HISTORIC LINGUISTICS (ADVANCED)

The course is part of the core educational activities of the master’s degree programs in Ancient Civilisations: Literature, History and Archaeology (Ancient Philology, Literatures and History) and in Italian Philology and Literature (Medieval and Renaissance period) and is part of the interdisciplinary activities of the master’s degree programs in talian Philology, Linguistics and Literature (European, Medieval and Renaissance Period, Modern and Contemporary Period). It aims to provide the knowledge required for reflecting and operating on language and languages as historical phenomena revealed by texts, with particular attention to the topics of variation, change, and reconstruction.

Students are expected to acquire the awareness of variation across time, space, society, and according communicative settings as a constitutive dimension of language, to be able to recognise and describe phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical changes as well as to analyse them in light of the current theoretical frameworks, to achieve a knowledge of the principles and methods of etymology and linguistic reconstruction as well as of the relationship between linguistic reconstruction and cultural reconstruction, to be able to frame theoretical and methodological issues and problems relevant to Historical Linguistics. Students are also expected to learn to use appropriate terminology.

The course requires basic knowledge of general linguistics obtained through the Principle of Linguistics course or other basic linguistics courses. The course also requires a good knowledge of the Italian language for foreign students.

The first part of the course will cover open theoretical and methodological issues concerning the genesis and theoretical grounds of Historical Linguistics, linguistic variation, historical and typological results of linguistic comparison, linguistic reconstruction, cultural reconstruction based on language data, and etymology. The second part of the course will focus on morphological change, taking into account different perspectives on the nature and functioning of language and languages. Examples from both ancient and modern languages will be considered.

1. Reference manual
M. Mancini (ed.), Il cambiamento linguistico, Roma, 2003.

2. Further readings
2.1. Open theoretical and methodological issues
A. L. Prosdocimi, Diacronia: ricostruzione. Genera proxima e differentia specifica, in «Lingua e stile» 13/III, 1978, pp. 335-371.
A. L. Prosdocimi, I fondamenti teorici della linguistica storica ovvero alla ricerca dell’odorosa pantera ovvero à la recherche…, in A. L. Prosdocimi, Scritti inediti e sparsi, Padova, 2004, II, pp. 583-627.
A. L. Prosdocimi, Comparazione, tipologia e ricostruzione, in A. L. Prosdocimi, Scritti inediti e sparsi, Padova, 2004, II, pp. 657-855.
A. L. Prosdocimi, Dialetto/dialetti, koinè/koinai. Ambito del significare e orizzonti del comunicare, in G. Marcato (ed.), Le mille vite del dialetto, Padova, 2014, pp. 441-472.
M. P. Marchese, A. L. Prosdocimi, Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Coseriu e Saussure, in V. Orioles, R. Bombi (eds.), Oltre Saussure. L’eredità scientifica di Eugenio Coseriu, 2015, pp. 233-247.

2.2. Morphological change
A. Meillet, L’évolution des formes grammaticales, in «Scientia» 12, 1912, pp. 384-400.
W. U. Dressler, W. Mayerthaler, O. Panagl, W. U. Wurzel, Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology, Amsterdam, 1987, pp. 3-22.
M. Halle, A. Marantz, Distributed Morphology and the Pieces of Inflection, in K. Hale, S. J. Keyser (eds.), The View from Building 20, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 111-176.
M. Aronoff, Morphology by Itself. Stems and inflectional classes, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 5-29.
W. U. Dressler, Naturalness and Morphological Change, in J. D. Brian, J. D. Richard (eds.), The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Blackwell, Oxford, 2003, pp. 461-471.
D. Embick, R. Noyer, Distributed Morphology and the Syntax/Morphology Interface, in The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, Oxford, 2007, pp. 289-234.
L. Gaeta, Analogical change, in S. Luraghi, V. Bubenik (eds.), The Continuum Companion to Historical Linguistics, London-New York, 2010, pp. 147-160.
M. Maiden, The Romance Verb. Morphomic Structure & Diachrony, Oxford, 2018, pp. 9-24.
M. Maiden, Folk etymology and contamination in the Romance languages, Oxford, 2020.

Learning will be assessed through an interview. The interview will focus on three general topics, which will be selected by the teacher: one from the reference manuals, one from the further readings concerning Open theoretical and methodological issues (2.1), one from the further readings concerning Morphological change (2.2). It should be noted that the further readings will be framed and discussed during the lessons.
In particular, mastery of the topics, ability in presentation, and terminological adequacy will be taken into account for evaluation.

Classroom-taught classes and in-depth analysis of specific topics carried out also through seminars.

Italian

On-line texts:
Prosdocimi 2004 (I fondamenti teorici della linguistica storica) https://www.academia.edu/27676483/I_fondamenti_teorici_della_linguistica_storica
Prosdocimi 2004 (Comparazione, tipologia e ricostruzione) https://www.academia.edu/27676358/II03Comparazione_tipologia_e_ricostruzione_pdf
Prosdocimi 2014 https://www.academia.edu/27676592/A_L_PROSDOCIMI_Dialetto_dialetti_koin%C3%A8_koinai_Ambito_del_significare_e_orizzonte_del_comunicare_pdf

Meillet 1912 https://www.academia.edu/5124610/A_Meillet_L_%C3%A9volution_des_formes_grammaticales
Halle – Marantz 1993 https://home.uni-leipzig.de/muellerg/dm8.pdf
Dressler 2003 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470756393.ch12
Embick – Noyer 2007 https://babel.ucsc.edu/~hank/mrg.readings/E_N_DM_SM_Interface.pdf
Gaeta 2010 https://www.academia.edu/39223324/Analogical_Change
Maiden 2020 https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:449d9457-ab4a-4f45-aba7-9e70dc4dc8b6

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