Master's dissertation focusing on the diachronic development of Övdalian and its position within ... more Master's dissertation focusing on the diachronic development of Övdalian and its position within the Scandinavian dialectal landscape. This first italian-written research on Övdalian offers an overview of the phonological, morphological and syntactical features of the dalecarlian vernacular in an historical and typological perspective.
Seminario tenuto presso l'Università degli Studi di Firenze in collaborazione con il Circolo Ling... more Seminario tenuto presso l'Università degli Studi di Firenze in collaborazione con il Circolo Linguistico Fiorentino il 23/02/2024
Standardisation through opposition: the case of the Gustav Vasa Bible (italian version)- 27 Janua... more Standardisation through opposition: the case of the Gustav Vasa Bible (italian version)- 27 January 2023, Rome
The Gustav Vasa Bible (henceforth GVB, 1526-1541) is the first Swedish translation of the Bible. It gets its name from king Gustav I, who was raised to the throne in 1523, following a violent conflict with Denmark which led to the dissolution of the Kalmar Union. The translation marks an important milestone for the history of the Swedish language: it is canonically mentioned as the first example of Early Modern Swedish (Äldre Nysvenska) and it represents the first systematic attempt at an orthographic standardisation of the language.
This standardisation process is characterised by a programmatic distancing from Danish, via the – sometimes deliberate – erasure of all the features that Swedish shared with the language of the former overlords. The most apparent features are the introduction of the graphemes <å> <ä> <ö> in opposition to Danish <aa>, <æ>, <ø>, as well as the replacement of final -e with the hypercorrected -a . In this respect, the GVB represents a significant case in historical sociolinguistics, i.e., an example of standardisation catalysed by the will and need of marking the difference between two highly similar languages, thus contributing to the construction of a cohesive national identity.
The presentation will feature a direct comparison of the translations of Matthew 5 from DNT24 and SNT26 respectively. When necessary, further insight will be given on the influence of the sources – either Latin or Low German – from which the text has been translated. A deeper diachronic insight will be provided through the analysis of a short recording of a dialectal speaker.
Contribution to the conference "Accidents, Hitches, and Glitches
in Linguistic Research" Roma, 23... more Contribution to the conference "Accidents, Hitches, and Glitches in Linguistic Research" Roma, 23-24 February 2023
The Nordic Dialect Corpus (henceforth NDC) represents the most comprehensive digital resource for the study of North Germanic diatopic varieties. The latest version of the platform (NDC v. 4.0) has been launched in 2019 and features contributions from nine of the most prominent universities in Northern Europe. While the corpus is mainly designed for syntactic research, it is also suitable for other areas of investigations (phonology, morphology, discourse analysis). However, the degrees of suitability may vary according to the precise scope of research. By sharing personal experiences regarding the performance of a survey on the NDC, the talk will provide insights on how to find strategies to work around the limitations (or absence) of features in digital corpora. More specifically, the presentation will tackle the following issues that hindered the swift analysis of dative retention in Norwegian and Swedish dialects: a) Incomplete or absent tagging: grammatical categories are overtly tagged exclusively in those areas where such categories are present in the standard language. It is necessary to employ a series of filters and to perform multiple queries to analyse non-standard features. b) Errors in automatic tagging: the incorrect tagging of parts of speech makes them unretrievable for most filters. This can significantly alter the figures when dealing with scarce data. c) Incomplete transcription: the Norwegian section of the corpus provides a phonetic transcription of the recordings together with a bokmål translation, while the Swedish recordings (with some exceptions) only feature standard Swedish translations. Despite the presence of obstacles that forced the scope of the research to be slightly redefined, the talk ultimately displays the valuable advantages of corpus resources and methods for diachronic investigations.
Contribution to the conference "Cracks in the bottleneck
Verb-third and the polyoccupation of the... more Contribution to the conference "Cracks in the bottleneck Verb-third and the polyoccupation of the initial slot in verb-second languages – insights from Germanic and beyond", Paris 16-17 February 2023
In their extensive work on Rhaetoromance (henceforth Rr.), Benincà & Haiman (2017) state the “importance of German influence” regarding the areal distribution of G-inversion, with particular reference to Ladin and Romansh varieties. However, given the absence of further elaboration on the matter, such a statement leaves space for a wide array of interpretations. Indeed, the explanatory soundness of language contact as the ground for syntactic phenomena in the Rr. area has often been object for debate (Belardi, 1991).
