The Strange Case of the Gallo-Italic Dialects of Sicily

Preservation and Innovation in Contact-Induced Change

Bibliographic Data

ID5900549
AuthorsA De Angelis (0000-0002-3288-2517, University of Messina, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume8
Issue3
Pages163
Publication date2023-06-30
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguages (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages8030163
OpenAlexW4382752576
LanguageEN
References cited14

The Gallo-Italic dialects widespread within central-eastern Sicily represent the result of the medieval immigration of settlers from southern Piedmont and Liguria, after the Norman conquest of the island (1061-1091). As far as the language spoken by these communities is concerned, an oddity arises: most of their lexical and syntactic features developed further through contact with neighboring varieties (such as, most notably, Sicilian), whereas, at a phonetic/phonological level, they have remained very conservative, largely maintaining their original northern characteristics. In the present paper, the possible causes underlying such a split are discussed: if the transfer of syntactic structures can be triggered by the presence of bilingual speakers who become progressively dominant (that is, more proficient) in Sicilian as L2, the preservation of the main phonetic/phonological features can represent a tool employed to the ends of emphasizing the identity of these new settlers from both an ethnic and linguistic perspective

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · CONQUEST · Geography · Immigration · Language contact · Linguistics · Perspective (graphical · Sicilian · Visual arts · History · Linguistic Studies and Language Acquisition · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy

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