those who are better acquainted with Italian than with Latin, a general table of the Italian sounds, accompanied by their more usual Latin source or sources, is here given. VOWELS ACCENTED

Italian Latin < d, a a g, ie < ¿, at f < ¿, t, oe i < i g < S, all uo le uova; cornu > il corno, cornua > le corna; genu > *genitculiim > il ginocchio, *genucula > le ginocchia. On the one hand, these -a plurals with feminine gender in contrast with -o singulars in the masculine are beset by the analogical tendency to turn them into normal singular -o and plural -i masculine nouns, so that i cigli, gli uovi, i corni, i ginocchi are popularly used; and the double plural, in -a and in -i, is often used to distinguish between two meanings of a noun that are not distinguished in the singular (brachium > braccio; più. braccia, "arms of the body," bracci, "arms of the sea"; membrum > membro; pi. membra "limbs of the body," membri "members gf an association"; ossum > osso; più. ossa, collective; ossi, individual bones). On the other hand, the attraction exerted by these -a plurals was so ¿trong that many originally masculine nouns were drawn into their orbit: digitus > il dito, pi. le dita; murus > muro, pi. i muri ("house walls") and le mura ("city walls") ; fructus > frutto, pi. i frutti, le frutta, and even the collective la frutta; linteolus > lenzuolo, pi. i lenzuoli, le lenzuola. The feminine -a plural was also extended to a few nouns built from verb stems : il grido, le grida; il riso, le risa.

76

MORPHOLOGY

Lastly, attention may be called to the survival in the south of the Peninsula of many -ora plurals from third declension -us neuters and the extension of this suffix to many originally masculine nouns, as well as to nouns with ordinary -a plurals: tempus, tempora > il tempo, le tempora; lotus, latera > il lato, le latora; pignus, pignora > il pegno, le pegnora; campus, campi > il campo, le campora; focus, foci > il fuoco, le focora; pratum, prata > il prato, le pratora; locus, loca > il luogo, le luogora.

Survival of Individual Cases § 108. Occasionally "petrified" survivals of the classical genitive appear, particularly in compound words: terrae motu > terremoto, aquae ductu > acquedotto, lunae die > lunedì (also martis die, mercuri die, jovis die, veneris die > martedì, mercoledì, giovedì, venerdì). Prolonged survival of the genitive singular in -i for proper nouns of the second declension appears in the early Italian documents. 3 A classical genitive plural, with and without shift from -arum > -orum, appears in candelara, candelora (< die, ox festa candelarum) .4 The classical locative case, equivalent in form to the genitive in the singular, appears in many place names: Brundisium, loc. Brundisì > Brindisi; Florentia, loc. Florentiae > Firenze; Ariminum, loc. Ariminl > Rimini; Agrigentum, loc. Agrigenti > Girgenti. When plural forms were used as place names, the locative was equivalent to the ablative form; this also frequently survives: Aquae, loc. Aquis > Acqui. A petrified accusative form, which retains final -m because it is monosyllabic, is speme < spem (nom. spes). The theory advanced by many linguists that Italian single-case forms (and Romance single or oblique6 forms in general) are derived from the 3

For an interpretation of this phenomenon see Pei, "La locuzione in casa i Frescobaldi," in Lingua nostra, I, (Aug. 1939), 101-3. 4 6

For illorum > loro, see sec. 119.

With respect to classical Latin the term "oblique" is used to indicate any case save the nominative and vocative. In Romance development the term is used to denote the single form resulting from the phonetic merging of classical Latin oblique cases, where such merging took place. Old French, which preserves final -s in pronunciation, has a two-case system for masculine nouns: nom. sg. murs (< murus); oblique

sg. mur ( < merger of murum, muro)) nom. pi. mur (< muri)-, oblique pi. murs (
uomo; homine > *uomine or, with syncopation and retrogressive assimilation, > *onne; tempus > tempo, but tempore > *tempore or *tempre.

MORPHOLOGY

78

uopo < opus (not < opere) are all indicative of the more frequent victory

on Italian territory 7 of the nominative-accusative form. On the other hand, folgore < fulgure

(not < fulgur),

sovero, sughero

< subere (not < suber), acero < acere (not < acus), farre, farro < farre (not < far), vase, vaso < vase (not < vas), papavere, papavero < papavere

(not < papaver) are evidences of the partial triumph of the longer form. Lastly, an entire series of double derivations, one from the nominativeaccusative, the other from the ablative form, supplies final evidence of t h e conflict: rovo < robur, rovere < robure; vime < vimen, vimine


buone. Third declension adjectives; in which there is usually no distinction between masculine and feminine forms, develop into adjectives in -e, -i9: grandi(s), grandS(m), grandS > grande; grandes (or grandis; or *grandi on the analogy of boni) > grandi. In the singular, neuter forms undergo a process of phonetic merging with the masculine (bonuim), grande), or are lost. Neuter plural forms in -a or -ia are generally lost, but a few survive, transformed into feminine singular substantives (fortia, neuter pi. of fortis, > forza; festa, neuter pi. of festus-a-um, > festa). Omnia, neuter pi. of omnis, produces the archaic ogna. Transfer of declension, generally from the third to the first-second declension type, is sporadic: acer-acris-acre > acre, agro (acrus-a-um appears, occasionally in classical writers); rudis-e > rude, rudo; tristis-e >; triste, tristo; alacer-cris-cre > alacre, allegro; pauper >v povero. § 110. Classical comparative forms in -ior and -ius normally give way to analytical formations with plus (grandior being replaced by plus grandis > pin, grande)-, note that in the case of many adjectives the comparative formed by magis + positive was current in classical Latin and that early Italian documents show mai, ma• (< magis) used in this function (see sec. 266, and cf. also modern Spanish ~mds). Meliore, pejore, majore, and minore survive in migliore, peggiore, maggiore, and minore. Other comparative forms, such as superiore, inferiore, and so forth, appear to be of a learned nature. Some doubt is attached to the popular comparative adjective forms meglio, peggio, maggio, and meno, which phonetically could represent the nominatives melior, pejor, major, and minor or the neuter forms melius, pejus, majus, and minus or could be extensions of the adverbs melius, pejus, and so forth. § 111. There is doubt also concerning the Italian absolute superlative in -issimo, which is generally described as a learned restoration rather than a direct survival of Latin -tssimus (which, popularly treated, would probably have become *-esmo, *-emmo, or *-essimo, *-esimo; cf. • It is of interest to note how in one third declension adjective (vetus), in which the nominative and oblique forms could not phonetically fuse, a conflict arises, similar to the one we have noted in the case of imparisyllabic third-declension nouns: Urbs

Vetus > Orvieio, but Castellu *veteru (for veiere) > Castelvetro.

80

MORPHOLOGY

*met-ipsimu > medesimo). On the other hand, such forms as massimo < maximu, menomo < minimu, primo < primu, sommo < summu, ottimo < optimu, pessimo < pessimu, prossimo < proximu, ultimo < ultimu, may be of popular origin. The Italian relative superlative (il più grande) is a popular analytical form CHllu plus grande), replacing grandissimu. Adverbs § 112. The classical Latin adverbial ending -e (-