The talk stems from Cognola’s (2015) argument – originally regarding Mòcheno– that syntactic variation need not be explained as the result of competing grammars in a plurilingual community, by extending this principle to Rr. varieties. For the purposes of this contribution, the genetic relation between Romansh, Ladin and Friulan, as well as their supposed common Rhaetic substrate, is considered irrelevant and Rr. is simply intended as a conventional label for a group of languages that have retained several conservative features, mainly by means of areal isolation. Wolfes’ (2016, 2020) accounts of Medieval Romance varieties as V2 languages allows us to propose some inferences on the diachronic development of the phenomena in Rr., by drawing comparisons with the analyses of Ladin dialects brought forward by Poletto (2002) and Casalicchio & Cognola (2018), the latter defining V2 constraints in Rr. as “less strict than those of Germanic V2 varieties […] and less liberal than those of Old Italian”.
Starting from these premises, the action of language contact is reconsidered from a new perspective. Rather than acting as a trigger for the V2 phenomena in Rr., the prolonged contact with German can be interpreted as reinforcing pre-existing grammatical structures, thus contributing to their conservation.
Therefore, Rr. varieties such as Romansh and Mareo-Badiotto, characterised by an extended areal coexistence with German (and/or spoken in areas where German is the Dachsprache) show a tendency towards the conservation of stricter V2 constraints, as opposed to Friulan and Fassano, while Gardenese falls in the transitional area of the spectrum. This analysis aligns neatly with the original observations by Benincà & Haiman (2017), without necessarily relying on the aforementioned hypothesis of competing grammars critiqued by Cognola (2015).
The presentation will therefore provide an overview of the different parameters at work in the structure of the left periphery of several Romance, Rhaetoromance, and Germanic languages and dialects. A collection of examples from both modern and older sources will allow us to describe the development of the phenomenon in Rr., while relating them to the sociolinguistic history of the area.
Presentation on the misuse of the term "Anglo-Saxon" in Italy and other Mediterranean countries. ... more Presentation on the misuse of the term "Anglo-Saxon" in Italy and other Mediterranean countries. Part of the conference "What’s in a Name? -(Ab)Use of Anglo-Saxon in English-speaking cultures and elsewhere" in Padua, 6-7 June 2022.
Master's dissertation focusing on the diachronic development of Övdalian and its position within ... more Master's dissertation focusing on the diachronic development of Övdalian and its position within the Scandinavian dialectal landscape. This first italian-written research on Övdalian offers an overview of the phonological, morphological and syntactical features of the dalecarlian vernacular in an historical and typological perspective.
Seminario tenuto presso l'Università degli Studi di Firenze in collaborazione con il Circolo Ling... more Seminario tenuto presso l'Università degli Studi di Firenze in collaborazione con il Circolo Linguistico Fiorentino il 23/02/2024
Standardisation through opposition: the case of the Gustav Vasa Bible (italian version)- 27 Janua... more Standardisation through opposition: the case of the Gustav Vasa Bible (italian version)- 27 January 2023, Rome
The Gustav Vasa Bible (henceforth GVB, 1526-1541) is the first Swedish translation of the Bible. It gets its name from king Gustav I, who was raised to the throne in 1523, following a violent conflict with Denmark which led to the dissolution of the Kalmar Union. The translation marks an important milestone for the history of the Swedish language: it is canonically mentioned as the first example of Early Modern Swedish (Äldre Nysvenska) and it represents the first systematic attempt at an orthographic standardisation of the language.
This standardisation process is characterised by a programmatic distancing from Danish, via the – sometimes deliberate – erasure of all the features that Swedish shared with the language of the former overlords. The most apparent features are the introduction of the graphemes <å> <ä> <ö> in opposition to Danish <aa>, <æ>, <ø>, as well as the replacement of final -e with the hypercorrected -a . In this respect, the GVB represents a significant case in historical sociolinguistics, i.e., an example of standardisation catalysed by the will and need of marking the difference between two highly similar languages, thus contributing to the construction of a cohesive national identity.
