First person narration in the modern Italian novel (2025)

RAPPRESENTAZIONE LINGUISTICA E CULTURALE DELLA FICTION ITALIANA ALL'ESTERO. Studio comparativo delle versioni sottotitolate in inglese britannico e americano della prima stagione del commissario Montalbano.

2017

Audiovisual Translation - Subtitling studies - Italian fiction - Culture-bound items - Linguistic Variation

Grammatica storica delle parlate giudeo-italiane, written by M. Aprile. 2012

Journal of Jewish languages, 2016

Il discorso bilingue. Italiano e dialetto a Catania

Journal of Pragmatics, 1995

Cinzia Russi. Sicilian Elements in Andrea Camilleri's Narrative Language: A Linguistic Analysis

Quaderni d'Italianistica, 2023

A review of Cinzia Russi's "Sicilian Elements in Andrea Camilleri's Narrative Language: A Linguistic Analysis"

Ledgeway, Adam, 2023. ‘Italian dialectology: practical and theoretical considerations’, in Alberto Regagliolo (ed.), Italian as a Foreign Language: Teaching and Acquisition in Higher Education. Wilmington: Vernon Press, 129-164.

Italian as a Foreign Language: Teaching and Acquisition in Higher Education, 2023

In a book like the present one focused on Italian as a Foreign Language, an article on Italian dialectology might at first sight seem somewhat surprising, not to say out of place. Yet, the dialects have played, and continue to play, an important role in the internal and external linguistic history of Italy. Indeed, it hardly needs repeating that Italian itself has its roots in the dialect of Florence and was for centuries, as Maiden (2002:323) accurately puts it, ‘a mere face in the crowd’ among a myriad of dialects. Exemplary in this respect is the first Italian document, the Placito capuano dating from March 960, written not in (Tuscan) Italian but, rather, a Campanian variety (cf. Bartoli 1944-45; Michel 1996; Ledgeway 2011a; 2012). And even when a Tuscan literary vernacular began to emerge a little over two centuries later, as embodied most notably in the literary works of the Tre corone, it represented just one of several competing literary vernacular traditions that had sprung up in different parts of medieval Italy (Migliorini & Griffith 1984:ch. 4), including the Sicilian school of poetry (e.g. Giacomino Pugliese, Stefano Protonotaro), Umbrian religious poetry (e.g. S. Francesco, Iacopone da Todi), northern Italian didactic poetry (e.g. Patecchio, Barsegapé, Bonvesin da la Riva, Uguccione da Lodi), and the Bolognese school of vernacular grammatical and rhetorical studies (e.g. Guido Fava). Although by the end of the fifteenth century a form of Tuscan dialect (notably Florentine) was beginning to emerge as a national literary language, the questione della lingua was far from settled as long as the numerous other regional literary traditions of the peninsula and islands continued to flourish. Indeed, these regional vernaculars, now relegated to dialects proper, came to represent in many cases important vehicles of literary expression, affording Italy an alternative, rich and valuable body of authors. Significantly, this body of early and modern dialect literature, far from being demoted to a peripheral position within the literary canon, is widely read and studied by scholars of Italian, and is even given varying degrees of coverage in both undergraduate and postgraduate university courses. Yet, the non trivial practical and pedagogical linguistic issues associated with teaching, reading and studying dialect literature are typically overlooked by scholars and students alike, who, apart from some rather superficial inferences about the structure of the linguistic system in which their texts are written, progressively accrued during the course of their readings, generally approach such texts without any formal study or knowledge of the relevant linguistic variety. Undoubtedly, the potential difficulties for comprehension are enormous, as they are for anyone expected to read a text in a ‘foreign’ language, a point convincingly made by Vincent (2005) in relation to old Italian. Here too, he argues, scholars and students of Italian all too frequently fail to appreciate the many, often subtle, linguistic differences, especially those of a morphosyntactic nature, that distinguish old Italian from modern Italian. In short, knowledge of the latter, however expert, is simply not sufficient to invariably guarantee a correct reading of the former. The same argument applies to the dialects, whether in their earlier or modern attestations, which, although related to (Tuscan) Italian, frequently differ in subtle yet radical ways which the unwitting reader will quite simply fail to appreciate (cf. Ledgeway 2008; 2011b). Consequently, at least a working knowledge of Italian dialectology should form part of the basic competence of all Italianists, ultimately constituting a compulsory element of all degree programmes and graduate training. At present, Italian dialectology, if taught at all, tends to form part of those specialist courses referred to under the generic title of Storia della lingua. Among other things, such courses tend to highlight Italy’s ricco patrimonio dialettale, which, by European standards, stands unparalleled for the wealth of linguistic variation concentrated into such a compact area. Indeed, over recent decades such vast typological variation has been profitably exploited by dialectologists to throw light on issues in general linguistic theory, demonstrating how the dialects present the linguist with relatively unexplored experimental territory in which to investigate new ideas about language structure, language change and language variation. In the face of such variation, which frequently even baffles the most experienced of dialectologists, one cannot legitimately expect those with little or no formal training in dialectology to recognise or fully understand the often complex structural subtleties masked by an unfamiliar grammar. In this chapter, I shall exemplify and explore some of the apparent problems that the formal study of the dialects of Italy can raise for both the teacher and the student, as well explore some methodological and practical solutions to the same, including an outline of of the topics and material to be covered and an overview of some of the most useful pedagogical resources. Among other things, I shall highlight the necessity and advantages of studying (and teaching) Italian dialectology, how it can enrich both literary and linguistic modules and, in particular, how it can also enhance the teaching of standard Italian as well as throw considerable light on the peculiarities of spoken Italian, the italiani regionali which in large part represent the outcome of language contact between standard Italian and dialect (Berruto 1987; Telmon 1990; Cardinaletti & Munaro 2009).

