Prendendo spunto dalla famosa ‘Proposta dei Seicento’ del 2017, il contributo saggia la
comprens... more Prendendo spunto dalla famosa ‘Proposta dei Seicento’ del 2017, il contributo saggia la
comprensione linguistica (sinetica) degli italiani, e in particolare di studentesse e studenti medi e universitari, lungo gli ultimi cinquant’anni, prendendo in esame cinque studi, diversi per metodologia, pubblicati a partire dalla metà degli anni ’70 del Novecento.
L’analisi comparativa mostra che, pur se in generale i dati non sono affatto confortanti, la
(in)competenza lessicale sembra costante o leggermente in miglioramento lungo l’arco di tempo preso in considerazione. In qualche caso gli errori possono essere dovuti al metodo di somministrazione del questionario (specialmente al cosiddetto ‘effetto da esame’) e alla scelta dei termini di cui era richiesta la definizione, talvolta obsoleti o ricercati. Quando si effettua una comparazione diretta tra generazioni a minore età corrisponde sempre maggiore comprensione: per spiegare questo dato si può certamente chiamare in causa la diffusione dell’italiano come lingua della comunicazione spontanea di tutti i cittadini e le cittadine.
Quando e come gli esseri umani hanno cominciato ad associare lettere, parole e immagini? In che m... more Quando e come gli esseri umani hanno cominciato ad associare lettere, parole e immagini? In che modo sono costruiti i rebus moderni? Che cos'hanno di interessante dal punto di vista linguistico? Il libro, muovendosi fra storia, ludolinguistica, sociolinguistica e tipologia, risponde a queste domande e, approfondendo in particolare qual è la varietà di italiano che si incontra nelle frasi risolutive, fornisce al lettore gli strumenti utili per decifrare anche i giochi più difficili.
Since the first written documents in the history of mankind (produced at the end of the 4th mille... more Since the first written documents in the history of mankind (produced at the end of the 4th millennium BC), translation has always played a pivotal role in human societies. Translators were needed whenever the need for contact between different-speaking communities arose, such as for the purposes of communication, commerce, and declarations of war, or peace.
Translation is even more important in today’s world. Globalization has brought the nations of the Earth closer, to the extent that books, movies and television programs released or aired far away in the world are just a click of the mouse away. However, such cultural products still have to be translated in order to be enjoyed by a wider audience. In international relations, diplomacies work very much on the basis of what is said and written, meaning that official documents and political charts need to be correctly and precisely translated.
Hi-tech devices, such as tablets and smartphones, have their software translated into an increasing number of languages, in order to be accessible to a larger number of people.
The challenging issues that arise for translation studies from these socio-cultural changes in Western Europe and all over the world are tackled in this volume according to two intertwined viewpoints: From a strictly linguistic perspective, typological differences between genetically unrelated languages challenge linguists in gaining an overall understanding of what language really is: how can linguistic categories, be they verbal, nominal or pertaining to other domains of the grammar, be defined? How are they shaped in syntax?
From the point of view of anthropological linguistics, on the other hand, the cross-linguistic differences that come to the fore illustrate that translating – as well as language itself – is one of the basic cognitive strategies of the human mind.
È giusto resistere ai cambiamenti linguistici? È sbagliato abbreviare le parole nei messaggini e... more È giusto resistere ai cambiamenti linguistici? È sbagliato abbreviare le parole nei messaggini e nei tweet? È vero che i nostri ragazzi non sanno più leggere e scrivere? Come si imparano le lingue, a partire dalla propria?
Un’indagine nella lingua parlata e scritta dai “nativi digitali”, per saggiare se sia davvero incomprensibile e sgrammaticata, e quindi peggiore di quella che gli adulti parlano tutti i giorni o che si parlava cinquant'anni fa. A partire dal concetto di errore e da quello di innovazione, Emanuele Miola osserva i comportamenti linguistici oggi più diffusi. Quei tecnicismi barbari che fanno rabbrividire genitori e insegnanti, quei simboli incomprensibili, quell’ortografia in libertà con cui i ragazzi comunicano su internet e nei social network indicano davvero il declino dell’italiano? E quali sono i fenomeni sociali e psicologici che fanno sì che il modo di esprimersi cambi senza che le persone smettano di comprendersi? Un viaggio nel “giovanilese” spiega come la lingua non sia mai un oggetto unico e cristallizzato, ma come si componga di un continuum di varietà, ordinate dal punto di vista sociale: ce ne sono alcune più accettate in determinate situazioni, altre meno accettate, altre sconsigliabili in tutte le situazioni. Così come conoscere bene più lingue è un pregio, è un pregio conoscere bene più varietà di una lingua e stimolare la conoscenza e l'impiego della varietà giusta al momento giusto e nella situazione giusta, cosicché la comunicazione vada sempre a buon fine.
