A Linguistic History of Italian

Abstract

Part 1 Introduction: perspectives and aims the emergence of Italian chronology and historical sources a note on phonetic transcription some concepts in linguistic change. Part 2 History of the sound system: the prosodic system vowels consonants major vowel changes the glides [j] and [w], and their effects palatalizing effects of the front vowels consonantal weakening consonant lengthening, and syllable structure syllable-final weakening the word-final consonants dissimilation and metathesis the phonetic sources of inflectional -e and -i a note on learned phonology. Part 3 Structural evolution of nouns, adjectives and verbs: structure of words infectional morphology of the noun and adjective invariance and inflectionalessness number in the noun and adjective gender adjectives the demonstratives the articles the verb the pronouns the prepositions derivational word formation. Part 4 History of sentence structure: verb - subject agreement interrogation negation conjunctions comparison verb complementation aspect and tense mood. Part 5 Variation in modern Italian: types of variation the dialects structural influences of the dialects on popular Italian emergence of neostandard Italian? Italian abroad.