La Spezia–Rimini Line

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
standard Italian
language.
Romance-speaking Europe
)

The La Spezia–Rimini Line (also known as the Massa–Senigallia Line), in the

Gallo‒Italic languages are representatives of the Western group. Sardinian does not fit into either Western or Eastern Romance.[1]

It has been suggested that the origin of these developments is to be found in the last decades of the

Slavic peoples).[2]

Some

linguists, however, say[3] that the line actually runs through Massa and Senigallia
about 40 kilometres further to the south and would more accurately be called the Massa–Senigallia Line.

In either case, it roughly coincides with the northern range of the Apennine Mountains, which could have helped the appearance of these linguistic differences.

Generally speaking, the western Romance languages show common innovations that the eastern Romance languages tend to lack.[citation needed] The three isoglosses considered traditionally are:

  • formation of the plural form of nouns
  • the voicing or not of some consonants
  • Pronunciation of Latin c before e/i as /(t)s/ or /tʃ/ (ch)

To these should be added a fourth criterion, generally more decisive than the phenomenon of voicing:

  • preservation (below the line) or simplification (above the line) of Latin geminate consonants

Plural of nouns

North and west of the line (excluding all Northern Italian varieties) the plural of nouns was drawn from the Latin accusative case, and is marked with /s/ regardless of grammatical gender or declension. South and east of the line, the plurals of nouns are marked by changing the final vowel, either because these were taken from the Latin nominative case, or because the original /s/ changed into a vocalic sound (see the Romance plurals origin debate). Compare the plurals of cognate nouns in Aromanian, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French, Sardinian and Latin:

Eastern Romance Western Romance Sardinian Latin English
Aromanian Romanian Italian Spanish Portuguese Catalan French nominative accusative
yeatsã
yets		 viață
vieți		 vita
vite		 vida
vidas		 vida
vidas		 vida
vides		 vie
vies		 bida
bidas		 vita
vitae		 vitam
vitās		 life
lives
lupu
lupi		 lup
lupi		 lupo
lupi		 lobo
lobos		 lobo
lobos		 llop
llops		 loup
loups		 lupu
lupos/-us		 lupus
lupī		 lupum
lupōs		 wolf
wolves
omu
uamini		 om
oameni		 uomo
uomini		 hombre
hombres		 homem
homens		 home
homes/hòmens		 homme
hommes		 ómine/-i
ómines/-is		 homo
hominēs		 hominēm
hominēs		 man
men
an
anji		 an
ani		 anno
anni		 año
años		 ano
anos		 any
anys		 an
ans		 annu
annos		 annus
annī		 annum
annōs		 year
years
steauã
steali/-e		 stea
stele		 stella
stelle		 estrella
estrellas		 estrela
estrelas		 estrella
estrelles		 étoile
étoiles		 istedda
isteddas		 stēlla
stēllae		 stēllam
stēllās		 star
stars
tser
tseri/-uri		 cer
ceruri		 cielo
cieli		 cielo
cielos		 céu
céus		 cel
cels		 ciel
cieux/ciels		 chelu
chelos		 caelum
caelī		 caelum
caelōs		 sky
skies

Result of ci/ce palatalization

The pronunciation of Latin ci/ce, as in centum and civitas, has a divide that roughly follows the line: Italian and Romanian use /tʃ/ (as in English church), while most Western Romance languages use /(t)s/. The exceptions are some

Mozarabic and (partially) Norman
.

Voicing and degemination of consonants

Another isogloss that falls on the La Spezia–Rimini Line deals with the restructured

Emilian, caéna/cadéna in Venetian
and chaîne in French (with loss of intervocalic [ð]). Voicing, or further weakening, even to loss of these consonants is characteristic of the western branch of Romance; their retention is characteristic of eastern Romance.

However, the differentiation is not totally systematic, and there are exceptions that undermine the isogloss:

Western Romance
) also retain the original Latin voiceless stop between vowels. The presence in Tuscany and elsewhere below the line of a small percentage but large number of voiced forms both in general vocabulary and in traditional toponyms also challenges its absolute integrity.

The criterion of preservation vs. simplification of Latin geminate consonants stands on firmer ground. The simplification illustrated by Spanish boca /boka/ 'mouth' vs. Tuscan bocca /bokka/, both continuations of Latin bucca, typifies all of Western Romance and is systematic for all geminates except /s/ (pronounced differently if single/double even in French), /rr/ in some locales (e.g. Spanish carro and caro are still distinct), and to some degree for earlier /ll/ and /nn/ which, while not preserved as geminates, did not generally merge with the singletons (e.g. /n/ > /n/ but /nn/ > /ɲ/ in Spanish, annus > /aɲo/ 'year'). Nevertheless, the La Spezia-Rimini line is real in this respect for most of the consonant inventory, although simplification of geminates to the east in Romania spoils the neat east-west division.

Indeed, the significance of the La Spezia–Rimini Line is often challenged by specialists within both Italian

rhotacism
of intervocalic /l/.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Ruhlen M. (1987). A guide to the world's languages, Stanford University Press, Stanford.
  2. ISBN 0-393-95803-5
    .
  3. ISBN 88-15-04340-3
    .

References

Note that, up to c. 1600, the word Lombard meant Cisalpine, but now it has narrowed in its meaning, referring only to the administrative region of Lombardy .

  • Adolfo, Mussafia (1873) Beitrag zur Kunde der norditalienischen Mundarten im XV. Jahrhunderte. Wien.
  • Beltrami, Pierluigi; Bruno Ferrari, Luciano Tibiletti, Giorgio D'Ilario (1970) Canzoniere Lombardo. Varesina Grafica Editrice.
  • Brevini, Franco (1984) Lo stile lombardo : la tradizione letteraria da Bonvesin da la Riva a Franco Loi. (Lombard style: literary tradition from Bonvesin da la Riva to Franco Loi.) Pantarei, Lugan.
  • Brown, Peter (1970) The World of Late Antiquity W. W. Norton New York.
  • Comrie, Bernard; Stephen Matthews, Maria Polinsky, eds. (2003) The Atlas of languages : the origin and development of languages throughout the world. New York: Facts On File. p. 40.
  • Cravens, Thomas D. (2002) Comparative Romance Dialectology: Italo-Romance clues to Ibero-Romance sound change. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Hull, Dr Geoffrey (1982) The linguistic unity of Northern Italy and Rhaetia. PhD thesis,
    University of Western Sydney
    .
  • Hull, Dr Geoffrey (1989) Polyglot Italy: Languages, Dialects, Peoples. Melbourne: CIS Educational.
  • Maiden, Martin (1995) A linguistic history of Italian. London: Longman.
  • Maiden, Martin & Mair Parry, eds. (1997) The Dialects of Italy. London: Routledge.
  • Sanga, Glauco La lingua Lombarda, in Koiné in Italia, dalle origini al 1500. (Koinés in Italy, from the origin to 1500.) Bèrghem: Lubrina.
  • Vitale, Maurizio (1983) Studi di lingua e letteratura lombarda. (Studies in Lombard language and literature.) Pisa : Giardini.
  • Wurm, Stephen A. (2001) Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, p. 29.
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