28.2763, Review: Italian; General Ling; Historical Ling; Language Acquisition; Pragmatics; Text/Corpus Ling: Lubello (2016)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-2763. Tue Jun 20 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.2763, Review: Italian; General Ling; Historical Ling; Language Acquisition; Pragmatics; Text/Corpus Ling: Lubello (2016)

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Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2017 14:07:50
From: Emilia Aigotti Garcia [Lenguafranca77 at gmail.com]
Subject: Manuale di linguistica italiana

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-3692.html

EDITOR: Sergio  Lubello
TITLE: Manuale di linguistica italiana
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Emilia Aigotti Garcia, Universidad de Guadalajara

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

This book is Volume 13 of Manuals of Romance Languages by de Gruyter (Edited
by Günter Holtus and Fernando Sánchez Miret) which has been designed to offer
a complete and wide ranging historical and contemporary picture of the romance
languages themselves and linguistic studies concerning these languages. It is
expected to consist of 60 volumes with 15-30 contributors each and an average
of 600 pages each. The volumes are written in a single language ranging from
French, Italian, Spanish, English and Portuguese. 

Sergio Lubello starts the introduction to this volume by mentioning similar
foundational work on the Italian languages. Including: Volume 4 of Manuals of
Romance Languages, Lexikon der Romantistischen Linguistik (1988) along with
three other works of this same time period on Italian grammar- Serianni 1988,
Renzi, Salvi, and Cardinaletti 1988-1995, and Schwarz 1988. He also makes note
of more recent work such as the Enciclopedia dell’italiano (Simone 2010-2011),
Storia della lingua italiana (Serianni, Trifone 1993-1994) and Storia
dell’italiano scritto (Antonelli, Motolese, Tomasin 2014) among others, all of
which have contributed a voluminous amount to the linguistic body of research
on the Italian language. However, Lubello stresses the contemporary nature of
this volume in comparison to previous research. In particular Volume 13
focuses on the changes in the Italian language in the last quarter of a
century.

The editor’s note frequently emphasizes the diversity, wide scope, and
diachronic nature and intent of the Manuals of Romance Languages and this
volume has achieved just that. The articles (mostly of Parts 2 and 3) support
its contemporary basis while offering synopses of older foundational research
where relevant. Particular attention is paid to the morphing social, cultural
and linguistic landscape in Italy as it has been affected by technology,
immigration and demographic changes, as well as a large population with
“functional illiteracy”. It includes an introduction and three sections of 30
academic articles by 30 different authors from a diverse scope of subjects
including: philology, dialectology, morphophonology, syntax, morphology,
pragmatics, sociolinguistics, lexicography, grammaticography, geolinguistics,
psycho- and neurolinguistics, sign language, and applied linguistics.     

A little bit of knowledge about Italian history is crucial as several articles
make diachronic comparisons between contemporary phenomena and those that
occurred pre-unification or in the Middle Ages. Unification is used in many
articles as a defining moment not just in history but in the linguistic
development of Italy. It is therefore important to briefly explain the main
details of this historical event. Unification, also called Risorgimento
“resurgence”, occurred in the 19th century and its end result was the creation
of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. It was a political and social movement toward
nationhood. After the fall of the Roman Empire (around 476 CE) the country was
fractured into city states and territorial states and at times ruled by many
different groups including Spain, France and the Hapsburgs. Some say the fall
of the Roman Empire marked a beginning to the Middle Ages. It was important
that Risorgimento also inspired Italian nationalism among the people. 

The volume is broken into three sections: (1) Italian in history – containing
6 articles, (2) Contemporary Italian: structure and variety- containing 15
articles, and (3) Places of codification, questions, and recent developments
in research- containing 9 articles. Part One lays a historical foundation of
the Italian language and seems to focus on how it changed in relation to
important political and historical occurrences, while Part Two (the meat of
the book) focuses on more contemporary issues particularly in the
sociolinguistic realm. Part Three is a blend of many other mostly contemporary
topics and research related to the Italian language, seemingly without any
particular focus.