This volume presents the Proceedings of the Second International Workshop organized by the IUSS P... more This volume presents the Proceedings of the Second International Workshop organized by the IUSS Postgraduate Research Center LETiSS and held under the title Languages Go Web. Standard and non-standard languages on the Internet.
As anyone can see, the Internet, and more specifically the Web, is today being utilized to do what in a certain sense defines us as human beings: that is, to relate to others, to create and strengthen cultural and social ties – ultimately, to communicate.
The online use of national and official languages, as well as non-standard, dialectal, or so-called contact languages is currently and will continue to be of great interest for linguists. Therefore, it has been put under the microscope of the authors of the papers collected in the volume both in order to detect the language changes that have taken or are taking place due to the Internet and to trace possible linguistic scenarios from a political and social viewpoint.
This volume presents the proceedings of the first Workshop organized by the Postgraduate Research... more This volume presents the proceedings of the first Workshop organized by the Postgraduate Research Centre LETiSS (Lingue d’Europa: Tipologia, Storia e Sociolinguistica – Languages of Europe: Typology, History and Sociolinguistics), specifically dedicated to the linguistic situation of Europe, approached from a variety of perspectives. The massive immigration wave of the last fifty years has deeply changed the linguistic constellation of Europe, leading to the formation of alloglottic communities more or less integrated in the local, social, and sociolinguistic fabric: because of these reasons, LETiSS has chosen to deepen the study of European languages according to the three dimensions announced in its acronym. The Centre wants to create a reference point for research on the linguistic dynamics of Europe and favor international cooperation, especially by gathering young researchers from many different countries and different cultural as well as linguistic traditions: workshops and spring schools should lead to establish new research networks as an outcome of these fruitful interactions between European and non-European researchers. The papers collected in the present volume deal with the manifold subject of language death and endangered languages following two thematic areas, namely socio-cultural-political conditions of endangered languages, and linguistic phenomena associated with the decay and death of a language.
In this paper, typological changes that took place, or are taking place, in Esperanto are discuss... more In this paper, typological changes that took place, or are taking place, in Esperanto are discussed for the first time. Two varieties, namely, the one used by Esperanto’s planner Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, and the other one used in modern and contemporary Esperantist magazines, are put in comparison. Three different case studies are discussed: the order of adjective and noun in the noun phrase; the order of verb and manner adverbs in the verb phrase, and the usage of pre-nominal participial relative clauses vs the usage of the (post-nominal) relative pronoun strategy. The analysis is based on corpus-driven data, drawn from the existing literature on the topic and from corpus queries carried out by the author. Results show evidence of some changes in the typological shape of Esperanto. The reason behind these changes is also investigated; most notably, influences of English and speakers’ mother tongues, as well as natural typological drift, cannot be called into question, as far as syntactic changes are concerned. On the other hand, it seems reasonable to think that changes involving morphology – at least to some extent – are due to the tendency of Esperanto speakers to reduce the number of words and of morphemes in their sentences, fully exploiting the agglutinative morphology of the language.
Prendendo spunto dalla famosa ‘Proposta dei Seicento’ del 2017, il contributo saggia la
comprens... more Prendendo spunto dalla famosa ‘Proposta dei Seicento’ del 2017, il contributo saggia la
comprensione linguistica (sinetica) degli italiani, e in particolare di studentesse e studenti medi e universitari, lungo gli ultimi cinquant’anni, prendendo in esame cinque studi, diversi per metodologia, pubblicati a partire dalla metà degli anni ’70 del Novecento.
