| Abstract |
Present day Italian is in great part the language used by Dante and other Tuscan writers at the end of the 13th century. 61% of contemporary Italian vocabulary has been used since the 14th century. If we include in our survey words used In Italian from the beginning to the 16th century, we see that the percentage of words still in use today rises and reaches 76,5%. Italy lacked a centre of political and cultural power which could establish an undisputed linguistic standard as had happened in France and Spain. Therefore the language of the great 14th century Florentines, namely Petrarca and Boccaccio, was adopted as a model. The diffusion of the printing process also contributed to the standardisation of the language. Ever since 1590 the Accademia della Crusca had been working on a comprehensive Dictionary of the Italian language, based on the study of texts mostly written in 14th century Florentine, but also including several later authors, not all Tuscan. The dictionary was published in Venice in 1612 and was the first modern European lexicographical undertaking in terms of its content and methods. The works of the authors quoted formed a balanced corpus. Galileo and other scientists attended to the technical and scientific entries. For each meaning a large context was supplied and there were frequent links to other related words and definitions. The Vocabolario acted as a centre of standardisation and identity of the language in Italy for centuries. |
| BibTex |
@InProceedings{ELX06-004,
author = {Francesco Sabatini},
title = {La Storia dell'Italiano nella Prospettiva della Corpus Linguistics },
pages = {31-37},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 12th EURALEX International Congress},
year = {2006},
month = {sep},
date = {6-9},
address = {Torino, Italy},
editor = {Elisa Corino, Carla Marello, Cristina Onesti},
publisher = {Edizioni dell'Orso},
isbn = {88-7694-918-6},
} |
