The work begins with definitions of a ‘loan’ and then explores the role of
the loanword as an initiator of linguistic change. Since the historical and
social contexts surrounding situations of linguistic contact are useful in
understanding linguistic change, the history of the Spanish domination of
Naples is summarized to provide a context for the analysis of Spanish
loanwords in Neapolitan. From the 400 Spanish loanwords isolated from
Altamura’s Dizionario dialettale napoletano(1968), thirteen semantic fields
were identified. The fields have a clear relationship with certain groups
of Spaniards in Naples and represent the linguistic legacy left by them.
The soldiers, sailors and galley slaves left loanwords related to the armed
forces, insults, robbery, aggression, sexual practices and the camorra-
this terminology corresponds to the Neapolitan underworld of delinquency.
The aristocrats left words related to work, clothing, and the court. The
loanwords enclose clues about their users, illustrating that it is possible
to use linguist proof- the very loanwords- to characterize the people who
introduced them into Neapolitan. Attention is then directed to
morphological and phonological adaptations and classifications. Grouping
according to similar morphology highlights the ‘new creations’ which
suggest good bilingual proficiency in Spanish/ Neapolitan. The phonological
adaptations, analyzed with Optimality Theory (OT), illustrate gemination,
aphaeresis, apocope, consonant assimilations, betacismo and palatal
adaptations. A reconstruction of proto- Neapolitan and a lexical-
glottochronology study show that Neapolitan shares phonological and lexical
similarity with dialects spoken one hundred kilometers from Naples, which
suggests comprehensibility of the loanwords far from the city.
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