Fattori identitari, modelli e attori dell’Italia centro-settentrionale tra II e IV secolo

In the context of the dynamics between historical-social factors, cultural and linguistic contacts that characterize the first centuries of the Christian era in central-northern Italy, this study tests the concept of community of practice, that based on Christianity and that of the world Roman-imperial identifiable with the elite who accessed education and public administration.
The study focuses on the relationship between Greek and Latin as language of translation, in the belief that a linguistic analysis referring to texts of these communities of practice can lead to a revision of various conceptual assumptions and a better understanding of defined areas and periods, avoiding the distorting effect of macro-labels.
Quickly tracing the historical-social framework, we examine some significant linguistic facts both in the relationship between the two languages and in the evolution of Latin. Regarding the syntactic level and the subordination strategies, we analyze the relationship between the synthetic structure (AcI) and the explicit substantive clauses as a signal of evolution from the archaic and classical Latin system. On a pragmatic level, some phenomena of dialogical deixis are examined. The texts investigated are letters of the Christian community, starting from the First Epistle of Clement, in the original Greek version and in the Latin translation, and the dialogical parts of the Colloquia scholica, bilingual didactic texts.