BERGAMO
Overview
Date/time interval
Syllabus
Course Objectives
This course has two closely connected aims. First an in-depth study of the of the ‘external’ history of the Italian language, including the social, political and cultural forces which helped to promote one of the many dialects of Italy (namely, Florentine) to cultural pre-eminence as a literary language and then to social pre-eminence as the basis of the modern national language. Second an in-depth examination of the internal history of Italian and the non-standard language systems used in Italy, i.e., the ‘dialects’ (though not forgetting the minority languages of Italy and the various issues they raise for language contact), exploring and tracing their two-thousand-year structural evolution from Latin to the present day.
By the end of the course students will acquire an in-depth knowledge of the linguistic history of Italy and, in particular, will possess the analytic and theoretical skills to understand and situate in a diachronic and comparative perspective the external history and the internal structural development of the Italo-Romance varieties. The expected learning outcomes include:
a) a knowledge and understanding of the rise of Florentine as the national language;
b) the ability to apply diachronic analyses to the phonetic-phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical structures of the principal Italo-Romance varieties;
c) the ability to contextualize the structural development of Italo-Romance within the broader Indo-European family and above all within the wider sub-branch of Romance;
d) a knowledge and understanding of various aspects of current theories of language change and an ability to apply these to the specific developments of Italo-Romance.
Course Prerequisites
Other than an excellent command of Italian, there are no prerequisites for this course.
Teaching Methods
Teaching is principally through face-to-face lectures supported by PowerPoint presentations uploaded to the course’s e-learning platform. Lectures will also include practical activities including the completion of linguistic exercises (carried out in groups) and the reading and discussion in class of short texts. Students are warmly encouraged to take part in all class discussions.
In addition to the reading lists published on Leganto, PowerPoint presentations uploaded onto the course’s e-learning platform also contain specific bibliographies for each of the arguments covered in each of the lectures.
Assessment Methods
Assessment is carried out through a (15-minute) oral discussion and marked out of a total of 30. The assessment consists in a series of questions relating to various topics on the external and internal histories of Italy to ascertain the students’ ability to describe, understand and analyse in sufficient depth and with the required expertise the diachronic development of Italian and the other Italo-Romance varieties. Students will be offered a selection of topics to choose from for in-depth discussion which may also involve the use of textual materials (short passages and linguistic exercises).
Contents
The course will examine a wide selection of topics relating to the external and internal histories of different Italo-Romance varieties. These include:
• The birth of Italian and the first Italo-Romance texts
• Tuscan-Italian and the dialects of Italy
• Italian as an exemplar of Standard Average European
• Italian among the Romance languages
• Multilingual Italy
• Northern Italian dialects: development of phonetic, morphological and syntactic structures;
• Central Italian dialects: development of phonetic, morphological and syntactic structures;
• Southern Italian dialects: development of phonetic, morphological and syntactic structures;
• Sardinian dialects: development of phonetic, morphological, syntactic and lexical structures
• Regional varieties of Italian
• Lexis: change and stability
• Stressed vowel systems
• Consonants: weakening and strengthening
• Rafforzamento fonosintattico ‘phonosyntactic strengthening’
• The syntax of old Italian
• From Latin to Italo-Romance: syntheticity and analyticity
• From Latin to Italo-Romance: changes in configurationality
• From Latin to Italo-Romance: alignment changes
• Pushing theory and variation to their limits: evidence from Italo-Romance
• Classifications of Italo-Romance: the north-south continuum and parameters of morphosyntactic variation
• Greek–Romance contact in southern Italy: processes of Hellenization and Romanicization
Online Resources
More information
1) Attendance of lectures is strongly recommended. Students are required to consult regularly the e-learning platform of the course and to download all required materials.
2) The curriculum is the same for students who are unable to attend lectures. They are not required to undertake any additional readings, but are expected to download and study the PowerPoint presentations and all other materials available on the course’s e-learning platform.
3) Those without a basic knowledge of linguistics are advised to study an introductory handbook to linguistics.
4) Erasmus students and those with personal or individual learning plans (PDP/PEI) are advised to contact the lecturer at the beginning of the course.
5) For any other information students may contact the lecturer at the following email address: adam.ledgeway@unibg.it