Topics covered in Part One include:

- The Italoromanza dialect and written testimonials, with specific attention
paid to the relationship between Latin and the vernacular in medieval times.

- The morphophonology of the Italoromanzi vernacular in medieval times, a
description of traits related to modern dialects, the difference between past
and present dialect groupings, in particular the Tuscan vernacular related to
the formation of a common language, geographic justifications for Italoromania
before the existence of a standard Italian, geographic distinctions between
northern, southern, high-southern, and extreme southern dialects.

- The syntax of antiquated Italian vernacular based on Florentine data from
the 13th and early 14th centuries and how it differs from modern dialects. 

- A diachronic examination of the cultural and institutional factors that laid
the foundation for a Tuscan based Italian pre- and post- unification
including: music and art, printing and publishing, church, school, politics
and bureaucracy, theater, cinema and mass media, socio-ethnic and
socio-economic dynamics.

- Italian outside Italy from the Middle Ages to Unification – “language
without empire”. Specifically the prestige of Italian art and music in Europe
and England from the Renaissance to the First Modern Age, in the Mediterranean
the circulation of Italoromanze through commercial carriers, and in the
Ottoman Empire supranational communication and diplomacy. 

- The idea of a common language, a non-literary language, popular language,
and regional languages in light of multidialectalism, a characteristic of the
16th to 20th centuries (given written examples from the semi-educated class).

Part 2 includes:

- Current language trends as a result of immigration, the web and the
expansion of English, key trends in phonetics/phonology, spelling and
punctuation, morphosyntaxis, and lexicon to indicate possible changes in the
linguistic structure.

- Morphology of contemporary Italian including the discussion of gender and
flexible gender of nouns and adjectives, and organization of the verbal
paradigm, as well as diverse processes of formation, the groupings of semantic
categories, and the principal innovations in the formation of contemporary
Italian words. 

- A review of the discipline of textual study and the main fields of analysis
in the last twenty years, interesting studies relating to the interpretation
of text and the relationship between text, context and implied meanings, as
well as a look at anaphoric cohesion, voice, enunciation, dialogue and
monologue using key texts of foreign learners.

- An overview of pragmatics research while looking at different publications
including those related to context, text and deixis, speech acts, verbal
interaction, the relationship between linguistic structure, use and meaning,
and cross-cultural aspects. 

- A sociolinguistic profile in regard to immigration, the death of dialects
and the new social acceptance and value given to dialects, particularly
distinguishing the sociolinguistics of variation and social markedness as well
as the sociolinguistics of minority languages and dialects and its interplay
with social status. 

- Geographic distribution and characteristics of the dialects of Italoromanzi
(the rise of the Romance variety and the beginning of the standard Italian). 

- Italian by region, looking at the dialects that occurred in the century and
a half after unification. A new wave of dialectalization that led to the
learning of Tuscan-based Italian, as well as diatopic facets of the new
Italian described by phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical
characteristics.

- A definition, explanation and discussion of research of the semi-educated
class from the last twenty years concentrating in diaphasic and diastratic
criteria, as well as trends in relation to the presence of substandard
Italian.

- Types of jargon and the formation of slang words, as well as juvenile
language and the interface of language, gender and sexism with particular
attention paid to recent research.

- Italian research on specialized languages from 1988-2015, the study of
diamesic variation, didactics of the university, recent research in
terminology, neology and lexicographical production, and specialized
vocabulary at various levels.
- Recent trends of Italian in the mass media with a focus on cross media and
user interaction in social networks considering newspapers, radio and TV with
specific attention to text, syntax and lexicon, as well as a description of
language of the web, printed and online newspapers, radio and TV with recent
studies on the variation of diamesia and diaphasia. 

- The traditional areas of public and institutional Italian: the
bureaucratic-administrative language, political communication, the
legislative-administrative language in the European Union, called euroletto
(eurocratese), with reference to the Swiss Confederation, as well as the
diffusion of English in public and institutional communication in Italian.

