Italian Zero: A Comparative History

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide the first comparative, corpus-based description of the linguistic history of the Italian numeral-word zero. We show that the formal and semantic development of zero is far more complex than has been assumed and that it is intertwined with the history of cifra, originally a medieval Latin name for the symbol ’0‘. Cifra has received little attention from linguists despite the fact that its semantic development as a polysemous word is still reflected in modern Italian and in some of the other languages here explored. We examine the occurrence of these words in the context in which numerals for the symbol ’0‘ originated, namely the mathematical register, and then consider their uses in non-mathematical sources. We employ diachronic and synchronic analysis, both intragenre (within mathematical writings) and intergenre, and provide a comparative perspective by placing side-by-side works written in a variety of languages which have so far only been studied separately. Our theoretical observations and arguments cover both semantics and morphology. We argue that cifra underwent productive word-formation processes which created new lexemes via derivation and that its semantic development is a kind of expansive synecdoche. We also set out the challenges encountered in trying to explain the form zero.