Pantesco is theSicilian dialect of the island ofPantelleria, betweenSicily andTunisia. It is notable amongRomance varieties for an unusually high degree of influence fromArabic, originating in Arabic dialect similar toMaltese, which was spoken on the island until around the 19th century and issubstratal to Pantesco.

Many Arabic loanwords are found in Pantesco, for examplehurrìhi ("nettle") andkardèna ("tick"). These terms frequently refer to a rural lifestyle, have negative connotations or are even limited to use with reference to animals, reflecting the low prestige of the extinct Arabic dialect. In such loans, the glottal fricative h (unusual for a Romance dialect) is preserved as a reflex of Arabic laryngeals h/x/ħ and sometimes even q.

In addition to lexical and phonological influence, the grammar of Pantesco shows Arabic influence in its formation of the periphrastic future and the pluperfect. Pantesco uses unstressedsubject pronounclitics to form acontinuous aspect, which is unique among Romance languages. The dialect has undergone a process of Sicilianisation, by which it has lost most of its Arabic vocabulary, and is currently undergoing alanguage shift to Italian. A dictionary of Pantesco was published by Giovanni Tropea in 1988.

Pantelleria was occupied from theNeolithic period,^[2] and in classical timesPunic,Greek andLatin were spoken on the island.^[3] However, no trace of a substrate originating in these languages is detectable in Pantesco, as it appears that the island was forcibly depopulated, through massacre or deportation, when it was conquered by theAghlabids in 840.^[3][4]

It is likely that Pantelleria was uninhabited for a period of time before being resettled by Arab Muslims at some point prior to 1127.^[6] It is not known whether the settlers initially spoke a variety ofSicilian orMaghrebi Arabic, as no written record of the dialect exists and the process of resettlement of the island was not documented.^[4][6]

Following the Norman conquest of Pantelleria in 1127, the island's Muslim Arab population came under the control of theKingdom of Sicily.^[7] This placed them under the government of a Christian bureaucracy, which used both Arabic and Greek as languages of administration, although this was changed to Latin around the turn of the 13th century.^[7] The christianisation and latinisation of the population on the island was initially much slower than on Malta, with the Islamic faith definitely surviving until the 15th century.^[7] Likewise, the rural areas of Pantelleria remained entirely Arabic-speaking throughout the medieval period.^[4][6] However, the port and castle were colonised by merchants and officials from Sicily, who were later joined by others fromGenoa andCatalonia.^[4] The castle was therefore Christian and increasinglyRomance in its language, which, due to rough terrain, did not spread to the isolated settlements of the rural population.^[4]

During the 16th century, Pantelleria was prey to attacks not only byBarbary corsairs, who treated it the same as any other Christian territory, but alsoChristian pirates, for whom the inhabitants' Arabic speech rendered them legitimate targets.^[4] In 1599, the island was visited by the bishop ofMazara, who found that young people still wore Moorish clothing and spoke Arabic.^[6][4] He ordered that these customs should cease, and that the population should adopt Sicilian customs.^[6][4] The rural areas of the island were still Arabophone in 1670, when a visiting French captain was forced to use a Maltese interpreter to converse with the population because "the language of Malta is the same as that of Pantelleria".^[4][6]

Pantesco is descended from the Sicilian dialects ofTrapani, the nearest point on the Sicilian mainland.^[6] The process by which the Arab population adopted Sicilian is not well-documented, but Maltese linguist Joseph Brincat states that the conversion of the island to Christianity and the emigration ofmudéjars who refused to convert, alongside pirate raids, were contributory factors.^[6] It is also possible that official linguistic policy favoured the abandonment of Arabic language features in the 19th and 20th century.^[6]

French historianHenri Bresc describes a process of Latinisation of the population, by which speakers of different Romance varieties from Spain and Italy congregated on the island, producing a new oral culture which absorbed vocabulary and habits from the Arabic population into the new Pantesco reality.^[6] On the other hand, Brincat views the process of language shift as a gradual incorporation of Trapanese Sicilian words into the island's Arabic speech, until it was more Sicilian than Arabic.^[3] This would, in his view, explain the fact that the Arabic vocabulary is limited to "the elementary activities of daily life", particularly farming.^[6]

