The dialects of northern Italy

Abstract

After a brief outline of the principal episodes in the external history, the chapter surveys the principal aspects of phonology, morphology and syntax of the dialects of northern Italy, including both Gallo-Italic (Ligurian, Piedmontese, Lombard, Emilian-Romagnol) and Venetan dialects. Topics dealt with include: characteristics of northern Italian dialects; suprasegmental phonology; segmental phonology; morphology of nouns and adjectives; verb morphology: tenses, person endings, root alternations, past participles; word formation; pronouns; articles; demonstratives; possessives; agreement in the nominal group; subject clitic pronouns; wh-movement constructions; negation; auxiliaries and double compound forms; restructuring and clitic climbing; clitic syntax.

Bilingual advantage and language switch: What's the linkage?

“…This point can be illustrated by comparing Italian and Venetian, the Northeastern dialect spoken in Venice and the nearby region (Ferguson, 2007; Maiden, 1995; Tuttle, 1997a) that was examined in the present investigation. Syntactic differences appear with clitics, subordinate clauses, auxiliary verbs, question formation and negation, just to mention a few (Benincà & Cinque, 2014; Cardinaletti & Ripetti, 2010; Cennamo & Sorace, 2007; Maiden, 1995; Poletto, 2000). Their phoneme repertoires differ: the velar nasal consonant /ŋ/ and the lenited l (/ɰ/) occur only in Venetian, while consonant germination appears in Italian but not in Venetian (Giannelli & Cravens, 1997; Maiden, 1995; Tuttle, 1997a; 1997b).…”

Initial laryngeal neutralisation in Tyrolean

“…The Alemannic varieties, which do have a length contrast, are part of a different dialect group, and contact with this variety has not been important for the Tyrolean spoken in South Tyrol. For the Romance varieties, there has historically been some language contact with the non-standard varieties of Northern Italy, which, as opposed to Standard Italian (but like all other western Romance languages), do not display any length contrast in their consonantal system (Benincà et al 2016: 187). Since 1919, Standard Italian has become part of the repertory of Tyrolean speakers, but in its regional variety it is spoken by speakers without a length contrast in their non-standard substrate; their pronunciation of geminates may be orthography-driven (Bertinetto & Loporcaro 2005: 134).…”

Gemination in Northern versus Central and Southern Varieties of Italian: A Corpus-based Investigation

“…So, we will compare data of 12 speakers from the six cities lying in the northern area ( Turin, Genoa, Milan, Bergamo, Parma, Venice ) with data of 16 speakers from cities lying in the central-southern area ( Florence, Perugia, Rome, Naples, Bari, Lecce, Catanzaro, Palermo ) (cf. Benincà et al, 2016). We will refer to the former as N (northern) speakers and to the latter as CS (central/southern) speakers.…”

“…Since southern dialects retain contrastive consonant length, it is usually assumed that southern speakers produce geminates in Italian without differing significantly from central speakers. In contrast, northern dialects do not retain consonant length, as most of them have lost it in favor of vocalic length (Benincà, Parry, & Pescarini, 2016; Loporcaro, 1996). Accordingly, it is usually assumed that “many northern speakers do not produce geminates” (Payne, 2005, p. 155; cf.…”