Re: Somewheres

Christian Weisgerber hat am 05.09.2024 um 22:42 geschrieben:

On 2024-09-04, Sergio Gatti <sergiogatti@meine-wahrheit-deine-wahrheit.de> wrote:
 

Deletion of final consonants and vowels in a High German dialect

>
Standard German is notably conservative.

>
As a native Italian, I have to point out that this statement is utterly
ridiculous.

 
You ripped that out of its context, which I restored above.  So:
... compared to German dialects.
 

Italians attending grammar schools read Dante in the last three years
before university (he died 1321, so he must have written the Divine
Comedy before that) and could understand most of it.

 
Excellent.  With so much widespread exposure to early 14th century
Italian, maybe somebody can tell me which of these conspicuous
features of the Italian verbal system--not inherited from Latin and
notably absent from Spanish--were already in Dante's language and
which are subsequent innovations:
 
* replacement of the 1PL present indicative by the subjunctive form
* leveling of the same 1PL (-iamo) and 2PL (-iate) present subjunctive
  endings across all three conjugations
* leveling of one ending across all persons in the singular of the
  present subjunctive
* replacement of 1SG imperfect -ava/-eva/-iva by -avo/-evo/-ivo
  (Wait, I think I read that this one happened only in the last 200
  years.)

Actually, you'd better ask such questions in an Italian NG about the
Italian language, like it.cultura.linguistica.italiano. You'll find many
more native Italians there than here. However, we never had a look at
your questions. We just notice the differences between Dante and our own
usage (sanza/senza).

Anyway, a look at Luca Serianni, Italiano, Garzanti tells us (my
translation):

- 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
- was used before that only as a subjunctive (following the vulgar Latin
*siamus instead of the classical simus) and was probably the model for
the the 1PL present indicative of all verbs, always ending in -iamo.

- I can't find anything there.

- 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.
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).

- 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).