ITALIAN LINGUISTICS I

The course is part of the Bachelor Degree in Humanities (Lettere), curriculum Science of the literary text and communication.
Aim of the course is to provide students with a basic knowledge of the internal structures and socio-linguistic uses and contexts of Italian and, more generally, of the Italo-Romance varieties, especially from a synchronic point of view. The achievement of this objective will enable students to apply autonomously the methods and tools of general linguistics to the Italian language and the Italo-Romance dialects and sociolects, both oral and written, pertaining to the Contemporary Era and to the past.

1. Knowledge and comprehension:
1.1 to acquire the main principles of linguistics, as far as different levels of analysis are concerned (phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon etc.), with regard to the specific characteristics of the Italian language;
1.2 to be aware of the socio-linguistic contexts of use of Italian and the other Italo-Romance varieties and of the dynamics of variation, especially as far as the diaphasic, diastratic and diamesic axes are concerned;
1.3 to be acquainted with the main notions of contact linguistics (interference, code-switching, borrowing, phonological/morphological integration etc.), with special regard to the most important episodes of the encounter between Italian, the Italian dialects and other languages, both Romance and non-Romance, in the Contemporary Era and also in the past.
2. Capability of applying knowledge and comprehension:
2.1 to be able to use correctly linguistic terminology concerning the internal structures of Italian and its different uses in the society;
2.2 to be able to interpret correctly the most significant contact phenomena between Italian, the Italian dialects and other languages, both in the Contemporary Era and in the past.
3. Judgement ability:
3.1 to be able to evaluate critically the adequateness of models of structural and socio-linguistic analysis to particular forms of language and contexts of communication, deriving from (or characterized by) contact between Italian, the Italian dialects and other languages.
4. Communicative abilities:
4.1 to be able to communicate the specific characteristics of the Italian language and of interlinguistic contact involving Italo-Romance to some extent, by making use of a convenient scientific terminology.
5. Learning abilities:
5.1 to be able to study critically the reference texts, by hierarchizing information and allowing notions to interact mutually.

Students planning to attend this course are advised to follow before the beginning of the lessons at least one course of Principles of Linguistics and/or History of the Italian language.

The interaction between different languages, their mutual alternation and their mixing is characteristic of many human societies, as can be easily ascertained by looking at the linguistic history of Italy, which has been deeply influenced by the encounter between the local Italo-Romance varieties and other languages. The modes and effects of interlinguistic influence are dealt with by a particular branch of linguistics, dubbed "Contact Linguistics", a field of study whose development has been uninterrupted from the half of the 20th century on, leading to relevant debates and opening new perspectives as far as both the grammatical aspect of language mixing and the social dynamics of bilingual speakers/writers are concerned.
In this course the main principles and problems of Contact Linguistics will be illustrated, by making use of examples taken from the history of the Italian language and dialects, in Italy and out of Italy, especially as far as the Contemporary Era is concerned. Therefore, students will be given the opportunity to realize the complexity of this field of study from a privileged perspective, i.e. the Italo-Romance perspective, thus "traveling" through space and time from the Alps to the Mediterranean (and occasionally also oversea), from the first contacts between Latin and other languages (Germanic, Arabic etc.) to the encounter of Italian, Italian dialects and European and extra-European languages in the contemporary world.

Massimo Palermo, Linguistica italiana, Bologna, il Mulino, 2015.
Notes taken during the lessons.
Handouts given at lesson, which will be also available on Moodle.

Students will have to pass a written exam of one hour. During the exam, students will demonstrate their knowledge of the subjects that have been illustrated in the lessons and that are described in the reference texts. In particular, students are expected to orientate themselves on the one hand in the general field of Italian linguistics, by recognizing the specific characteristics of Italian on a phonological, morphological, syntactic-textual and lexical level; on the other hand in the field of Contact Linguistics applied to Italian, by making use of a convenient scientific terminology and proving able to recognize similar phenomena in different historical, geographic and socio-linguistic contexts.

Frontal lectures. All materials (schemes, graphics, texts in transcription) will be available in the e-learning platform moodle.unive.it. Although the course is not conceived as a seminar, feedback from students will be constantly solicited, according to an interactive and dynamic idea of teaching which suits very well to this subject (especially if students are - at least partially - bilingual or multilingual, Standard Italian/Italian dialect bilinguals included).

Italian

written