XPost: alt.usage.english   
   From: naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   On 2024-09-06, Sergio Gatti    
   wrote:   
      
   > Actually, you'd better ask such questions in an Italian NG about the   
   > Italian language, like it.cultura.linguistica.italiano.   
      
   I need to read a book about the history of the Italian language.   
   Like, where are all those geminates from?   
      
   >> * replacement of the 1PL present indicative by the subjunctive form   
   >   
   > - In old Tuscan, like in many modern Italian dialects, the 1PL present   
   > indicative was semo (example from Dante - please note that he chose   
   > freely among the forms available at his time for euphony and rhythm   
   > reasons); the form siamo - since the beginning attested as an indicative   
      
   I downloaded _La Divina Commedia_ from Project Gutenberg, and a   
   search for -emo indeed shows a number of 1PL present indicatives.   
   In fact, there's "avemo", a form still reflected in today's Italian   
   in the 1PL future ending -emo.   
      
   >> * leveling of one ending across all persons in the singular of the   
   >>   present subjunctive   
   >   
   > - Singular of the present subjunctive. Originally the 1st and 3rd   
   > persons ended in -e (like the Latin endings); the unification to only -i   
   > is very old and derives from the 2nd person.   
      
   Alkire/Rosen, _Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction_, describe   
   this somewhat differently.  The Old Italian forms were   
      
     indicative    subjunctive   
        canto        cante   
        cante        canti   
        canta        cante   
      
        parto        parta   
        parti        parte   
        parte        parta   
      
   The subjunctive forms leveled to -i (-are) and -a (-ere, -ire),   
   because these forms were distincly subjunctive and not homonymous   
   with an indicative form.  On the other hand, this introduced ambiguity   
   between first/second/third person.   
      
   The change of 2SG indicative -e > -i for the -are verbs is later   
   and in analogy to the -ere/-ire verbs.   
      
   Unfortunately, Alkire/Rosen don't give any dates for those changes,   
   so that's why I wondered which ones came before and after Dante.   
      
   > Also: worth noting is the attraction of the 1st conjugation on all other   
   > classes. Different forms are common in Leopardi's prose (benché tu vadi,   
   > che tu non possi) (XIX century) and abbi can be found in Bacchelli (XX   
   > century).   
      
   But also note the other classes pushing the 2SG indicative -i into   
   the first conjugation.   
      
   >> * replacement of 1SG imperfect -ava/-eva/-iva by -avo/-evo/-ivo   
   >   
   > - The form amavo got widespread very soon in Florentine (end of the XIV   
   > century) but it was hardly accepted for a long time in the literary   
   > language; its success got a huge drive through Manzoni in The Betrothed   
   > (XIX century).   
      
   According to Alkire/Rosent the transparent reason for this change   
   was the disambiguation of 1SG and 3SG.   
      
   Overall, we're looking at a list of changes that remove some   
   ambiguities, but new ambiguities are also introduced.   
      
   I'm a bit sensitive to this because Italian and Spanish are pro-drop   
   languages, i.e., they omit the subject pronoun, except for emphasis   
   or disambiguation.  Spanish in particular does not distinguish 1SG   
   and 3SG in the imperfect, conditional, present subjunctive, or   
   imperfect subjunctive, and Spanish speakers seem to feel little   
   need to inject pronouns for disambiguation, which can be disorienting   
   to language learners.   
      
   --   
   Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)