Teaching about the Other Italian Languages: Dialectology in the Italian Curriculum

Repetti, Lori

doi:10.2307/479504

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 5 publications

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“…Since the work of Bartoli (1936) and Wartburg (1950), it is generally agreed that the Rimini-La Spezia line is an important isogloss for Romance classification in general and for the classification of Italian vernaculars in particular (see Green, 2009;Iacobini, 2009;Repetti, 1996; and the volume edited by Maiden & Parry,1997, for more recent discussion). There is also broad agreement on the fact that most of the Romance vernaculars traditionally spoken between the Alps and the Rimini-La Spezia line form a generally homogenous group known as "Gallo-Italic".…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach

Tamburelli

Brasca

2017

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities

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While Gallo-Italic varieties clearly belong to the Romance language family, their subgrouping as either Gallo-Romance or Italo-Romance has been the source of disagreement in the classificatory literature. While earlier analyses tended to classify Gallo-Italic as Gallo-Romance (notably Schmid, 1956; Bec, 1970-1971), later work has either argued for or tacitly assumed a classification of Gallo-Italic as part of the Italo-Romance branch, a view that is both different from as well as irreconcilable with the earlier Gallo-Romance classifications. In this paper we aim to contribute to the development of an empirically-based classification of Gallo-Italic through the use of dialectometry applied to atlas corpora, and specifically through the measurement of Levenshtein distance. Using three wordlists (Swadesh 100, Swadesh 200, Leipzig-Jakarta) and comparing twenty-six linguistic varieties across Italy and southeastern France, we show that Gallo-Italic is best classified as a third subgroup within the Gallo-Romance branch. Our results also clearly identify all the major bundles of isoglosses established through traditional dialectological methods and confirm Gallo-Italic as a relatively homogenous group distinct from Italo-Romance.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach

Tamburelli

Brasca

2017

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities

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Heritage nation vs heritage language: Towards a more nuanced rhetoric of ‘heritage’ in Italian language pedagogy

Tortora

2014

Forum Italicum: A Journal of Italian Studies

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Language programs in the US frequently invoke the notion of heritage in order to spark student interest in language learning. The idea is that acquisition of a particular language can connect a student to their past in ways that can empower them and give them a richer appreciation of their own ethnic background. This article addresses this ‘appeal to heritage’ approach to the promotion of language learning, in relation to Italian. I discuss the disconnect between the language of the classroom on the one hand and true Italian-American linguistic heritage on the other. My purpose is to facilitate an informed discussion of linguistic reality, which is that many members of the Italian diaspora descend from ancestors who were monolingual dialettofoni. I argue that the facts of linguistic diversity in Italy and dialect heritage in the US should be central to any discourse which aims to promote the learning of Italian as a gateway to our students’ pasts. While there is no question that knowledge of Standard Italian gives access to Italy, which in turn can give access to the Italian-American student’s heritage culture(s), it is necessary to formulate a more precise understanding of the link between ‘knowledge of Italian’ on the one hand, and ‘Italian heritage’ on the other – a link which is much less direct than is often suggested.

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Teaching about the Other Italian Languages: Dialectology in the Italian Curriculum

Cited by 2 publications

References 5 publications

Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach

Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach

Heritage nation vs heritage language: Towards a more nuanced rhetoric of ‘heritage’ in Italian language pedagogy

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