Fragments of Linguistics Works from the Italian Genizah - 2014

in Vidro, N., I.E. Zwiep, J. Olszowy-Schlanger (eds), A Universal Art. Hebrew Grammar across Disciplines and Faiths, (Studies in Jewish History and Culture Series), Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2014, pp. 137-161.

This is a digital offfprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV

La traducción español > italiano de la narrativa de posguerra. Un análisis lingüístico-traductológico de un fragmento de La Colmena a partir de la labor traslativa de Sergio Ponzanelli

2020

This paper aims to analyse a brief fragment of the famous work La Colmena written by Camilo José Cela from a linguistic, translatological and contrastive perspective (Spanish-Italian) based on the translation work undertaken by Sergio Ponzanelli. After framing the novel within a social, historical and literary context, we will deal with its characteristics and peculiarities at a formal and meaning level. Next, we will carry out an analysis of the translatological choices made by the translator by means of a comparison between the original version and the translated one and we will reflect upon the language used by the author through his characters. We will adopt a qualitative and heuristic-speculative methodology. On the qualitative level, the translatological analysis will allow us to determine the reason for the translatological operations carried out when translating the text into Italian. The heuristic-speculative paradigm will allow us to consider a series of hypotheses about the communicative efficacy of the choices made by Sergio Ponzanelli. Finally, based on modern translation theories we aim to emphasise linguistic, stylistic, cultural, pragmatic and contrastive aspects that could be a hindrance to the activity of a literary translator.

To appear in Rivista di Linguistica – Italian Journal of Linguistics in 2005. Person, Context and Perspective

2014

ABSTRACT: It is argued that the indexicality of first person pronouns is arises from a restriction on the pronouns themselves, as opposed to any operator that binds them. The nature of this restriction is an asyntactic constant function that picks out individuals to the context of utterance (following Kaplan, 1989)). Constant function pronouns do not require an antecedent, neither an operator nor an argument, although this does not prevent them from participating in bound readings if an appropriate antecedent is introduced. The notion that agents of contexts and agents of propositional attitudes are versions of the same operator-variable relation is thus rejected, along with certain less fine-grained versions of the nature of de se interpretation. Consequently, indexical pronouns such as first person ones contrast with logophoric pronouns, which are necessarily operator-bound by perspectival operators introduced by propositional attitude verbs. Scope-sensitive properties of operator...

BENVENUTO ARON TERRACINI AS A PRECURSOR OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS THROUGH HIS STUDIES ON ANCIENT AND MODERN JUDEO-ITALIAN

Multilingualism in contemporary Italian fiction (slides)

Presented in Research Agendas in Literary Linguistics, University of Mainz, 16th April 2015

The Novellino or "How to Do Things with Words": An Early Italian Reflection on a Specific Western Way of Using Language

Mln, 2010

Hodder Education, London UK, 2007

The Metalinguistic Dimension of Literary Multilingualism: Linguistic Biographies in Italian Fiction

Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2024

In this article, I argue that a thorough analysis of literary multilingualism and code-switching needs to take their metalinguistic dimension into account. Many scholars have noticed multilingual authors’ tendency to frame code-switches with metalinguistic comments, but they are sometimes treated marginally, or as just one of the many functions of code-switching. My article argues that metalanguage is, in fact, a fundamental characteristic of literary multilingualism, and key to its interpretation. This is particularly evident when we look at how the contemporary Italian writers Laura Pariani, Silvana Grasso and Elena Ferrante construct their characters through linguistic biographies, and how they describe dialect use, bilingualism, language loss and shift and other collective and individual sociolinguistic processes. I also show that metalanguage needs to be analysed together with other tools used by authors to flag multilingualism: namely intratextual translations and peritextual elements (such as glossaries or notes), but also visual cues, such as italics.