Although monolingual speakers are documented at the end of the 17th century, no later direct evidence of Arabic on the island exists.^[6] Brincat suggests that the population switched to Sicilian during the 19th century.^[6] Despite the disappearance of Arabic, its influence on Pantesco was significant, leaving effects on its vocabulary, grammar and phonology, which made it the most Arabised of all theRomance languages.^[6]

Pantesco in the 20th century underwent a process of de-Arabisation, becoming gradually more similar to mainland Sicilian dialects.^[6] Several factors contributed to this. The construction of roads on the island reduced the isolation of the rural areas and brought conservative countryside speakers into contact with the more Sicilianised dialect of the port.^[6] In addition, prior to theSecond World War, a prison colony existed on Pantelleria, andItalian military personnel were stationed there.^[6] These outsiders were agents ofItalianisation on the island.^[6]

A record of the pre-war dialect exists in a 1937 dissertation by Maria Valenza, the first study conducted on the language of the island.^[6] By the 1950s, the Sicilianisation of Pantesco was extensive, with much Arabic vocabulary already lost.^[6] In 1964-1967, Anna Rosa D'Ancona carried out fieldwork on the island, which would be used as the source material Giovanni Tropea's 1988Lessico del dialetto di Pantelleria,^[8] the main source for study of the dialect.^[6]

A process of further Italianisation began in the late 20th century, with younger inhabitants of Pantelleria abandoning their mother tongue in favour of regional Italian.^[6] Speakers on the island around the turn of the century associated Italian with progress and economic advancement, and Pantesco with a backwards rural lifestyle.^[6] Brincat writes that, as of 2011, no literature had been published in Pantesco, reflecting the low status of the language.^[6]

Although little has been published in Pantesco,^[6] the dialect has a tradition of poetry.^[9][10] The local Italian-language press occasionally publish poems in Pantesco,^[11] as well as collections of sayings with translations and explanations.^[12]

In 2018, a collection of poetry in Pantesco,Eco di suoni panteschi, was published inBrescia by Beatrice Cornado, a daughter of emigrants from the island.^[9] The poet Lillo di Bonsulton, who died in 2022, published many poems in the local newspapers, and was well-known on the island.^[13][14] In memory of Bonsulton, the local council of Pantelleria inaugurated the annual Premio Lillo di Bonsulton, a poetry prize with categories for poetry written in Italian and Pantesco.^[15][10]

Pantesco has fivestressed vowels, which are the same as those in other dialects of Sicilian.^[16]

In addition to this,[o] exists as a possibleallophone of /ɔ/ in stressed syllables, and the close-mid[e] can replace /ɛ/.^[16]

In unstressed syllables, three vowels are possible in Pantesco: /ɪ/, /a/ and /ʊ/. Allophones of two of these exist; /ɪ/ can be pronounced as [e] while /ʊ/ can become [o].

The phoneme /h/ is unusual in Romance languages.^[16] In Pantesco it is used exclusively in wordsborrowed from the Arabic dialect formerly spoken on the island, replacing the Arabic phonemes /h/,/χ/,/ħ/ and/q/.^[3] Writing in 2011, Joseph Brincat states that /h/ is a rural pronunciation which has now been replaced by /c/, a feature previously characteristic of the dialect of the town of Pantelleria (u paìsi "the village" in Pantesco).^[6] Alice Idone still included it as a feature of rural speech in 2017.^[16]

The grammar of Pantesco is generally similar to that of other varieties of Sicilian, however, it has several features which are more similar to Maltese, an Arabic-derivedSemitic language. Pantesco forms thepluperfect using the verb "to be" which is a close parallel of the form used in Maltese.^[6][16] Another grammatical similarity to Maltese is the use of thepreterite (known as the "remote past" in Italian) to indicate an event which is certain to occur in the near future.^[3] Pantesco also forms aperiphrastic future by conjugating both the auxiliary verb and the main verb, as in Maltese.^[3]

Pantesco differs from both Sicilian and Maltese in its use of clitics to form a progressive aspect, which is unique among Romance languages.^[17][18]

Pantescoarticles vary according to number, gender anddefiniteness.

