Diatopic Variation Research Articles

Lingua sarda in movimento: dal parlato all'uso letterario

An internal diatopic variation and the lack of a pan-regional variety characterise Sardinian linguistic minority. In my analysis, I have employed the terminology of traditional baking products, together with their reflections in Sardinian fictional prose written both in Italian and in Sardinian, in order to delineate the main linguistic-cultural areas of the island.

Le(s) passé(s) surcomposé(s): temps, aspect, subjectivité

The aim of this paper is to explore whether the French overcomposed past tense (passé surcomposé) has anything to do with the raise of subjective interpretations, that is, interpretations where it is necessary to represent the point of view of an allocentric subject. First, the main grammatical features of the overcomposed past in French are spelled out. Second, a discussion of the semantic literature is proposed, with an eye to diatopic variation, in particular to the usages of this form in French-speaking switzerland, where the overcomposed past is more common and endorses a wider set of semantic functions as well as a greater number of grammatical types than in standard French. It is then argued that, contrarily to what some have suggested in the literature, the overcomposed past in French cannot be analyzed as bearing subjective effects by itself.

Alcune considerazioni inerenti all'architettura dell'italiano contemporaneo

This article describes certain fundamental issues relates to the current linguistic situation in Italy: the analysis of reciprocal relations between the national language and the Italian dialects (diglossia, bilinguism); the internal variants of Italian language depending on geographical location, social stratification, circumstances of the communication and the communication channels; the patterns of repertory proposed by famous linguists; some crucial problems concerning contemporary linguistic situation in Italy as: the importance of the diatopic variation; the recognition of the tension between Italian standard language derived from literary tradition and a new common form of the standard language; the recognition of the existence of a substandard variant - popular Italian.

DIALECT DICTIONARIES

Due to historical conditions, and in contrast to other Romance areas, a common standard language appears quite late in Italy. In the 16th century Tuscan definitively establishes itself as a literary language, but it is only after the political unification of the country in the second half of the 19th century that the foundations are laid for its linguistic unification. This has led to a multiform linguistic history and the persistence of an uncommonly high level of diatopic variation in the Italo-Romance area. Dialect dictionaries bear witness to these historical events and to the vitality which dialects still have in modern Italy, despite the increasing pressure of the standard language. The present article aims to describe briefly the various typologies of dialect dictionaries, focusing on the way they select and organize the linguistic material, the targets they set themselves, and the results they achieve.