The Tongues of Italy : Prehistory and History

Italy’s linguistic history reaches back past the Stone Ages. Through the intervening centuries it has passed through a series of colorful, turbulent changes. It has been affected by such diverse factors as geography, climate, invasions, politics, religion, literature, roads, and colonies.Ernst Pulgram’s complete linguistic history of Italy encompasses a span of time and an extent of subject matter not hitherto treated in one book. He is able to show that classical Latin was completely different from the spoken idioms, thus he refutes the notion of a sudden break down of Latinity and a “birth” of the Romance languages, views which he says have been held due to the uncritical analysis of the written evidence.Avoiding a mechanistic view of language, the author describes its history in the cultural and historic setting in which the speakers lived. Linguistic and non-linguistic evidence are always considered together. It is shown that the concept of “Indo-European” cannot be localized in time and space.The four sections of the book are devoted to Modern Italy, Pre-Roman Italy, Roman Italy, and Medieval Italy. Preface CONTENTS Note INTRODUCTION BOOK ONE MODERN ITALY Part One. Introduction to Italy CHAPTER I. The Land CHAPTER II. The Climate CHAPTER III. The People Part Two. The Italian Language CHAPTER V. The Dialects of Italy CHAPTER VI. The Italian Standard Language BOOK TWO PRE-ROMAN ITALY Part Three. Prehistoric Background CHAPTER VII. Language, Race, and Culture CHAPTER VIII. Prehistoric Europe CHAPTER IX. Italy in the Stone Ages CHAPTER X. Northern and Central Italy in the Metal Ages CHAPTER XI. Southern Italy in the Metal Ages CHAPTER XII. Linguistic Inferences and Conclusions Part Four. The Indo-Europeanization of Italy CHAPTER XIII. Indo-European and ‘Indo-Europeans’ CHAPTER XIV. The Linguistic Protohistory of Italy CHAPTER XV. The Etruscan Problem CHAPTER XVI. The Pre-Italic Dialects CHAPTER XVII. The Italic and Latinian Dialects CHAPTER XVIII. Conclusions BOOK THREE ROMAN ITALY Part Five. The Latinization of Italy CHAPTER XIX. The Proto-Latin Period CHAPTER XX. The Origins of Rome CHAPTER XXI. The Spread of Latin in Italy APPENDIX I: ROME’S CONQUEST OF ITALY APPENDIX II: THE COLONIES Part Six. The History of Latin CHAPTER XXII. Historic Background (200 B.C.–A.D.300) CHAPTER XXIII. Spoken and Written Latin CHAPTER XXIV. The Dialects of Spoken Latin CHAPTER XXV. The Literary Language BOOK FOUR MEDIAEVAL ITALY Part Seven. The Abortive Germanization of Italy CHAPTER XXVI. Historic Background, 300-80 CHAPTER XXVII. Germanic Dialects in Italy Part Eight. The Italianization of Italy CHAPTER XXVIII. Historic Background, 800-1250 CHAPTER XXIX. From Latin to Italian BIBLIOGRAPHY SUBJECT INDEX NAME INDEX SUBJECT INDEX NAME INDEX