The definite article in Sicilian parallels that of otherSouth Italian varieties, in that it only differentiates between masculine and feminine nouns in the singular.^[16][8] The definite article for singular masculine nouns isu whereas singular female nouns takea.^[16][8] Both feminine and masculine nouns use the plural definite articlei.^[16][8]

When the noun begins with a vowel, the definite article isl' for all genders and numbers.^[16]

The indefinite article in Pantesco is usually used only in the singular:^[16]

The only situation in which the indefinite article is used with plural nouns is when the adjectiveàutri is followed by a number and a plural noun.^[16]

In Pantesco, the majority of adjectives accord with thegender of the noun in the singular, but not in the plural.^[16]

Another class of adjectives is invariable according to number and gender.^[16]

There are five classes of nouns in Pantesco, which display two genders (masculine and feminine) and twonumbers (singular and plural).^[16]

Pantescopersonal pronouns exist in strong (stressed) andclitic forms.^[17] Loporcaro gives the following schema:

Possessives only agree with the noun's gender and number in the first and second person plural.^[16]

Determiners can generally be used with possessive pronouns in Pantesco, except when referring to a close family member, where the definite article is never used.^[16]

Pantescodemonstrative pronouns and adjectives have two grades of proximity,chistu ("this") andchiddhu ("that").^[16]

These are frequently shortened when used as adjectives, but never when used as a demonstrative pronouns.^[16]

Adverbs of manner are identical in form to their corresponding adjectives, for examplebbonu means both "good" and "well". Where the verb isintransitive, the adverb usually agrees with the subject, but where it istransitive, the adverb agrees with the object.^[16]

As with other Romance languages, verbs have basal infinitive forms which are then inflected for tense and signal agreement by number and person.^[16] As in other South Italian languages, thepresent subjunctive is absent in Pantesco.^[18] Thepresent perfect tense is almost completely absent, with Brincat stating it is only used to describe frequently repeated actions which have the potential to reoccur in future.^[3] In common with most south Italian varieties, no future tense exists in Pantesco, with the future instead being constructed by employing modal phrases (periphrastic future).^[6] Pantesco uses an unusual form of the Pluperfect, using the verb to be, which is calqued from the Arabic dialect formerly spoken on the island.^[6][18] It is also unique among Sicilian dialects for using a clitic pronoun to form the progressive aspect.^[6][16]

The following examples display the indicative mood of the two main conjugations of regular verbs in Pantesco, the example of the first conjugation iskanˈtaːrɪ ('to sing') and the second conjugation example isˈbːatːɪrɪ ('to beat').^[18] The infinitive of first conjugation verbs ends in-aːrɪ, that of second conjugation verbs in-iːrɪ^[18]

A subclass of the first conjugation exists for verbs which end in-iˈaːrɪ (e.g.taliˈaːrɪ, "to look";vuʃɪˈaːrɪ, "to cry out").^[18] These verbs place the stress on the second syllable in all persons and numbers of the present indicative, and maygeminate the /n/ in the third person plural of the present.^[18]

A further subclass of the second conjugation exists for some verbs which originate in thesecond and fourth Latin conjugations, where the second syllable of the infinitive is stressed; for examplefiˈniːri, "to finish".^[18] In the present tense, the second syllable of these verbs is also stressed in all persons and /ʃ/ is added to the second syllable (1SG fiˈniʃːʊ, 2SG fiˈniʃːɪ, 3SG fiˈniʃːɪ, 1PL fiˈnɛːmʊ, 2PL fiˈniːtɪ, 3PL fiˈniʃːɪnʊ).^[18]

A large number of more frequently used verbs are irregular.^[18] The verbs generally follow the pattern of endings above, with variations to the stem, however, some verbs are more radically irregular.^[18] A full discussion of these verbs can be found in Giovanni Tropea's 1988 dictionary and a summary in a 2018 paper by Loporcaro, Kägi and Gardani.^[18]

Thepluperfect for all persons and numbers is formed with the 3rd person singular imperfect of the verb "to be" and the inflected perfective.^[16][6] This structure is unique amongRomance languages, and differs from other Sicilian dialects, which use theimperfect of the verb "to have" and thepast participle.^[16][18] However, it has a parallel in Maltese, which suggests the structure originates in the Arabic dialect spoken on the island prior to the population'sadoption of Sicilian.^[6][16]

As well as using agerund and the verbto be to form aprogressive aspect, as in Italian and Spanish, Pantesco uses clitics based on personal pronouns.^[17][1] The clitics are near identical to Pantesco subject pronouns, except in that they are unstressed and initiali can be dropped.^[16]

In the variety of Pantesco spoken in the main town of Pantelleria, these clitics cannot be used in negative sentences.^[16] However, in the surrounding villages negation is allowed.^[16] Therefore, the following phrase would be grammatical for rural speakers, but not for those in the town:Viàtri un viàtri travagghjati ("You are not working").^[16]

Unlike in Italian, but in common with many South Italian dialects, Pantesco has nosynthetic construction of the future tense.^[6] Instead it forms its future tense by inflectingˈjiːrɪ ("to go") before the verb.^[6] Mainland Sicilian has a similar structure using the verb to go, but rather than using the infinitive, in Pantesco the following verb is conjugated to the present indicative.^[6] This structure is very similar to the periphrastic future in Maltese.^[6]

As a Sicilian dialect, the larger part of the vocabulary of Pantesco is found in the dialects of mainland Sicily.^[8] However, in addition to the Siculo-Arabicsubstrata found in the mainland dialects, a considerable number of Arabic borrowings derived from the more recently extinct dialect spoken on the island are identifiable.^[4][6]

The borrowings are particularly concentrated in terminology related to rural and traditional life on the island.^[6][4] Staccioli gives over a hundred examples of these loanwords.^[4] Brincat points out that a large number of these words also exist in Maltese, with the same or related meanings.^[3]

Brincat notes that many of the words originating in Arabic are not merely related to a primitive rural lifestyle, but have clearly negative connotations.^[6]

He also notes that words which in Maltese cover widesemantic fields and can be used to refer humans are given more specific negative meanings, or are used exclusively to refer to animals.^[6]

Variouscalques from Arabic are also present in Pantesco.^[4] The Sicilian termtinnùsu ("mangy")is used to mean "bald" on the island, this calques the Arabic wordfarṭās, which means "mangy", but which also has the meaning "bald" in Maltese.^[4] The wordfarṭās came to refer to hornless goats, so a new word was needed to cover the meaning of "mangy", this was obtained by usinginkamulùto, from Arabickamula, "woodworm".^[4] Another example is the wordṣṭṛàniu ("outsider") which would normally mean "strange" in Sicilian, but which on Pantelleria has taken on the secondary meaning of Arabicġarīb ("strange, curious, foreign").^[4] It is also possible thatòčču d'àkua (lit. "eye of water") meaning "spring" is a calque from 'ayn ("eye") as this word is found in the names of many springs in Sicily.^[4]

The influence of Arabic on Pantesco is also notable in terms ofepenthesis, the insertion of a vowel, andmetathesis, the swapping of a vowel and a consonant.^[4][3][6] These occur in Pantesco to avoid initial consonant clusters, which are found in Sicilian but would have been difficult to pronounce for Arabic speakers. For example, the Sicilianblusa ("blouse") became Pantescobilùsa,frenu ("brake") >firènu,creta ("chalk/clay") >kirìta,cravatta ("tie") >kurvàta,precìso ("precise, exactly") >pirčìsu,trottola ("spinning top") >tòrtula.^[4]

Another effect, which is also found in Sicilian loans to Maltese, was the deletion of unstressed vowels.^[4] This phenomenon is very common in Maghrebi Arabic, and can be found in Pantesco words likemirtàre ("to deserve"; Italianmeritare),mantrìnu ("mandarine orange"; Italianmandarìno),viṭṛinàriu ("veterinary surgeon"; Italianveterinàrio).^[4]

Staccioli notes that Pantesco uses repetition of words to form new but related words, and argues that this process has its origin in Arabic.^[4] Examples includeguardegguàrda, from duplication of the imperative of the verb to look, which means "with great care"; andfàvi fàvi, fromfàvi ("beans"), which is adermatological reaction to contact with uncooked beans.^[4] He also gives the example of this doubling in an Arabic borrowing,kìffikìffi, an adjective meaning "of the same character".^[4] This originates in Arabickifā meaning "the same" or "equivalent".^[4]

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