Il Cisalpino e il retoromanzo

Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach

“…As to its classification, comparisons for all three wordlists cluster Gallo-Italic varieties as closer to Gallo-Romance than to varieties south of the Rimini-La Spezia line, or Italo-Romance proper. This classification is consistent with the work of Schmid (1956), Bec (1970-1971), and Hull (1982 but in opposition to the rather widespread stance that takes Gallo-Italic as essentially Italo-Romance (Hall, 1974;Pellegrini, 1973Pellegrini, , 1992Loporcaro, 2009; among others). As dialectometric comparison of wordlists does not select any linguistic feature a priori, it might be the case that the analyses that have assumed close affinity between Gallo-Italic and Italo-Romance have been biased towards traits that happen to be specific to Italo-Romance.…”

“…Similar conclusions had previously been reached by Ascoli (1890), Schmid (1956) and Bec (1970Bec ( -1971 who explicitly classified Gallo-Italic varieties as part of the Gallo-Romance branch, a classification that found further support in the work of Pellegrini (1992Pellegrini ( , 1995 and Kotliarov, (2009).…”

“…On this view, Gallo-Italic is part of a dialect group that includes all Romance varieties historically spoken in Italy, Corsica, and Canton Ticino (southern Switzerland), but excluding Occitan, Franco-Provençal/Arpitan (classified as Gallo-Romance), Sardinian (classified as a separate branch), Ladin and Friulian (classified as Rhaeto-Romance) 2 . Works that are representative of this tradition include Wartburg (1950), Merlo (1960Merlo ( -1961, Hall (1974), Pellegrini (1973;1992), Loporcaro (2009) and, in some respects, Lausberg (1956). Within this tradition, Gallo-Italic varieties are either explicitly classified as Italo-Romance (and consequently excluded from the Gallo-Romance group) or indirectly presumed to be Italo-Romance, as is the case with classifications that consider Gallo-Italic as simply "Northern Italian" or even just "Italian" (e.g.…”

“…However, according to a second, less influential tradition, Gallo-Italic is part of the Gallo-Romance branch, separated from Italo-Romance by the Rimini-La Spezia line. Hull (1982) is perhaps the most extensive comparative analysis carried out within this tradition, culminating in a proposal for a genealogical classification of Gallo-Italic as part of a wider historical linguistic branch that he calls "Padanian", comprising of the Gallo-Italic and Rhaetic continua (not unlike the "Cisalpine" group in the work of Pellegrini, 1992Pellegrini, , 1995, and belonging to the larger Gallo-Romance branch within the Western Romance group. Hull concludes that "the Romance vernaculars of Northern Italy and Rhaetia have conserved, and in many cases have developed further, their original Gallo-Roman structure" (1982:660), and warns against giving unwarranted to the "superficial Italic, German and Franco-Occitan influences" which are "insufficient to warrant a classification of all or part of the Rhaeto-Cisalpine zone as "Italo-Romance" in the strictly linguistic sense of the term."…”