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From: Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de>
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Somewheres
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2024 15:57:14 -0000 (UTC)
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On 2024-09-06, Sergio Gatti <sergiogatti@meine-wahrheit-deine-wahrheit.de> wrote:

> Actually, you'd better ask such questions in an Italian NG about the
> Italian language, like it.cultura.linguistica.italiano.

I need to read a book about the history of the Italian language.
Like, where are all those geminates from?

>> * replacement of the 1PL present indicative by the subjunctive form
> 
> - In old Tuscan, like in many modern Italian dialects, the 1PL present
> indicative was semo (example from Dante - please note that he chose
> freely among the forms available at his time for euphony and rhythm
> reasons); the form siamo - since the beginning attested as an indicative

I downloaded _La Divina Commedia_ from Project Gutenberg, and a
search for -emo indeed shows a number of 1PL present indicatives.
In fact, there's "avemo", a form still reflected in today's Italian
in the 1PL future ending -emo.

>> * leveling of one ending across all persons in the singular of the
>>   present subjunctive
> 
> - Singular of the present subjunctive. Originally the 1st and 3rd
> persons ended in -e (like the Latin endings); the unification to only -i
> is very old and derives from the 2nd person.

Alkire/Rosen, _Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction_, describe
this somewhat differently.  The Old Italian forms were

  indicative    subjunctive
     canto        cante
     cante        canti
     canta        cante

     parto        parta
     parti        parte
     parte        parta

The subjunctive forms leveled to -i (-are) and -a (-ere, -ire),
because these forms were distincly subjunctive and not homonymous
with an indicative form.  On the other hand, this introduced ambiguity
between first/second/third person.

The change of 2SG indicative -e > -i for the -are verbs is later
and in analogy to the -ere/-ire verbs.

Unfortunately, Alkire/Rosen don't give any dates for those changes,
so that's why I wondered which ones came before and after Dante.

> Also: worth noting is the attraction of the 1st conjugation on all other
> classes. Different forms are common in Leopardi's prose (benché tu vadi,
> che tu non possi) (XIX century) and abbi can be found in Bacchelli (XX
> century).

But also note the other classes pushing the 2SG indicative -i into
the first conjugation.

>> * replacement of 1SG imperfect -ava/-eva/-iva by -avo/-evo/-ivo
> 
> - The form amavo got widespread very soon in Florentine (end of the XIV
> century) but it was hardly accepted for a long time in the literary
> language; its success got a huge drive through Manzoni in The Betrothed
> (XIX century).

According to Alkire/Rosent the transparent reason for this change
was the disambiguation of 1SG and 3SG.

Overall, we're looking at a list of changes that remove some
ambiguities, but new ambiguities are also introduced.

I'm a bit sensitive to this because Italian and Spanish are pro-drop
languages, i.e., they omit the subject pronoun, except for emphasis
or disambiguation.  Spanish in particular does not distinguish 1SG
and 3SG in the imperfect, conditional, present subjunctive, or
imperfect subjunctive, and Spanish speakers seem to feel little
need to inject pronouns for disambiguation, which can be disorienting
to language learners.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de