Abstract
The present research paper explores the effects of relexification in the context of an in-group jargon variety. Specifically, it addresses the role of Romani as a supplier language in the process of lexical renewal that is ongoing in Dritto—the jargon of the Italian Travellers. Considered the most ancient descendant of the Italian historical jargon of the Roads, Dritto is a secret code which is still actively used within some socially marginalized service-provider communities, such as the families involved in the circus and the travelling show business. At the margins of the mainstream society, the families of Dritti entertainers share their living and economic spaces with the families of Italian Sinti, whose presence has been documented in Italy for centuries. As a consequence of this intense and prolonged cohabitation, Romani elements have always been documented in the corpora of Italian historical jargon. However, a considerably more significant contribution has recently been documented by researchers among the funfair workers in northern Italy. This work examines the driving factors behind this contact-induced shift by considering the changing socio-economic context faced by the travelling community in the last decades.
Highlights
The concept of ‘relexification’, in use since the 60s in creole studies and whose roots can be traced back to the late 19th century (DeGraff 2002, p. 325), was for the first time formally theorized by Muysken (1981) in the context of the analysis on Media Lengua, i.e., a mixed language spoken in Ecuador resulting from the insertion of the Spanish lexicon in the syntactic structure of Quechua
In comparison to the apport of Romani found in the historical corpora discussed above, my observation on language practices highlights a process of lexical substitution considerably more significant
A woman of Dritto descent who is married to a Sinto man observed during an interview on jargon collected in the funfair of Bologna (Emilia Romagna): My mother used to speak Dritto, she didn’t know what Sinto was
Summary
The concept of ‘relexification’, in use since the 60s in creole studies and whose roots can be traced back to the late 19th century (DeGraff 2002, p. 325), was for the first time formally theorized by Muysken (1981) in the context of the analysis on Media Lengua, i.e., a mixed language spoken in Ecuador resulting from the insertion of the Spanish lexicon in the syntactic structure of Quechua. 325), was for the first time formally theorized by Muysken (1981) in the context of the analysis on Media Lengua, i.e., a mixed language spoken in Ecuador resulting from the insertion of the Spanish lexicon in the syntactic structure of Quechua. The phenomenon is described as “the process of vocabulary borrowing in which the borrowed element adopts the meaning and use of the element in the receptor language for which it is substituted” It is recognized as a form of vocabulary substitution where the only element acquired from the target language is the phonological representation, while syntactic features and semantic representations remain unaltered. The theory of relexification was adopted and reworked by Lefebvre and her research team at Université Québec à Montréal (UQAM), which study conducted on the Haitian Creole led to the ‘Relexification Hypothesis for creole genesis’ (Lefebvre and Lumsden 1989; Lefebvre 1993, 1998)
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