The presentation will feature a direct comparison of the translations of Matthew 5 from DNT24 and SNT26 respectively. When necessary, further insight will be given on the influence of the sources – either Latin or Low German – from which the text has been translated. A deeper diachronic insight will be provided through the analysis of a short recording of a dialectal speaker.
Contribution to the conference "Accidents, Hitches, and Glitches
in Linguistic Research" Roma, 23... more Contribution to the conference "Accidents, Hitches, and Glitches in Linguistic Research" Roma, 23-24 February 2023
The Nordic Dialect Corpus (henceforth NDC) represents the most comprehensive digital resource for the study of North Germanic diatopic varieties. The latest version of the platform (NDC v. 4.0) has been launched in 2019 and features contributions from nine of the most prominent universities in Northern Europe. While the corpus is mainly designed for syntactic research, it is also suitable for other areas of investigations (phonology, morphology, discourse analysis). However, the degrees of suitability may vary according to the precise scope of research. By sharing personal experiences regarding the performance of a survey on the NDC, the talk will provide insights on how to find strategies to work around the limitations (or absence) of features in digital corpora. More specifically, the presentation will tackle the following issues that hindered the swift analysis of dative retention in Norwegian and Swedish dialects: a) Incomplete or absent tagging: grammatical categories are overtly tagged exclusively in those areas where such categories are present in the standard language. It is necessary to employ a series of filters and to perform multiple queries to analyse non-standard features. b) Errors in automatic tagging: the incorrect tagging of parts of speech makes them unretrievable for most filters. This can significantly alter the figures when dealing with scarce data. c) Incomplete transcription: the Norwegian section of the corpus provides a phonetic transcription of the recordings together with a bokmål translation, while the Swedish recordings (with some exceptions) only feature standard Swedish translations. Despite the presence of obstacles that forced the scope of the research to be slightly redefined, the talk ultimately displays the valuable advantages of corpus resources and methods for diachronic investigations.
Contribution to the conference "Cracks in the bottleneck
Verb-third and the polyoccupation of the... more Contribution to the conference "Cracks in the bottleneck Verb-third and the polyoccupation of the initial slot in verb-second languages – insights from Germanic and beyond", Paris 16-17 February 2023
In their extensive work on Rhaetoromance (henceforth Rr.), Benincà & Haiman (2017) state the “importance of German influence” regarding the areal distribution of G-inversion, with particular reference to Ladin and Romansh varieties. However, given the absence of further elaboration on the matter, such a statement leaves space for a wide array of interpretations. Indeed, the explanatory soundness of language contact as the ground for syntactic phenomena in the Rr. area has often been object for debate (Belardi, 1991).
The talk stems from Cognola’s (2015) argument – originally regarding Mòcheno– that syntactic variation need not be explained as the result of competing grammars in a plurilingual community, by extending this principle to Rr. varieties. For the purposes of this contribution, the genetic relation between Romansh, Ladin and Friulan, as well as their supposed common Rhaetic substrate, is considered irrelevant and Rr. is simply intended as a conventional label for a group of languages that have retained several conservative features, mainly by means of areal isolation. Wolfes’ (2016, 2020) accounts of Medieval Romance varieties as V2 languages allows us to propose some inferences on the diachronic development of the phenomena in Rr., by drawing comparisons with the analyses of Ladin dialects brought forward by Poletto (2002) and Casalicchio & Cognola (2018), the latter defining V2 constraints in Rr. as “less strict than those of Germanic V2 varieties […] and less liberal than those of Old Italian”.
Starting from these premises, the action of language contact is reconsidered from a new perspective. Rather than acting as a trigger for the V2 phenomena in Rr., the prolonged contact with German can be interpreted as reinforcing pre-existing grammatical structures, thus contributing to their conservation.