L’analisi comparativa mostra che, pur se in generale i dati non sono affatto confortanti, la
(in)competenza lessicale sembra costante o leggermente in miglioramento lungo l’arco di tempo preso in considerazione. In qualche caso gli errori possono essere dovuti al metodo di somministrazione del questionario (specialmente al cosiddetto ‘effetto da esame’) e alla scelta dei termini di cui era richiesta la definizione, talvolta obsoleti o ricercati. Quando si effettua una comparazione diretta tra generazioni a minore età corrisponde sempre maggiore comprensione: per spiegare questo dato si può certamente chiamare in causa la diffusione dell’italiano come lingua della comunicazione spontanea di tutti i cittadini e le cittadine.
Quando e come gli esseri umani hanno cominciato ad associare lettere, parole e immagini? In che m... more Quando e come gli esseri umani hanno cominciato ad associare lettere, parole e immagini? In che modo sono costruiti i rebus moderni? Che cos'hanno di interessante dal punto di vista linguistico? Il libro, muovendosi fra storia, ludolinguistica, sociolinguistica e tipologia, risponde a queste domande e, approfondendo in particolare qual è la varietà di italiano che si incontra nelle frasi risolutive, fornisce al lettore gli strumenti utili per decifrare anche i giochi più difficili.
Since the first written documents in the history of mankind (produced at the end of the 4th mille... more Since the first written documents in the history of mankind (produced at the end of the 4th millennium BC), translation has always played a pivotal role in human societies. Translators were needed whenever the need for contact between different-speaking communities arose, such as for the purposes of communication, commerce, and declarations of war, or peace.
Translation is even more important in today’s world. Globalization has brought the nations of the Earth closer, to the extent that books, movies and television programs released or aired far away in the world are just a click of the mouse away. However, such cultural products still have to be translated in order to be enjoyed by a wider audience. In international relations, diplomacies work very much on the basis of what is said and written, meaning that official documents and political charts need to be correctly and precisely translated.
Hi-tech devices, such as tablets and smartphones, have their software translated into an increasing number of languages, in order to be accessible to a larger number of people.
The challenging issues that arise for translation studies from these socio-cultural changes in Western Europe and all over the world are tackled in this volume according to two intertwined viewpoints: From a strictly linguistic perspective, typological differences between genetically unrelated languages challenge linguists in gaining an overall understanding of what language really is: how can linguistic categories, be they verbal, nominal or pertaining to other domains of the grammar, be defined? How are they shaped in syntax?
From the point of view of anthropological linguistics, on the other hand, the cross-linguistic differences that come to the fore illustrate that translating – as well as language itself – is one of the basic cognitive strategies of the human mind.
È giusto resistere ai cambiamenti linguistici? È sbagliato abbreviare le parole nei messaggini e... more È giusto resistere ai cambiamenti linguistici? È sbagliato abbreviare le parole nei messaggini e nei tweet? È vero che i nostri ragazzi non sanno più leggere e scrivere? Come si imparano le lingue, a partire dalla propria?
Un’indagine nella lingua parlata e scritta dai “nativi digitali”, per saggiare se sia davvero incomprensibile e sgrammaticata, e quindi peggiore di quella che gli adulti parlano tutti i giorni o che si parlava cinquant'anni fa. A partire dal concetto di errore e da quello di innovazione, Emanuele Miola osserva i comportamenti linguistici oggi più diffusi. Quei tecnicismi barbari che fanno rabbrividire genitori e insegnanti, quei simboli incomprensibili, quell’ortografia in libertà con cui i ragazzi comunicano su internet e nei social network indicano davvero il declino dell’italiano? E quali sono i fenomeni sociali e psicologici che fanno sì che il modo di esprimersi cambi senza che le persone smettano di comprendersi? Un viaggio nel “giovanilese” spiega come la lingua non sia mai un oggetto unico e cristallizzato, ma come si componga di un continuum di varietà, ordinate dal punto di vista sociale: ce ne sono alcune più accettate in determinate situazioni, altre meno accettate, altre sconsigliabili in tutte le situazioni. Così come conoscere bene più lingue è un pregio, è un pregio conoscere bene più varietà di una lingua e stimolare la conoscenza e l'impiego della varietà giusta al momento giusto e nella situazione giusta, cosicché la comunicazione vada sempre a buon fine.
This volume presents the Proceedings of the Second International Workshop organized by the IUSS P... more This volume presents the Proceedings of the Second International Workshop organized by the IUSS Postgraduate Research Center LETiSS and held under the title Languages Go Web. Standard and non-standard languages on the Internet.
