A Reference Grammar of Modern Italian

Professor Martin Maiden, Dr Cecilia Robustelli, Martin Maiden, Cecilia Robustelli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134654154
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachwissenschaft

This Italian reference grammar provides students, teachers and others interested in the Italian language with a comprehensive, accessible and jargon-free guide to the forms and structure of Italian.
Whatever their level of knowledge of the language, learners of Italian will find this book indispensable: it gives clear and detailed explanations of everything from the most elementary facts such as the relation between spelling and pronunciation, or the forms of the article, to more advanced points such as the various nuances of the subjunctive. Formal or archaic discourse is distinguished from informal, everyday usage, and regionalisms are also indicated where appropriate.
The authors have taken care to make it an easy and illuminating reference tool: extensive cross-referencing enables readers to quickly find the information they require, and also stimulates them to discover new, related facts.

1

Introduction

 

This book aims to provide a comprehensive work of reference for learners of Italian whose native language is English, or who possess a very good knowledge of English. It is not intended as a course in Italian grammar, but it is meant to be accessible to all learners of Italian, whatever their level of knowledge of the language. So a beginner who needs to check the distinction between the forms of the article il and lo should find this book as useful as an advanced learner who is interested, say, in the finer points of use of the subjunctive. The fact that we are aiming at English-speaking learners means that we do not usually comment on those aspects of Italian grammar which happen to be identical to English, and over which an English-speaking learner is unlikely ever to make a mistake; thus, for example, while we mention that it is possible in Italian, unlike English, to form adverbs from certain adjectives of nationality (e.g., italianamente), we do not bother to state that in Italian one cannot form adverbs from adjectives of colour (*giallamente) – for no more can one say ‘yellowly’ in English.

A ‘reference grammar’ should, precisely, facilitate ‘reference’, so this grammar has a detailed index and list of contents. In the latter, section headings are designed, as far as possible, to give the user a clear idea of what the section deals with, often including brief examples of the type of structure involved, with English translation where appropriate. On the whole, the meaning of grammatical terminology, if unfamiliar, should be obvious from the illustrative examples but, where necessary, explanatory notes have been given. There is also extensive cross-referencing within the text, a fact which should help obviate some of the problems of organization which can affect works of this kind: it is debatable, for example, whether a section on ‘negative adverbs’ should appear in the chapter on adverbs or in the chapter on negatives, but this should matter little so long as there is good cross-referencing between the two.

We have tried to give ample exemplification of the grammatical points discussed and, to avoid the monotony of invented examples in the ‘plume de ma tante’ tradition, we have taken as many as possible from current newspapers, magazines, from novels, political, historical, sociological and scientific works and from radio and television broadcasts. We have also made use of the database of contemporary Italian literature available on the Internet at www.alice.it. We have not, however, felt it necessary to give the source of each example, except for cases where we believe that the source may have some real bearing on the grammatical structure at issue, and for passages which constitute substantial quotations from literary works or whose content is, taken out of context, so striking that readers might actually wish to see the original. Virtually all examples have been translated (by Maiden) into English, in as natural and idiomatic a way as is compatible with illustrating the grammatical point in question.¹

There are some ‘grey areas’ between what should be contained in a dictionary and what should be contained in a grammar. A good example of this appears in Chapter 20, on word formation: a comprehensive account of the semantic and structural idiosyncrasies of word formation is beyond the scope of a reference grammar, and one can do little more than indicate some of the problems and structures associated with word formation. Arguably, Chapters 12 (on numerals) and 21 (on time expressions), barely belong in a ‘grammar’ at all, but the inclusion of such things (apparently on the grounds that, like morphological paradigms, they often constitute closed sets of forms) is a time-honoured tradition, and we make no exception here.

As far as we have been able, we have attempted to bear in mind potentially significant differences at least between United States English and British English. We apologize in advance to readers in other parts of the Anglophone world, if we have labelled as ‘British’, or ‘United States’, usages which are actually more widespread, or have neglected to mention features of English in other parts of the world which might be relevant to learners of Italian in those places.