Therefore, Rr. varieties such as Romansh and Mareo-Badiotto, characterised by an extended areal coexistence with German (and/or spoken in areas where German is the Dachsprache) show a tendency towards the conservation of stricter V2 constraints, as opposed to Friulan and Fassano, while Gardenese falls in the transitional area of the spectrum. This analysis aligns neatly with the original observations by Benincà & Haiman (2017), without necessarily relying on the aforementioned hypothesis of competing grammars critiqued by Cognola (2015).
The presentation will therefore provide an overview of the different parameters at work in the structure of the left periphery of several Romance, Rhaetoromance, and Germanic languages and dialects. A collection of examples from both modern and older sources will allow us to describe the development of the phenomenon in Rr., while relating them to the sociolinguistic history of the area.
Presentation on the misuse of the term "Anglo-Saxon" in Italy and other Mediterranean countries. ... more Presentation on the misuse of the term "Anglo-Saxon" in Italy and other Mediterranean countries. Part of the conference "What’s in a Name? -(Ab)Use of Anglo-Saxon in English-speaking cultures and elsewhere" in Padua, 6-7 June 2022.
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This first italian-written research on Övdalian offers an overview of the phonological, morphological and syntactical features of the dalecarlian vernacular in an historical and typological perspective.
Degree evaluation: 110/110 cum laude
La registrazione è disponibile al seguente link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3zGA0-Yoso&ab_channel=DipartimentoForlilpsi%2CUniversit%C3%A0diFirenze
The Gustav Vasa Bible (henceforth GVB, 1526-1541) is the first Swedish translation of the Bible. It gets its name from king Gustav I, who was raised to the throne in 1523, following a violent conflict with Denmark which led to the dissolution of the Kalmar Union.
The translation marks an important milestone for the history of the Swedish language: it is canonically mentioned as the first example of Early Modern Swedish (Äldre Nysvenska) and it represents the first systematic attempt at an orthographic standardisation of the language.
This standardisation process is characterised by a programmatic distancing from Danish, via the – sometimes deliberate – erasure of all the features that Swedish shared with the language of the former overlords. The most apparent features are the introduction of the graphemes <å> <ä> <ö> in opposition to Danish <aa>, <æ>, <ø>, as well as the replacement of final -e with the hypercorrected -a .
In this respect, the GVB represents a significant case in historical sociolinguistics, i.e., an example of standardisation catalysed by the will and need of marking the difference between two highly similar languages, thus contributing to the construction of a cohesive national identity.
The presentation will feature a direct comparison of the translations of Matthew 5 from DNT24 and SNT26 respectively. When necessary, further insight will be given on the influence of the sources – either Latin or Low German – from which the text has been translated. A deeper diachronic insight will be provided through the analysis of a short recording of a dialectal speaker.
in Linguistic Research" Roma, 23-24 February 2023
The Nordic Dialect Corpus (henceforth NDC) represents the most comprehensive digital resource for the study of North Germanic diatopic varieties. The latest version of the platform (NDC v. 4.0) has been launched in 2019 and features contributions from nine of the most prominent universities in Northern Europe. While the corpus is mainly designed for syntactic research, it is also suitable for other areas of investigations (phonology, morphology, discourse analysis). However, the degrees of suitability may vary according to the precise scope of research.
By sharing personal experiences regarding the performance of a survey on the NDC, the talk will provide insights on how to find strategies to work around the limitations (or absence) of features in digital corpora. More specifically, the presentation will tackle the following issues that hindered the swift analysis of dative retention in Norwegian and Swedish dialects:
a) Incomplete or absent tagging: grammatical categories are overtly tagged exclusively in those areas where such categories are present in the standard language. It is necessary to employ a series of filters and to perform multiple queries to analyse non-standard features.
b) Errors in automatic tagging: the incorrect tagging of parts of speech makes them unretrievable for most filters. This can significantly alter the figures when dealing with scarce data.
c) Incomplete transcription: the Norwegian section of the corpus provides a phonetic transcription of the recordings together with a bokmål translation, while the Swedish recordings (with some exceptions) only feature standard Swedish translations.
Despite the presence of obstacles that forced the scope of the research to be slightly redefined, the talk ultimately displays the valuable advantages of corpus resources and methods for diachronic investigations.