As anyone can see, the Internet, and more specifically the Web, is today being utilized to do what in a certain sense defines us as human beings: that is, to relate to others, to create and strengthen cultural and social ties – ultimately, to communicate.
The online use of national and official languages, as well as non-standard, dialectal, or so-called contact languages is currently and will continue to be of great interest for linguists. Therefore, it has been put under the microscope of the authors of the papers collected in the volume both in order to detect the language changes that have taken or are taking place due to the Internet and to trace possible linguistic scenarios from a political and social viewpoint.
This volume presents the proceedings of the first Workshop organized by the Postgraduate Research... more This volume presents the proceedings of the first Workshop organized by the Postgraduate Research Centre LETiSS (Lingue d’Europa: Tipologia, Storia e Sociolinguistica – Languages of Europe: Typology, History and Sociolinguistics), specifically dedicated to the linguistic situation of Europe, approached from a variety of perspectives. The massive immigration wave of the last fifty years has deeply changed the linguistic constellation of Europe, leading to the formation of alloglottic communities more or less integrated in the local, social, and sociolinguistic fabric: because of these reasons, LETiSS has chosen to deepen the study of European languages according to the three dimensions announced in its acronym. The Centre wants to create a reference point for research on the linguistic dynamics of Europe and favor international cooperation, especially by gathering young researchers from many different countries and different cultural as well as linguistic traditions: workshops and spring schools should lead to establish new research networks as an outcome of these fruitful interactions between European and non-European researchers. The papers collected in the present volume deal with the manifold subject of language death and endangered languages following two thematic areas, namely socio-cultural-political conditions of endangered languages, and linguistic phenomena associated with the decay and death of a language.
In this paper, typological changes that took place, or are taking place, in Esperanto are discuss... more In this paper, typological changes that took place, or are taking place, in Esperanto are discussed for the first time. Two varieties, namely, the one used by Esperanto’s planner Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, and the other one used in modern and contemporary Esperantist magazines, are put in comparison. Three different case studies are discussed: the order of adjective and noun in the noun phrase; the order of verb and manner adverbs in the verb phrase, and the usage of pre-nominal participial relative clauses vs the usage of the (post-nominal) relative pronoun strategy. The analysis is based on corpus-driven data, drawn from the existing literature on the topic and from corpus queries carried out by the author. Results show evidence of some changes in the typological shape of Esperanto. The reason behind these changes is also investigated; most notably, influences of English and speakers’ mother tongues, as well as natural typological drift, cannot be called into question, as far as syntactic changes are concerned. On the other hand, it seems reasonable to think that changes involving morphology – at least to some extent – are due to the tendency of Esperanto speakers to reduce the number of words and of morphemes in their sentences, fully exploiting the agglutinative morphology of the language.
Nel saggio si offriranno alcune riflessioni intorno alla sintassi del rebus moderno, esaminando l... more Nel saggio si offriranno alcune riflessioni intorno alla sintassi del rebus moderno, esaminando le prime letture dei rebus vincitori e premiati, dal 1974 a oggi, nel prestigioso concorso \u2018Briga\u2019 de La Settimana enigmistica. Saranno istituiti, inoltre, confronti tra la variet\ue0 d\u2019italiano usata nelle prime letture rebussistiche e altre variet\ue0 di italiano, come quella giornalistica e quella \u2018dell\u2019uso medio\u2019
Since the academic year 2015/2016, the University of Turin holds a
Piedmontese Laboratory, that i... more Since the academic year 2015/2016, the University of Turin holds a Piedmontese Laboratory, that is a course where, along with Piedmontese regional literature, the structures of the language are taught, and proficiency is enhanced. Attendants had mainly Italian as an L1 and had some to no command of Piedmontese. In this article we investigate the referring expressions used in a number of papers submitted for the laboratory as assignments and we find that Italian- Piedmontese bilinguals, when writing in Piedmontese, tend to overspecify referring expressions (i.e. make use of overt or explicit forms linked to a highly activated referent) in comparison to what is expected by native/fluent speakers of Italian, but also by native/fluent speakers of Piedmontese. The tendency is explained by appealing to the need to compensate for possible nontargetlike features of the attendants’ (inter)language, and to the type of the texts under scrutiny (written and informative/argumentative).
