LINGUIST List 22.2111 Wed May 18 2011 Diss: Historical Ling:Brown: 'Early Evidence for Tuscanisation in ...' Editor for this issue: Mfon Udoinyang <mfonlinguistlist.org> New! Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:             http://multitree.linguistlist.org/ To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm. Directory         1.     Joshua Brown , Early Evidence for Tuscanisation in the Letters of Milanese Merchants in the Datini Archive, Prato, 1396-1402 Message 1: Early Evidence for Tuscanisation in the Letters of Milanese Merchants in the Datini Archive, Prato, 1396-1402 Date: 18-May-2011 From: Joshua Brown <Josh.Brownuwa.edu.au> Subject: Early Evidence for Tuscanisation in the Letters of Milanese Merchants in the Datini Archive, Prato, 1396-1402 E-mail this message to a friend Institution: University of Western Australia Program: Faculty of Arts Dissertation Status: Completed Degree Date: 2011 Author: Joshua J Brown Dissertation Title: Early Evidence for Tuscanisation in the Letters of Milanese Merchants in the Datini Archive, Prato, 1396-1402 Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics Subject Language(s): Italian (ita) Dissertation Director: Lorenzo Polizzotto John J Kinder Dissertation Abstract: The process of Tuscanisation, understood here as the adoption of Tuscan linguistic forms in non-Tuscan regions, affected different areas of medieval Italy at different times. In the linguistic history of Lombardy, this is generally considered to have become discernible in literary texts during the late Trecento. In non-literary texts, the earliest time that has been suggested is during the late Quattrocento. This thesis examines a corpus of letters sent from Milan by merchants between 1396-1402 to show that a process of Tuscanisation was occurring even earlier. These letters, written to the 'merchant of Prato' Francesco Datini and his associates around the Mediterranean, seem to show a strong presence of Tuscan or Tuscanised forms. These letters have been published by Frangioni (1994) and are subjected to a linguistic analysis for the first time here. I define a corpus of five Milanese writers based on biographical information taken from economic histories of medieval Milan and Italy, studies of medieval anthroponomy as well as family histories, and highlight evidence of Tuscanisation in both the phonology and morphology in the letters from these five merchants. Both phonology and morphology present a wide variety of outcomes. Uncertainty regarding 'correct' Tuscan usage is evident in hypercorrect occurrences of certain phenomena, such as diphthongs. Consonants, too, show much variation and a strong presence of Latin or Latinizing forms. Tuscan or Tuscanised forms are found to be present in all areas of morphology. Overall, I find that the language is essentially Tuscan, with clearly identifiable Lombard and Latin forms less evident. The strong presence of Tuscan in this corpus of letters by Milanese merchants may suggest a process of accommodation towards their Tuscan interlocutors. Chapter 1 provides a description of the principal linguistic developments in Lombardy during the 14th and 15th centuries, namely, the formation of the pan-Lombard koinè and the adoption of Tuscan as a linguistic model. The chapter surveys various datings proposed in the literature for the emergence of Tuscanisation in the linguistic history of Lombardy. Chapter 2 gives a brief introduction to the structure of Francesco Datini's trade network and a description of the role which Datini's major employees played in Milan. This information serves as a context for the description of all merchants from Milan whose correspondence is housed in the Archive, which is the object of the following chapter. Chapter 3 defines a homogeneous set of letters taken from Frangioni's 1994 edition of the 810 Milanese letters, by providing biographical information on the writers from Milan. It defines the corpus of letters to be used for a linguistic analysis in the following two chapters. Chapter 4 analyses the phonology and orthography from the corpus while noun and verb morphology is dealt with in Chapter 5. Forms present in the corpus are contrasted against contemporary variants of Lombard and Tuscan in order to determine their attribution to either a Lombard or Tuscan form. Cases where attribution is impossible due to a similarity of forms between these vernaculars and Latin are also highlighted. Chapter 6 provides some concluding remarks. All letters in the corpus have been checked against original manuscripts and all amendments proposed to Frangioni's edition are outlined in the Appendix. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of the history of the vernacular in Lombardy as well as the presence of Tuscan in merchant writing. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 18-May-2011       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.