22.777, Books: Historical Ling/Lang Documentation: Clivio, Danesi, Maida-Nicol

Tue Feb 15 23:03:01 UTC 2011

LINGUIST List: Vol-22-777. Tue Feb 15 2011. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 22.777, Books: Historical Ling/Lang Documentation: Clivio, Danesi, Maida-Nicol

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>

Reviews: Veronika Drake, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Monica Macaulay, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Eric Raimy, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Joseph Salmons, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Anja Wanner, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
       <reviews at linguistlist.org> 

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, 
and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Fatemeh Abdollahi <fatemeh at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
          http://multitree.linguistlist.org/

Links to the websites of all LINGUIST's supporting publishers
are available at the end of this issue. 

===========================Directory==============================  

1)
Date: 08-Feb-2011
From: Ulrich Lueders [lincom.europa at t-online.de]
Subject: An Introduction to Italian Dialectology: Clivio, Danesi,
Maida-Nicol

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 18:01:47
From: Ulrich Lueders [lincom.europa at t-online.de]
Subject: An Introduction to Italian Dialectology: Clivio, Danesi, Maida-Nicol

E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=22-777.html&submissionid=4495496&topicid=2&msgnumber=1

Title: An Introduction to Italian Dialectology 
Series Title: LINCOM Studies in Romance Linguistics 19  

Publication Year: 2011 
Publisher: Lincom GmbH
	   http://www.lincom.eu

Author: Gianrenzo P. Clivio
Author: Marcel Danesi
Author: Sara Maida-Nicol

Hardback: ISBN:  9783895866562 Pages: 240 Price: Europe EURO 124.80

Abstract:

The immense linguistic wealth of Italy, reflecting her varied and multicentered 
history, is represented not only by its literary language -- the medium forged 
by Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, and adopted by countless other great 
writers -- but also by its many regional and local dialects, often so different 
from common Italian as to constitute in practice separate languages. 

The object of this book is to describe and, in as much as possible, account 
for the linguistic fragmentation of modern Italy, keeping in mind both diatopic 
and diastratic variation, along with diachrony and synchrony. Numerous maps 
serve as concrete illustration.

Like any science, dialectology is based on observation, identification, 
description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of 
phenomena. It does not make blanket statements about what is "good 
grammar," as do the grammars taught in schools. It is not a normative, or 
prescriptive, approach to language; it is descriptive. Indeed, it studies not 
only standard usage, but variation of all kinds, geographical and social, in the 
use of language. It is concerned with the structure of languages (or dialects), 
with how language is used in society, how it is learned, and how and why it 
changes over time.

Some of the Italian dialects form the speech of a single village or small town, 
others are in use in metropolis such as Milan and Naples, and a very few 
others still have achieved the status of a regional language, as is the case of 
Piedmontese. All of them, however, are well worthy of scientific study, from 
both a diachronic and synchronic standpoint, for each one is a modern and 
original form of Latin, as it evolved locally, partly under the influence of 
various external factors, such as substratum and superstratum languages, 
and complex socio-historical factors. In the North of the Country, there stands 
out a compact and generally mutually intelligible vast group of dialects, 
collectively labelled Gallo-Italic, which in many ways are more akin to Gallo-
Romance than to Tuscan Italian. The authors demonstrate that Gallo-Italic 
should be classified separately from Italo-Romance, which begins south of 
the famous La Spezia-Rimini line, and be granted the status of a separate 
Romance language, at least in the sense that Franco-Provençal and Rhaeto-
Romansch generally are, not to mention the equally highly fragmented 
Sardinian.

The Tuscan dialects, the basis of the literary language, are conspicuous 
more by the absence of certain features, e.g. metaphony, than by the 
presence of any of their own: only their conservative character vis-à-vis Latin 
makes them strikingly unique. Together with Tuscan go the Corsican dialects 
and the modern vernacular of the city of Rome (which, in its older phase, was 
instead akin to the Neapolitan type). South of the Ancona-Rome line, 
Neapolitan is the best known dialect, the vehicle of an important literature and 
of immensely popular songs, though it never developed into the regional 
koine it might have become in the days of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. 
Calabria and Sicily remain linguistically fragmented, though mutual 
intelligibility among different varieties does not by and large constitute a 
problem. A technologically trail blazing linguistic atlas of Sicily is now 
underway, as is a new atlas of Italy as a whole. Other important tools for the 
study of the Italian dialects are underway. 

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
                     Language Documentation
                     Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): Italian (ita)

Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=52986

MAJOR SUPPORTERS

	Brill          
		http://www.brill.nl	

	Cambridge Scholars Publishing          
		http://www.c-s-p.org	

	Cascadilla Press          
		http://www.cascadilla.com/	

	Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd          
		http://www.continuumbooks.com	

	De Gruyter Mouton          
		http://www.degruyter.com/mouton	

	Edinburgh University Press          
		http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/	

	Elsevier Ltd          
		http://www.elsevier.com/linguistics	

	Emerald Group Publishing Limited          
		http://www.emeraldinsight.com/	

	Equinox Publishing Ltd          
		http://www.equinoxpub.com/	

	Georgetown University Press          
		http://www.press.georgetown.edu	

	John Benjamins          
		http://www.benjamins.com/	

	Lincom GmbH          
		http://www.lincom.eu	

	MIT Press          
		http://mitpress.mit.edu/	

	Morgan & Claypool Publishers          

	Multilingual Matters          
		http://www.multilingual-matters.com/	

	Oxford University Press          
		http://www.oup.com/us	

	Palgrave Macmillan          
		http://www.palgrave.com	

	Peter Lang AG          
		http://www.peterlang.com	

	Rodopi          
		http://www.rodopi.nl/	

	Routledge (Taylor and Francis)          
		http://www.routledge.com/	

	University of Toronto Press          
		http://www.utpjournals.com/	

OTHER SUPPORTING PUBLISHERS	

	Association of Editors of the Journal of Portuguese Linguistics
		http://www.fl.ul.pt/revistas/JPL/JPLweb.htm 

	Graduate Linguistic Students' Association, Umass
		http://glsa.hypermart.net/ 

	Linguistic Association of Finland
		http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/ 

	Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke - LOT
		http://www.lotpublications.nl/ 

	Pacific Linguistics
		http://pacling.anu.edu.au/ 

	University of Nebraska Press

-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-22-777	
----------------------------------------------------------
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
          http://multitree.linguistlist.org/