The paper deals with an ongoing change in the clitic paradigm of contemporary Italian, namely the... more The paper deals with an ongoing change in the clitic paradigm of contemporary Italian, namely the incipient overextension of functions of the clitic ne.
In the standard variety ne can only stand for prepositional phrases consisting of di + [noun phrase] and da + [noun phrase], such as those found in genitival, partitive, and locative constructions or in passive ‘by’-phrases. In contemporary Italian, on the other hand, ne is increasingly appearing as a substitute of a + [noun phrase] when used as the second argument of intransitive bivalent verbs, such as accennare (a) ‘to mention’, appassionarsi (a) ‘to get passionate (about)’, and sopravvivere (a) ‘to survive’. The latter use has not received much attention in the literature.
This overextension is observed in a number of verbs, drawing on data from four corpora of written and spoken Italian, and is discussed as an incipient change from above, originating in formal registers of Italian and moving downwards into the neo-standard and (albeit rarely) colloquial varieties.
The change seems to have been triggered and favored by the fact that the standard variants for that slot of the paradigm, namely locative vi and ci, are avoided because they are considered too obsolete or low-prestige respectively, and also by the fact that these clitics, when combined with others, especially in pronominal verbs, might be judged agrammatical by some speakers.
This paper analyzes the first of the two Tarom letters published in Leo Spitzer’s Italienische Kr... more This paper analyzes the first of the two Tarom letters published in Leo Spitzer’s Italienische Kriegsgefangenenbriefen. Drawing on data from available jargon materials and glossaries, and based on linguistic and semantic considerations, a new translation of the letter is proposed. The amended translation, in turn, makes apparent that the sender and the recipient of the letter were mistakenly swapped by Spitzer.
Il contributo analizza la prima delle due lettere in gergo tarom pubblicata da Leo Spitzer nelle Italienische Kriegsgefangenenbriefen (Lettere di prigionieri di guerra ita-liani) e ne dà una traduzione differente da quella offerta dall’autore, sulla base dei materiali e dei glossari gergali disponibili e di considerazioni linguistiche e semantiche. La nuova traduzione della missiva induce inoltre a pensare che lo studioso viennese, nel suo libro, abbia erroneamente invertito mittente e destinatario.
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Books by Emanuele Miola
comprensione linguistica (sinetica) degli italiani, e in particolare di studentesse e studenti medi e universitari, lungo gli ultimi cinquant’anni, prendendo in esame cinque studi, diversi per metodologia, pubblicati a partire dalla metà degli anni ’70 del Novecento.
L’analisi comparativa mostra che, pur se in generale i dati non sono affatto confortanti, la
(in)competenza lessicale sembra costante o leggermente in miglioramento lungo l’arco di tempo preso in considerazione. In qualche caso gli errori possono essere dovuti al metodo di somministrazione del questionario (specialmente al cosiddetto ‘effetto da esame’) e alla scelta dei termini di cui era richiesta la definizione, talvolta obsoleti o ricercati. Quando si effettua una comparazione diretta tra generazioni a minore età corrisponde sempre maggiore comprensione: per spiegare questo dato si può certamente chiamare in causa la diffusione dell’italiano come lingua della comunicazione spontanea di tutti i cittadini e le cittadine.
Translation is even more important in today’s world. Globalization has brought the nations of the Earth closer, to the extent that books, movies and television programs released or aired far away in the world are just a click of the mouse away. However, such cultural products still have to be translated in order to be enjoyed by a wider audience. In international relations, diplomacies work very much on the basis of what is said and written, meaning that official documents and political charts need to be correctly and precisely translated.
Hi-tech devices, such as tablets and smartphones, have their software translated into an increasing number of languages, in order to be accessible to a larger number of people.
The challenging issues that arise for translation studies from these socio-cultural changes in Western Europe and all over the world are tackled in this volume according to two intertwined viewpoints: From a strictly linguistic perspective, typological differences between genetically unrelated languages challenge linguists in gaining an overall understanding of what language really is: how can linguistic categories, be they verbal, nominal or pertaining to other domains of the grammar, be defined? How are they shaped in syntax?
