The Oxford Handbook of the Italian Language
Will be published approx. on 30. June 2026
Book
Hardback
1072 pages
978-0-19-288521-0 (ISBN)
Description
This handbook brings together in a single volume detailed accounts of all facets of the Italian language from a wide range of perspectives. Data from Italian have always been prominent in the linguistic literature, thanks to the language's richly documented diachronic and synchronic variation. This perennially fertile yet still under-explored testing ground has a central role to play in challenging linguistic orthodoxies and shaping and informing new ideas and perspectives about language change, structure, and variation.
The volume is divided into six parts that explore, respectively: the making of Italian, historical changes, structures of Italian, sociolinguistics of Italian, Italian outside of Italy, and Italian in contact. The data and analyses featured across the chapters demonstrate that our knowledge and understanding of many fields of linguistics continue to be enhanced through the study of Italian. This handbook will therefore be a valuable resource not only for Italianists and Romance linguists, but also for general linguists - undergraduate and graduate students and established scholars - interested in the insights that Italian has to offer
The volume is divided into six parts that explore, respectively: the making of Italian, historical changes, structures of Italian, sociolinguistics of Italian, Italian outside of Italy, and Italian in contact. The data and analyses featured across the chapters demonstrate that our knowledge and understanding of many fields of linguistics continue to be enhanced through the study of Italian. This handbook will therefore be a valuable resource not only for Italianists and Romance linguists, but also for general linguists - undergraduate and graduate students and established scholars - interested in the insights that Italian has to offer
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 246 mm
Width: 171 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-19-288521-0 (9780192885210)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Adam Noel Ledgeway is Professor of Italian Linguistics at the University of Bergamo, and before that was Professor of Italian and Romance Linguistics at the University of Cambridge (1996-2024). He is a Fellow of the British Academy and Member of the Academia Europaea. His research interests include the comparative history and morphosyntax of the Romance languages, Italian dialectology, Latin, Italo-Greek, syntactic theory, linguistic change and language contact.
Martin Maiden is Professor of the Romance Languages at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Research Centre for Romance Linguistics. He is a general Romance linguist with particular research interests in Italian and Romanian linguistics and dialectology, historical linguistics, and morphology. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Corresponding Member of the Italian Accademia della Crusca, and President of the Societe internationale de linguistique et de philologie romanes.
Martin Maiden is Professor of the Romance Languages at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Research Centre for Romance Linguistics. He is a general Romance linguist with particular research interests in Italian and Romanian linguistics and dialectology, historical linguistics, and morphology. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Corresponding Member of the Italian Accademia della Crusca, and President of the Societe internationale de linguistique et de philologie romanes.
Content
Part I. The making of Italian 1: Adam Ledgeway and Martin Maiden: Defining Italian 2: Paolo D'Achille and Domenico Proietti: Tuscan, Florentine, and Italian: External history 3: Claudio Marazzini: The history of Italian: The roles of literature and economics 4: Brian Richardson: The questione della lingua in the Renaissance 5: Nigel Vincent: The questione della lingua: Nineteenth and twentieth centuries 6: Alvise Andreose: Grammaticography 7: Helena Sanson: Women in the history of the Italian language Part II. Historical linguistics 8: Lori Repetti and Jordan Kodner: Historical phonology 9: Martin Maiden: Historical morphology 10: Adam Ledgeway: Historical syntax 11: Lorenzo Renzi: Address systems and their history 12: Nigel Vincent: Archaism and innovation Part III. Structures of Italian 13: Pietro Maturi: Orthography and writing 14: Antonio Romano: Phonetics 15: Laura Vanelli: Phonology 16: Franck Floricic: Inflexional morphology 17: Maria Grossmann and Anna M. Thornton: Derivational morphology and compounding 18: Maria Silvia Micheli: Evaluative morphology 19: Luigi Andriani and Giuseppina Silvestri: The nominal group 20: Adam Ledgeway: Verbal group 21: Eva-Maria Remberger: The clause 22: Sandra Paoli and Jacqueline Visconti: Pragmatics 23: Delia Bentley and Silvio Cruschina: Information structure 24: Chiara Gianollo: Semantics 25: Luca Lorenzetti: The lexicon: Onomasiology and semasiology Part IV. Sociolinguistics 26: Massimo Cerruti: Standardization 27: Gabriele Iannaccaro, Vittorio Dell'Aquila, and Simone Ciccolone: Multilingualism 28: Anna-Maria De Cesare: Diamesic variation and registers 29: Mari D'Agostino: Diastratic variation 30: Francesca Dovetto: Gender and language Part V. Italian outside of Italy 31: Laura Baranzini: Italian in Switzerland 32: Daniele Baglioni: Italian in the Mediterranean area 33: Raffaella Bombi: Italian around the world Part VI. Italian in contact 34: Lorenzo Tomasin: Italian in contact: The Middle Ages 35: Alessandro Carlucci: Italian in contact: The modern period 36: Francesco Goglia: Italian and immigrant languages 37: Maurizio Dardano and Emanuele Ventura: Popular Italian and its history 38: Diego Pescarini: Northern regional Italian 39: Tania Paciaroni: Central regional Italian 40: Francesco Avolio: Southern regional Italian 41: Lucia Molinu and Simone Pisano: Regional Italian of Sardinia