- A diachronic and synchronic study of Italian considering computer-mediated
communication with a look at diamesia as an autonomous dimension of variation.

- A reconstruction of the conditions that made Italian a language for
foreigners post-unification, language policy choices post-unification, and how
(since the 1980s) the state has focused on the role of Italian in the world
and its competition with other languages. 

- Italian legislation regarding minorities within the European framework, the
alloglot community in Italy, a historical context as well as the vitality of
the language and on the manner of its use, and Italian legislation in the area
of minorities. 

And Part 3 includes:

- Lexicography and Italian meta-lexicography: Particularly antique bilingual
glossaries, the first monolingual dictionaries, the Accademia della Crusca,
the developments of historical lexicography and etymology, dictionaries of
individual eras and individual authors, dictionaries of common use and
dialectal lexicography as well as specialized dictionaries. 

- Grammaticography: “the crisis of grammar in an idealistic age”, a view of
Italian grammaticography from the late twentieth century to today, an outline
of the theoretical foundation, from generative linguistics to valenziale
grammar with specific attention given to two works of early Italian syntax
edited by G. Salvi and M. Dardano.

- Geolinguistics: Consisting of two parts (1) a brief description of its
origins within romance philology as well as the empirical basis for the
linguistic domains of Romania, and (2) the dialectometry of Salzburg with
particular focus on geo-variational data in linguistic atlases in the last 100
years and the geolinguistics interpretation of dialectometry.

- Corpus linguistics: Outlines the characteristics that define the Italian
corpora, reviews the corpora already fulfilled, and identifies the domains
within linguistics that have used Italian corpora (lexical, vocabulary,
research of phonetics and intonation, morpho-syntaxis and structure of
information, semantics, the instruction of Italian L2) with some important
contributions in the last 15 years.

- Philology: focuses attention on the relationship between philology and
linguistics, grammatical history and lexicography, the problem of the
publication of ancient texts, possible contributions to publishing, and points
on the cooperation between philology and language historians.

- Language policies and the use of English in university instruction: anguage
policy in general in Italy and as it relates to pre- and post-unification and
current debates on the diverse topics within this field some of which include:
the geographic or cultural seat of the superior language, the emulation and
competition between Italian and other European languages, the purity of the
language, and attempts at handwriting reform.

- Psycho and Neurolinguistics: applied linguistics and cognitive linguistics
together with psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics anchored by
interdisciplinary collaboration, while tracing a brief history and methods,
and major themes in three chapters (1) applied linguistics in the strict
sense, (2) psycholinguistics, and (3) neurolinguistics.

- Didactics and instruction of Italian and its phonology:  makes mention of
the debate on the direction taken in Italian teaching, and the interaction
between the didactics of Italian to foreigners and to Italian speakers.

- Italian Sign Language: Retracing 30 years of study and answering: What are
the first evidences of communication of the deaf in Italy? Who uses this
language? Can LIS be considered a natural language? Is it possible to study it
in relation to human language universals? 

EVALUATION

The scope and wide variety of themes addressed is impressive and at 737 pages
I would expect such. The entire manual with all its volumes is an impressive
endeavor. This, as Volume 13, accurately targets contemporary sociolinguistic
issues as the largest chunk of the book while still offering some discussion
of the history of the language for readers who did not study previous volumes.
The third section lacks a clear theme but its topics are poignant and
interesting and cover the wide breadth that the editor promises. This is a
reference book so it is best used as a sort of Italian linguistic encyclopedia
chock full of information that will surely pique the interest of any linguist,
researcher, or student interested in the Italian language.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Emilia Aigotti García is a linguistic researcher from Chicago. She received
her master's in linguistics from Northeastern Illinois University where she
focused on first language acquisition, indigenous languages, and phonology.
She hopes to attend one of the doctorate programs in Canada this fall to study
phonetics/phonology, semantics, and indigenous languages (her true passion).
She currently lives in Jalisco, Mexico (with her husband and son) and is a
teacher of English for Special Purposes: Anthropology/Anthropological
Linguistics. She is a lifelong student of Spanish and Italian.





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