Variazione grammaticale dei dialetti d’Italia

Abstract

Italian dialects are part of the Italian landscape, they vary as the colours and the nature of the land. Differences in phonology, lexicon, and morphology are immediately evident, syntactic variation needs specific observation to be detected. Despite appearance, variation is not chaotic and can be described showing consistent phenomena: not every possible choice is attested. Most of the characteristics of Romance languages are present in Italian dialects, which have the advantage of showing a rich sample of micro-phenomena; moreover, they are documented in written texts from the Middle Ages to present day, and thus can provide data for the study of diachronic change. Like Romance languages, Italian dialects are subdivided in two major areas: one is part of the Romània Continua, the northern area, the other is coherent with southern, or discontinuous, Romance. I will illustrate some grammatical phenomena which present systematic differences. The syntactic characteristics of these areas are accompanied by the areal distribution of phonological rules, and the conclusions of modern linguistic theory appear to be consistent with what linguists of the past have observed and discovered within the framework of diachronic phonology and morphology.

DOI: 10.4424/lam62017-8