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Central Italian

Central Italian (Italian: dialetti mediani “central dialects”) is a group of Italo-Romance varieties indigenous to much of Central Italy.

Background

In the early Middle Ages, the Central Italian area extended north into Romagna and covered all of modern-day Lazio. Some peripheral varieties have since been assimilated into Gallo-Italic and Southern Italo-Romance respectively. In addition, the dialect of Rome has undergone considerable Tuscanization from the fifteenth century onwards, such that it has lost many of its Central Italian features (the speech of the local Jewish community was less affected).

Subdivisions

The Central Italian dialect area is bisected by isoglosses that roughly follow a line running from Rome to Ancona. The zones to the south and north of this line are sometimes called the Area Mediana and Area Perimediana respectively. (Area Mediana may also be used in a broader sense to refer to both zones.)

Pellegrini further divides Central Italian into the following groups:

Phonological features

Except for its southern fringe, the Area Mediana (narrow sense) features a contrast between the final vowels and , a feature that distinguishes it from both the Area Perimediana to the north and from Southern Italo-Romance to the south. Cf. Spoletine , < Latin crēdō, tēctum ‘I believe’, ‘roof’.

Most of the Area Mediana shows voicing of plosives after nasal consonants, as in ‘cloak’, a feature shared with neighbouring Southern Italo-Romance.

In the Area Mediana are found the following vocalic phenomena:

  • In most areas, stressed mid-vowels are raised by one degree of aperture if the following syllable contains either or (a phenomenon sometimes called ‘Sabine metaphony’). Compare the following examples from the dialect of Ascrea:
  • , ‘apples’, ‘apple’
  • , ‘wife’, ‘husband’
  • , ‘old’ (), ‘old’ ()
  • , ‘new’ (), ‘new’ ()
  • In a few areas, metaphony results in diphthongization for stressed low-mid vowels, while high-mids undergo normal raising to . Compare the following examples from the dialect of Norcia:
  • , ‘I put’, ‘you put’
  • , ‘alone’ (), ‘alone’ ()
  • , ‘beautiful’ (), ‘beautiful’ ()
  • , ‘death’, ‘dead’ ()
  • Southeast of Rome, low-mid vowels undergo metaphonic diphthongization, while high-mids remain unaffected. This was also the case for Old Romanesco, which had alternations such as , ‘foot’, ‘feet’.
  • In some areas with Sabine metaphony, if a word has a stressed mid-vowel, then final lowers to . Compare , > , (metaphony) > , ‘beautiful’, ‘cold’ in the dialect of Tornimparte.

Sound-changes (or lack thereof) that distinguish most or all of Central Italian from Tuscan include the following. Many of them shared with Southern Italo-Romance.

  • > as in Latin vēndere > ‘to sell’.
  • , > as in Latin plumbum > ‘lead’.
  • > as in Latin cal(i)da > ‘hot’
  • Retention of as in Latin Maium > ‘May’.
  • > as in Latin vindēmia > ‘grape harvest’.
  • > as in Latin caprārium > ‘goatherd’.

Sound-changes with a limited distribution within the Area Mediana include:

  • > as in Latin agnum, ligna > , (Tagliacozzo) ‘lamb’, ‘firewood’.
  • , > word-initially and intervocalically as in Latin dentem, vaccam, crudum, ovum > (Rieti and L'Aquila)
  • Around Terni, and to its immediate northeast, this deletion only applies in intervocalic position.

In the north of the Area Perimediana, a number of Gallo-Italic features are found:

  • > in stressed open syllables, as in > ‘bread’, around Perugia and areas to its north.
  • In the same area, habitual reduction or deletion of vowels in unstressed internal syllables, as in > ‘traps’.
  • Voicing of intervocalic to and consonant degemination around Ancona and to its west.
  • In both of the aforementioned areas: lack, or reversal, of the sound-changes > and , > that are found in the rest of Central Italian.

The following changes to final vowels are found in the Area Perimediana:

  • > , as in Latin musteum > (), everywhere except for a small area around Pitigliano.
  • > , as in > ‘the dogs’, in some of the dialects situated along an arc running from Montalto di Castro to Fabriano.

Morphological features

  • In part of the Area Mediana, below a line running northeast from Rome to Rieti and Norcia, the 3PL ending of non-first conjugation verbs is (rather than ) which acts as a trigger for metaphony. Cf. Latin vēndunt > ‘they sell’ in the dialect of Leonessa.
  • In the same area, a series of irregular first-conjugation verbs also show 3PL (as opposed to the or found elsewhere). Examples include ‘they have/give/do/go’.
  • Latin fourth-declension nouns have been retained as such in many cases. Cf. Latin manum, manÅ«s ‘hand’, ‘hands’ > (invariant) in the dialect of Fabrica di Roma and Latin fÄ«cum, fÄ«cÅ«s ‘fig’, ‘figs’ > (invariant) in the dialect of Canepina.
  • Latin neuters of the -um/-a type survive more extensively than in Tuscan. Cf. Latin olÄ«vētum, olÄ«vēta ‘olive-grove’, ‘olive-groves’ > , in the dialect of Roiate. Even originally non-neuter nouns are sometimes drawn into this class, as in Latin hortum, hortÄ« ‘garden’, ‘gardens’ > , in the dialect of Segni.
  • The plurals, which are grammatically feminine, are replaced by the feminine ending in some dialects, leading to outcomes such as , ‘lip’, ‘lips’ in the dialect of Spoleto. Both plural endings may alternate within a dialect, as in ~ ‘eggs’ in the dialect of Treia.
  • The Latin neuter plural , as in tempora ‘times’, was extended to several other words in medieval times, but today the phenomenon is limited to areas such as Serrone, e.g. , ‘branch’, ‘branches’. In Serviglianeo, the final vowel changes to , as in , ‘fig’, ‘figs’.
  • In several dialects, final syllables beginning with , , or may be deleted in masculine nouns. In some dialects, such as that of Matelica, this occurs only in the singular, not the plural, as in , > , ‘lord’, ‘lords’. In Servigliano, this deletion occurs both in the singular and the plural, resulting in , .

Syntactic features

  • Direct objects are often marked by the preposition a if they are animate.

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links