Old Lombard (Old ) is an Old Gallo-Italic dialect and the earliest form of Lombard. Spoken in the 13th and 14th centuries within the Late Middle Ages, several folks such as the Milanese writers Bonvesin da la Riva and Pietro da Barsegapé in the Duecento wrote in this dialect.
Old Lombard shows precursors to modern Lombard in many areas and thus represents a helpful source for its historical grammar. The distinguishing features include:
Although Old Lombard is well documented, the research is still subject to some limitations. Since the medieval copyists did not use diacritical signs in the sense of modern orthography, the spelling often does not provide immediate information about the sound level. Often there are also Latinized, Tuscan, or Occitan spellings that cannot be reconciled with Lombard pronunciation. Since no elisions were marked in the medieval manuscripts, it is not possible, for example, to conclusively determine whether or in which cases â¨cheâ© stands for the mere conjunction che '<nowiki/>that' and how often the sequence actually ch'e that I' can be read.Such questions are of central importance for the development of the mandatory subject pronouns in modern Lombardic.
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