From the point of view of anthropological linguistics, on the other hand, the cross-linguistic differences that come to the fore illustrate that translating – as well as language itself – is one of the basic cognitive strategies of the human mind.
Un’indagine nella lingua parlata e scritta dai “nativi digitali”, per saggiare se sia davvero incomprensibile e sgrammaticata, e quindi peggiore di quella che gli adulti parlano tutti i giorni o che si parlava cinquant'anni fa. A partire dal concetto di errore e da quello di innovazione, Emanuele Miola osserva i comportamenti linguistici oggi più diffusi. Quei tecnicismi barbari che fanno rabbrividire genitori e insegnanti, quei simboli incomprensibili, quell’ortografia in libertà con cui i ragazzi comunicano su internet e nei social network indicano davvero il declino dell’italiano? E quali sono i fenomeni sociali e psicologici che fanno sì che il modo di esprimersi cambi senza che le persone smettano di comprendersi? Un viaggio nel “giovanilese” spiega come la lingua non sia mai un oggetto unico e cristallizzato, ma come si componga di un continuum di varietà, ordinate dal punto di vista sociale: ce ne sono alcune più accettate in determinate situazioni, altre meno accettate, altre sconsigliabili in tutte le situazioni. Così come conoscere bene più lingue è un pregio, è un pregio conoscere bene più varietà di una lingua e stimolare la conoscenza e l'impiego della varietà giusta al momento giusto e nella situazione giusta, cosicché la comunicazione vada sempre a buon fine.
As anyone can see, the Internet, and more specifically the Web, is today being utilized to do what in a certain sense defines us as human beings: that is, to relate to others, to create and strengthen cultural and social ties – ultimately, to communicate.
The online use of national and official languages, as well as non-standard, dialectal, or so-called contact languages is currently and will continue to be of great interest for linguists. Therefore, it has been put under the microscope of the authors of the papers collected in the volume both in order to detect the language changes that have taken or are taking place due to the Internet and to trace possible linguistic scenarios from a political and social viewpoint.
The papers collected in the present volume deal with the manifold subject of language death and endangered languages following two thematic areas, namely socio-cultural-political conditions of endangered languages, and linguistic phenomena associated with the decay and death of a language.
Papers by Emanuele Miola
comprensione linguistica (sinetica) degli italiani, e in particolare di studentesse e studenti medi e universitari, lungo gli ultimi cinquant’anni, prendendo in esame cinque studi, diversi per metodologia, pubblicati a partire dalla metà degli anni ’70 del Novecento.
L’analisi comparativa mostra che, pur se in generale i dati non sono affatto confortanti, la
(in)competenza lessicale sembra costante o leggermente in miglioramento lungo l’arco di tempo preso in considerazione. In qualche caso gli errori possono essere dovuti al metodo di somministrazione del questionario (specialmente al cosiddetto ‘effetto da esame’) e alla scelta dei termini di cui era richiesta la definizione, talvolta obsoleti o ricercati. Quando si effettua una comparazione diretta tra generazioni a minore età corrisponde sempre maggiore comprensione: per spiegare questo dato si può certamente chiamare in causa la diffusione dell’italiano come lingua della comunicazione spontanea di tutti i cittadini e le cittadine.
Translation is even more important in today’s world. Globalization has brought the nations of the Earth closer, to the extent that books, movies and television programs released or aired far away in the world are just a click of the mouse away. However, such cultural products still have to be translated in order to be enjoyed by a wider audience. In international relations, diplomacies work very much on the basis of what is said and written, meaning that official documents and political charts need to be correctly and precisely translated.
Hi-tech devices, such as tablets and smartphones, have their software translated into an increasing number of languages, in order to be accessible to a larger number of people.
The challenging issues that arise for translation studies from these socio-cultural changes in Western Europe and all over the world are tackled in this volume according to two intertwined viewpoints: From a strictly linguistic perspective, typological differences between genetically unrelated languages challenge linguists in gaining an overall understanding of what language really is: how can linguistic categories, be they verbal, nominal or pertaining to other domains of the grammar, be defined? How are they shaped in syntax?
From the point of view of anthropological linguistics, on the other hand, the cross-linguistic differences that come to the fore illustrate that translating – as well as language itself – is one of the basic cognitive strategies of the human mind.