A matter of gender. Italian sociolinguistics and didactics for the construction of a visible feminine.pdf

The Modern Language Journal, 2008

Spoken English and Spoken Italian: Grammar and Vocabulary

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2025

This book explores the grammar of spoken English and spoken Italian. It analyses and proposes Italian equivalents of spoken English discourse elements and English equivalents of Italian clitic constructions. It firstly outlines the main features of spoken English grammar by providing insights from the literature and examples from British and American spoken language banks and corpora. To this aim, the book examines English discourse markers, approximators, vague category markers, pragmatic markers, topic launchers, turn takers, pause fillers, non-words, and many others. It then outlines the characteristics of neo-standard Italian and what makes it peculiar, especially in the spoken form. Building on literature findings and on corpus-based evidence, it delves on the traits of spoken English and their related Italian equivalents. It scrutinises natural- occurring dialogues in spoken language banks, as well as in narratives, film dubbing and film subtitles. Insightful English-Italian equivalences are brought to the fore and analysed. The book then sources and proposes Italian corpus-driven equivalents of English discourse markers. Finally, it addresses possible English equivalents of Italian clitic constructions. The key findings of this book partly confirm literature research and partly challenge it. With regard to the Italian renderings of English discourse markers, new interesting equivalents emerge from the analyses. As concerns the English versions of Italian clitic phrases, the book highlights the fact that the English language does not make use of clitic pronouns to the same extent as the Italian language. Nonetheless, some correspondences are found as far as idiomatic expressions are concerned. This book is innovative as no other academic work has focused so thoroughly on the translation of spoken English and spoken Italian. Its rigorous methodology (based on the consultation of fiction corpora, the literature, and spoken language corpora) is fully replicable thanks to detailed and comprehensive analyses. Its contribution to the academic world and to the world of professionals is vast, as the corpus-driven findings can be useful to academics, audiovisual translators, students in Translation Studies, linguists and researchers. The corpus-sourced Italian equivalents of one-word, two-word, multi-word and non-word discourse markers and the English versions of Italian clitic constructions can be consulted as useful reference tools.

« Unspeakable Sentences : Narration and Representation in Benedetti’s “Five Years of Life” »

Narrative, 2013

Narrative and Argumentative Discourse between Dialect and Italian. Analysis of the Linguistic Atlas of Sicily corpus

Ficino’s Self-Translation of the "De amore": Some Linguistic Remarks

Rivista di Storia della Filosofia , 2019

This paper analyses Ficino's self-translation of his Commentarium in Convivium Platonis de amore (1469). After discussing the author's position on language (in particular concerning the potentiality for Florentine vernacular of being a proper vehicle for philosophical discourse), the paper takes first into account the textual features shared by both the Latin and the vernacular versions, deeply rooted in some basic assumptions of Ficino's thought. Then the proper translation strategies are considered. A spontaneous search for increasing the accessibility of the text, on the one hand, and for getting it closer to the naturalness of spoken language (possibly reducing philosophical technicality) on the other, appears to be the main guideline of the process of vernacularization: this is coherent with the general ideal, so praised by Ficino in this phase, of a non-scholastic, Socratic and dialectical philosophy.

Translation and Opposition in Italian Canadian Writing. Nino Ricci’s Trilogy and Its Italian Translation

Multilingual Matters, 2011

The emergence of English as the lingua franca of Europe as well as a global language has recently provided European nations, both large and small, with an international voice. The aim of the series, Translating Europe, is to cover aspects related to translation between English and the languages of Europe from among established, more recent and emerging members of the European Union, as well as giving voice to the speakers of more recent member states. Chosen topics will be wide ranging with each volume closely linked to a theme related to translation in its many multi-faceted functions. Translating Europe should be of interest to professional translators as well as scholars and students, not only in Translation Studies but also in Modern Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature.