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| Tuscan | |
|---|---|
| toscano, vernacolo | |
| Native to | Italy |
| Region | Tuscany (except parts of theProvince of Massa-Carrara) Umbria (western border with Tuscany) Corsica (as avariety) Sardinia,Gallura (as avariety),Sassari (as avariety) |
| Dialects | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
ita-tus | |
| Glottolog | None |
| Linguasphere | 51-AAA-qa |
| IETF | it-u-sd-it52 |
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| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
| This article is part ofthe series on the |
| Italian language |
|---|
| History |
| Literature and other |
| Grammar |
| Alphabet |
| Phonology |
Tuscan (Italian:toscano[djaˈlɛttotosˈkaːno;di.a-]; locally:vernacolo) is a set ofItalo-Dalmatianvarieties ofRomance spoken inTuscany,Corsica, andSardinia.
Tuscan, especially itsFlorentine variety, formed the basis for establishingStandard Italian. Due mostly to the prestige of the works byDante Alighieri,Petrarch,Giovanni Boccaccio,Niccolò Machiavelli, andFrancesco Guicciardini, the Tuscan-derived elaboration became the primary language of culture throughout Italy[1], and later the official language of all of thehistoric Italian states and then of theKingdom of Italy when it was formed.
InDe vulgari eloquentia (c. 1300), Dante Alighieri distinguishes four main variants of the Tuscan language:fiorentino (Florence),senese (Siena),lucchese (Lucca), andaretino (Arezzo).
Tuscan is a language complex composed of many local variants, with minor differences among them.
The main subdivisions are between Northern Tuscan dialects, the Southern Tuscan dialects, and Corsican.
The Northern Tuscan dialects are (from east to west):
The Southern Tuscan dialects are (from east to west):
Corsican, on the island ofCorsica, and the Corso-Sardinian transitional varieties that are spoken in northernSardinia (Gallurese andSassarese) are classified by scholars as a direct offshoot from medieval Tuscan,[6] even though they now constitute a distinct linguistic group.
Excluding the inhabitants ofProvince of Massa and Carrara, who speak anEmilian dialect, and people in the area of Tuscan Romagna, who speakRomagnol, around 3.5 million people speak Tuscan.
Tuscan as a whole has certain defining features, with subvarieties that are distinguished by minor details. A Romance language variety descending fromVulgar Latin, it also contains asubstrate from theEtruscan language of the original inhabitants prior to Romanization.[7][8][9] The Etruscan influence is found most saliently in thetoponyms ofTuscany, as well as some parts of neighbouringUmbria andLazio.[10][11]
TheTuscan gorgia affects thevoicelessstop consonants/k/,/t/, and/p/. They are usually pronounced asfricatives inpost-vocalic position when not blocked by the competing phenomenon ofsyntactic gemination:
A similarphonological alternation is the intervocalic weakening of the Italian "soft"g, the voiced affricate/dʒ/ (g as injudge) and "soft"c, the voiceless affricate/tʃ/ (ch as inchurch), known asattenuation, or, more commonly, asdeaffrication.
Between vowels, thevoiced post-alveolar affricate consonant is realized asvoiced post-alveolar fricative (s and z in the Englishmeasure andazure):
This phenomenon is very evident in daily speech (common also inUmbria and elsewhere in Central Italy): the phrasela gente 'the people' in Standard Italian is pronounced[laˈdʒɛnte], but in Tuscan, it is[laˈʒɛnte].
Similarly, thevoiceless post-alveolar affricate is pronounced as avoiceless postalveolar fricative between two vowels:
The sequence/laˈtʃena/la cena, 'the dinner', in Standard Italian is pronounced[laˈtʃeːna], but in Tuscan, it is[laˈʃeːna]. As a result of the weakening rule, there are a few minimal pairs distinguished only by length of the voiceless fricative (e.g.[laʃeˈrɔ]lacerò 'it/he/she ripped' vs.[laʃʃeˈrɔ]lascerò 'I will leave/let').
A less common phonetic phenomenon is the realization of "voiceless s" (voiceless alveolar fricative/s/) as thevoiceless alveolar affricate[ts] when preceded by/r/,/l/, or/n/.
For example,il sole (the sun), pronounced in Standard Italian as[ilˈsoːle], would be in theory pronounced[ilˈtsoːle] in Tuscan. However, since assimilation of the final consonant of the article to the following consonant tends to occur in exactly such cases (seeMasculine definite articles), the actual pronunciation is usually[isˈsoːle]. Affrication of/s/ can more commonly be heard word-internally, as infalso (false)/ˈfalso/ →[ˈfaltso]. It is a common phenomenon in Central Italy but is not exclusive to that area; for example, it also occurs inSwitzerland (Canton Ticino). It does not occur in a small area including Florence (exceptRifredi [it]) and Prato.[12]
There are two Tuscan historical outcomes of Latinŏ in stressed open syllables. Passing first through a stage/ɔ/, the vowel has then developed as a diphthong[wɔ]. The phenomenon has never gained universal acceptance, however, and so forms with the diphthong have come to be accepted as Standard Italian (e.g.fuoco,buono,nuovo,duomo), but the monophthong remains in popular speech (foco,bono,novo,domo).
A characteristic of Tuscan is the use of the accusative pronounte in emphatic clauses of the type "You! What are you doing here?".
A morphological phenomenon, cited also byAlessandro Manzoni in his novelI promessi sposi (The Betrothed), is thedoubling of the dative pronoun.
For the use of a personal pronoun asindirect object (to someone, to something), also calleddative case, Standard Italian makes use of a constructionpreposition + pronouna me (to me), or it makes use of a synthetic pronoun form,mi (to me). Tuscan frequently makes use of both in the same utterance as a kind of intensification[citation needed] of the dative/indirect object:
This usage is widespread throughout the central regions of Italy, not only in Tuscany, and is often considered redundant and erroneous by language purists. It is also a standard feature in Spanish:a mí me gusta ("I like it")
In some dialects, thedouble accusative pronounme mi vedi (lit:Me you see me) can be heard, but that is considered to be an archaic form.
Both the singular and the plural masculine definite articles can be realized phonetically as[i] in Florentine varieties of Tuscan but are distinguished by their phonological effect on following consonants. The singular causes the lengthening of the following consonant:[ikkaːne] 'the dog'. However, the plural permits consonant weakening:[ihaːni] 'the dogs'. As in Italian, the masculine singularlo occurs before consonants long by nature or not permitting/l/ in clusters (lo zio 'the uncle',lo studente 'the student'), but forms such asi zio can be heard in rustic varieties.
A morpholosyntactic phenomenon that is found throughout Tuscany is the personal use of the particle identical toimpersonal si (not to be confused withpassive si or thereflexive si), as the first-person plural. That is basically the same as the use ofon inFrench.
It is possible to use the constructionsi +third-person in singular verb, which can be preceded by the first-plural person pronounnoi.
The phenomenon is found in all verb tenses, including compound tenses. In those tenses, the use ofsi requires a form ofessere (to be) as auxiliary verb. If the verb is one that otherwise selects auxiliaryavere in compound constructions, the past participle does not agree with the subject in gender and number:
If the verb normally requiresessere, the past participle is marked as plural:
Usually,si contracts beforeè:si è → s'è.
Another morphological phenomenon present in Tuscan is what might appear to beshortening of first singular verb forms in the present tense offare (to do,to make) andandare (to go).
These forms have two origins. Natural phonological change alone can account for loss of/d/ and reduction of/ao/ to/o/ in the case of/vado/ > */vao/ >/vo/. A case such as Latinsapio > Italianso (I know), however, admits no such phonological account since the expected outcome of/sapio/ would be */sappjo/, with a normal lengthening of the consonant preceding/j/.
What seems to have taken place is a realignment of the paradigm in accordance with the statistically-minor but highly-frequent paradigms ofdare (give) andstare (be, stay). Thus,so, sai, sa, sanno (all singulars and the third-person plural of 'know') have come to fit the template ofdo, dai, dà, danno ('give'),sto, stai, sta, stanno ('be, stay'), andfo, fai, fa, fanno ('make, do'), which have followed the same pattern. The formvo, while quite possibly a natural phonological development, seems to have been reinforced by analogy in that case.
A phonological phenomenon that might appear to be morphological is the loss of the infinitival ending-re of verbs.
Stress remains on the same vowel that is stressed in the full form and so the infinitive may coincide with various conjugated singulars:pèrde 'to lose',pèrde 's/he loses';finì 'to finish',finì 's/he finished'. This homophony seldom, if ever, causes confusion, as they usually appear in distinct syntactic contexts.
The infinitive without-re is universal in some subtypes such as Pisano-Livornese, but in the vicinity ofFlorence, alternations are regular and so the full infinitive (e.g.vedere 'to see') appears before apause, and the clipped form (vedé) is found otherwise. The consonant of an enclitic is lengthened if it is preceded by stressed vowel (vedéllo 'to see it',portàcci 'to bring us') but not when the preceding vowel of the infinitive is unstressed (lèggelo 'to read it',pèrdeti 'to lose you').
A similar process is found inRomanian, with infinitives cited asa ("to") + the verb, and the-re has been dropped. As in Tuscan, the stress is on the same syllable that had it before the loss of-re.
In Catalan and its dialects, in Campidanese Sardinian and for some Portuguese-speakers, final infinitive-r is not pronounced and soanar is pronounced /ə'na/.
A phenomenon similar in origin in French has led to loss of both /r/ and final /e/ in the -are class of infinitives at an early stage and so the final syllable of Modern Frenchaimer,chanter etc. is pronounced as stressed[e].
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The most important differences among dialects is in thelexicon, which also distinguishes the different subdialects. The Tuscan lexicon is almost entirely shared with Standard Italian, but many words may be perceived as obsolete or literary by non-Tuscans. There are also many strictly-regional words and expressions.
Characteristically-Tuscan words:
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