Verb-third and the polyoccupation of the initial slot in verb-second languages – insights from Germanic and beyond", Paris 16-17 February 2023
In their extensive work on Rhaetoromance (henceforth Rr.), Benincà & Haiman (2017) state the “importance of German influence” regarding the areal distribution of G-inversion, with particular reference to Ladin and Romansh varieties. However, given the absence of further elaboration on the matter, such a statement leaves space for a wide array of interpretations. Indeed, the explanatory soundness of language contact as the ground for syntactic phenomena in the Rr. area has often been object for debate (Belardi, 1991).
The talk stems from Cognola’s (2015) argument – originally regarding Mòcheno– that syntactic variation need not be explained as the result of competing grammars in a plurilingual community, by extending this principle to Rr. varieties. For the purposes of this contribution, the genetic relation between Romansh, Ladin and Friulan, as well as their supposed common Rhaetic substrate, is considered irrelevant and Rr. is simply intended as a conventional label for a group of languages that have retained several conservative features, mainly by means of areal isolation. Wolfes’ (2016, 2020) accounts of Medieval Romance varieties as V2 languages allows us to propose some inferences on the diachronic development of the phenomena in Rr., by drawing comparisons with the analyses of Ladin dialects brought forward by Poletto (2002) and Casalicchio & Cognola (2018), the latter defining V2 constraints in Rr. as “less strict than those of Germanic V2 varieties […] and less liberal than those of Old Italian”.
Starting from these premises, the action of language contact is reconsidered from a new perspective. Rather than acting as a trigger for the V2 phenomena in Rr., the prolonged contact with German can be interpreted as reinforcing pre-existing grammatical structures, thus contributing to their conservation.
Therefore, Rr. varieties such as Romansh and Mareo-Badiotto, characterised by an extended areal coexistence with German (and/or spoken in areas where German is the Dachsprache) show a tendency towards the conservation of stricter
V2 constraints, as opposed to Friulan and Fassano, while Gardenese falls in the transitional area of the spectrum. This analysis aligns neatly with the original observations by Benincà & Haiman (2017), without necessarily relying on the aforementioned hypothesis of competing grammars critiqued by Cognola (2015).
The presentation will therefore provide an overview of the different parameters at work in the structure of the left periphery of several Romance, Rhaetoromance, and Germanic languages and dialects. A collection of examples from both modern and older sources will allow us to describe the development of the phenomenon in Rr., while relating them to the sociolinguistic history of the area.
Padua, 6-7 June 2022
Organised by the University of Padua and the Italian Association for Germanic Philology
This first italian-written research on Övdalian offers an overview of the phonological, morphological and syntactical features of the dalecarlian vernacular in an historical and typological perspective.
Degree evaluation: 110/110 cum laude
La registrazione è disponibile al seguente link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3zGA0-Yoso&ab_channel=DipartimentoForlilpsi%2CUniversit%C3%A0diFirenze
The Gustav Vasa Bible (henceforth GVB, 1526-1541) is the first Swedish translation of the Bible. It gets its name from king Gustav I, who was raised to the throne in 1523, following a violent conflict with Denmark which led to the dissolution of the Kalmar Union.
The translation marks an important milestone for the history of the Swedish language: it is canonically mentioned as the first example of Early Modern Swedish (Äldre Nysvenska) and it represents the first systematic attempt at an orthographic standardisation of the language.
This standardisation process is characterised by a programmatic distancing from Danish, via the – sometimes deliberate – erasure of all the features that Swedish shared with the language of the former overlords. The most apparent features are the introduction of the graphemes <å> <ä> <ö> in opposition to Danish <aa>, <æ>, <ø>, as well as the replacement of final -e with the hypercorrected -a .
In this respect, the GVB represents a significant case in historical sociolinguistics, i.e., an example of standardisation catalysed by the will and need of marking the difference between two highly similar languages, thus contributing to the construction of a cohesive national identity.
The presentation will feature a direct comparison of the translations of Matthew 5 from DNT24 and SNT26 respectively. When necessary, further insight will be given on the influence of the sources – either Latin or Low German – from which the text has been translated. A deeper diachronic insight will be provided through the analysis of a short recording of a dialectal speaker.
in Linguistic Research" Roma, 23-24 February 2023
The Nordic Dialect Corpus (henceforth NDC) represents the most comprehensive digital resource for the study of North Germanic diatopic varieties. The latest version of the platform (NDC v. 4.0) has been launched in 2019 and features contributions from nine of the most prominent universities in Northern Europe. While the corpus is mainly designed for syntactic research, it is also suitable for other areas of investigations (phonology, morphology, discourse analysis). However, the degrees of suitability may vary according to the precise scope of research.
By sharing personal experiences regarding the performance of a survey on the NDC, the talk will provide insights on how to find strategies to work around the limitations (or absence) of features in digital corpora. More specifically, the presentation will tackle the following issues that hindered the swift analysis of dative retention in Norwegian and Swedish dialects:
a) Incomplete or absent tagging: grammatical categories are overtly tagged exclusively in those areas where such categories are present in the standard language. It is necessary to employ a series of filters and to perform multiple queries to analyse non-standard features.
b) Errors in automatic tagging: the incorrect tagging of parts of speech makes them unretrievable for most filters. This can significantly alter the figures when dealing with scarce data.
c) Incomplete transcription: the Norwegian section of the corpus provides a phonetic transcription of the recordings together with a bokmål translation, while the Swedish recordings (with some exceptions) only feature standard Swedish translations.
Despite the presence of obstacles that forced the scope of the research to be slightly redefined, the talk ultimately displays the valuable advantages of corpus resources and methods for diachronic investigations.
Verb-third and the polyoccupation of the initial slot in verb-second languages – insights from Germanic and beyond", Paris 16-17 February 2023
In their extensive work on Rhaetoromance (henceforth Rr.), Benincà & Haiman (2017) state the “importance of German influence” regarding the areal distribution of G-inversion, with particular reference to Ladin and Romansh varieties. However, given the absence of further elaboration on the matter, such a statement leaves space for a wide array of interpretations. Indeed, the explanatory soundness of language contact as the ground for syntactic phenomena in the Rr. area has often been object for debate (Belardi, 1991).
The talk stems from Cognola’s (2015) argument – originally regarding Mòcheno– that syntactic variation need not be explained as the result of competing grammars in a plurilingual community, by extending this principle to Rr. varieties. For the purposes of this contribution, the genetic relation between Romansh, Ladin and Friulan, as well as their supposed common Rhaetic substrate, is considered irrelevant and Rr. is simply intended as a conventional label for a group of languages that have retained several conservative features, mainly by means of areal isolation. Wolfes’ (2016, 2020) accounts of Medieval Romance varieties as V2 languages allows us to propose some inferences on the diachronic development of the phenomena in Rr., by drawing comparisons with the analyses of Ladin dialects brought forward by Poletto (2002) and Casalicchio & Cognola (2018), the latter defining V2 constraints in Rr. as “less strict than those of Germanic V2 varieties […] and less liberal than those of Old Italian”.
Starting from these premises, the action of language contact is reconsidered from a new perspective. Rather than acting as a trigger for the V2 phenomena in Rr., the prolonged contact with German can be interpreted as reinforcing pre-existing grammatical structures, thus contributing to their conservation.
Therefore, Rr. varieties such as Romansh and Mareo-Badiotto, characterised by an extended areal coexistence with German (and/or spoken in areas where German is the Dachsprache) show a tendency towards the conservation of stricter
V2 constraints, as opposed to Friulan and Fassano, while Gardenese falls in the transitional area of the spectrum. This analysis aligns neatly with the original observations by Benincà & Haiman (2017), without necessarily relying on the aforementioned hypothesis of competing grammars critiqued by Cognola (2015).
The presentation will therefore provide an overview of the different parameters at work in the structure of the left periphery of several Romance, Rhaetoromance, and Germanic languages and dialects. A collection of examples from both modern and older sources will allow us to describe the development of the phenomenon in Rr., while relating them to the sociolinguistic history of the area.
Padua, 6-7 June 2022
Organised by the University of Padua and the Italian Association for Germanic Philology