Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Some corrections relating to Italian and its dialects


Roberto Battisti alerts me to some problematic/incorrect citations or arguments relating to some Italian and dialectal Italian forms.

p. 130, n. 38: The Italian form giunto is cited as evidence for a long ū before nkC as if from < *iūnktŭm, but this is incorrect. In Florentine Tuscan an *ọ from Lat. *ŭ is raised before an n plus velar, or palatal or before palatal ñ. In the case of giunto, the u probably originates in the present giungere. Cf. Tusc. ungere ~ unto, mungere ~ munto, pungere ~ punto. Southern Tuscan preserves ọ (Senese giọnto). See Rohlfs 1966:91. The best Romance evidence for length before nk are the reflexes of quīn(c)tus which always reflect a long ī: It. quinto, Sp. quinto, OFr. quint 'fifth'.

p. 372 n. 44: I wrote “Standard Ital. venti has borrowed the root vowel of trenta, but Sicil. still has vinti.” but Proto-Romance *i and *ẹ merge as i in Sicilian and therefore the Sicilian form does not illustrate the point. For *vīnti in the Italian dialects Cf. Old Senese vinti, and Venetian vinti See Rohlfs 1966:73.

p. 507: Add Bolognese amiga to the empty cell in the table illustrating the Northern Italian reflex of Lat. amīca.