Un’indagine nella lingua parlata e scritta dai “nativi digitali”, per saggiare se sia davvero incomprensibile e sgrammaticata, e quindi peggiore di quella che gli adulti parlano tutti i giorni o che si parlava cinquant'anni fa. A partire dal concetto di errore e da quello di innovazione, Emanuele Miola osserva i comportamenti linguistici oggi più diffusi. Quei tecnicismi barbari che fanno rabbrividire genitori e insegnanti, quei simboli incomprensibili, quell’ortografia in libertà con cui i ragazzi comunicano su internet e nei social network indicano davvero il declino dell’italiano? E quali sono i fenomeni sociali e psicologici che fanno sì che il modo di esprimersi cambi senza che le persone smettano di comprendersi? Un viaggio nel “giovanilese” spiega come la lingua non sia mai un oggetto unico e cristallizzato, ma come si componga di un continuum di varietà, ordinate dal punto di vista sociale: ce ne sono alcune più accettate in determinate situazioni, altre meno accettate, altre sconsigliabili in tutte le situazioni. Così come conoscere bene più lingue è un pregio, è un pregio conoscere bene più varietà di una lingua e stimolare la conoscenza e l'impiego della varietà giusta al momento giusto e nella situazione giusta, cosicché la comunicazione vada sempre a buon fine.
As anyone can see, the Internet, and more specifically the Web, is today being utilized to do what in a certain sense defines us as human beings: that is, to relate to others, to create and strengthen cultural and social ties – ultimately, to communicate.
The online use of national and official languages, as well as non-standard, dialectal, or so-called contact languages is currently and will continue to be of great interest for linguists. Therefore, it has been put under the microscope of the authors of the papers collected in the volume both in order to detect the language changes that have taken or are taking place due to the Internet and to trace possible linguistic scenarios from a political and social viewpoint.
The papers collected in the present volume deal with the manifold subject of language death and endangered languages following two thematic areas, namely socio-cultural-political conditions of endangered languages, and linguistic phenomena associated with the decay and death of a language.
Piedmontese Laboratory, that is a course where, along with Piedmontese
regional literature, the structures of the language are taught, and proficiency
is enhanced. Attendants had mainly Italian as an L1 and had some to no
command of Piedmontese.
In this article we investigate the referring expressions used in a number of
papers submitted for the laboratory as assignments and we find that Italian-
Piedmontese bilinguals, when writing in Piedmontese, tend to overspecify
referring expressions (i.e. make use of overt or explicit forms linked to a
highly activated referent) in comparison to what is expected by native/fluent
speakers of Italian, but also by native/fluent speakers of Piedmontese. The
tendency is explained by appealing to the need to compensate for possible
nontargetlike features of the attendants’ (inter)language, and to the type of
the texts under scrutiny (written and informative/argumentative).
In the standard variety ne can only stand for prepositional phrases consisting of di + [noun phrase] and da + [noun phrase], such as those found in genitival, partitive, and locative constructions or in passive ‘by’-phrases. In contemporary Italian, on the other hand, ne is increasingly appearing as a substitute of a + [noun phrase] when used as the second argument of intransitive bivalent verbs, such as accennare (a) ‘to mention’, appassionarsi (a) ‘to get passionate (about)’, and sopravvivere (a) ‘to survive’. The latter use has not received much attention in the literature.
This overextension is observed in a number of verbs, drawing on data from four corpora of written and spoken Italian, and is discussed as an incipient change from above, originating in formal registers of Italian and moving downwards into the neo-standard and (albeit rarely) colloquial varieties.
The change seems to have been triggered and favored by the fact that the standard variants for that slot of the paradigm, namely locative vi and ci, are avoided because they are considered too obsolete or low-prestige respectively, and also by the fact that these clitics, when combined with others, especially in pronominal verbs, might be judged agrammatical by some speakers.
Il contributo analizza la prima delle due lettere in gergo tarom pubblicata da Leo Spitzer nelle Italienische Kriegsgefangenenbriefen (Lettere di prigionieri di guerra ita-liani) e ne dà una traduzione differente da quella offerta dall’autore, sulla base dei materiali e dei glossari gergali disponibili e di considerazioni linguistiche e semantiche. La nuova traduzione della missiva induce inoltre a pensare che lo studioso viennese, nel suo libro, abbia erroneamente invertito mittente e destinatario.