The differences between varieties of English are much less dramatic than those between varieties of Italian. The ‘Italian language’ (based on a late-medieval form of just one of the dialects of Italy, that of Florence) was for many centuries primarily a written language and chiefly the preserve of intellectuals. The adoption of Italian as a versatile everyday language by the mass of the population is really a phenomenon of the twentieth century. The dialects which until recently were the native speech of Italians were often so profoundly different from Italian (and from each other) as to constitute ‘different languages’, and these differences have left their mark on the way in which the Italian language is used in different regions of Italy.² This reference grammar makes no attempt at a systematic account of the regional varieties of Italian but points out some of the more salient regional differences which might be encountered in the speech or writing of educated speakers of Italian. There are also considerable differences of register between the kind of Italian used in formal discourse (such as making a public address, academic or bureaucratic writing, etc.) and informal (particularly spoken) usage. It is simply beyond the scope of this book to give a detailed characterization of such differences, but we have attempted where possible to point out major differences between formal and informal discourse, as far as they impinge on grammatical structure, and have summarized these differences in chapter 23. The books by Moss and Motta (2000) and Kinder and Savini (2004), which have appeared since the first edition of this book, provide an excellent complement to it where information about lexical and register distinctions is concerned.

This book is the joint work of both authors. However, Martin Maiden is principally responsible for Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (1–28, 37–38), 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 (1–24), 15 (1–11, 17–57), 16, 20, 21 and 23 and the glossary, and Cecilia Robustelli for Chapters 6 (29–36), 14 (25–36), 15 (12–17), 17, 18, 19 and 22.

Many native speakers and/or specialists in Italian linguistics were consulted – some of them will have felt that they were pestered – in the preparation of this book. A complete list of names would be lengthy, but our thanks go to all of them (and to a number of readers who sent us extremely useful comments on, and corrections to, the first edition of this Grammar). Among those who particularly went out of their way to be helpful in the preparation of the first edition, we should like to mention Michela Cennamo, Roberta Middleton, Anna Morpurgo Davies and Nigel Vincent; Francesco Sabatini, Barbara Wehr and Paola Tite made some very helpful suggestions for the second edition. But our greatest debt of gratitude goes to Giulio Lepschy, who patiently and painstakingly commented on a large part of this book, making countless acute suggestions for improving it. The authors alone are responsible for the defects of this grammar, but many of its strengths are due to Giulio.

Martin Maiden
Cecilia Robustelli
e-mail: [email protected]
[email protected]

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¹ In translating Italian third person singular verb-forms (which frequently do not indicate the gender of the subject) we have used indifferently both ‘he’ and ‘she’ in English, but make no guarantee that we have distributed the sexes equally!

² Brief accounts of the historical and dialect background (with suggestions for further reading) appear in Part One of Lepschy and Lepschy (1988), Maiden (1995, Chapters 1 and 3), and the articles under ‘Italy’ variously by Benincà, Maiden, Parry and Vanelli, in Price (1998: 251–76). Lepschy and Tosi (2002) provides a useful overview of the linguistic situation in Italy, past and present, particularly the chapters by Maiden, by Parry and by Lepschy.

2

Spelling and pronunciation

2.1 The relationship between letters and sounds

The relationship between Italian letters and the sounds they represent is relatively straightforward. By and large, one letter corresponds to one sound, and vice versa. But there are also respects in which this relationship is less transparent and, in certain cases, highly unpredictable. Sections 2 to 6 throw some light on these more problematic areas. Pronunciation, and especially that part of pronunciation which is not unambiguously indicated by spelling, is a domain in which standardization of Italian is at its weakest and most fluid: even educated speakers vary considerably from region to region and deviation from a norm which is based, historically, on Tuscan, and particularly Florentine, pronunciation, is widespread and often perfectly acceptable. After all, only a minority of Italians are Tuscan, leave alone Florentine (and there are dif...