Chapter 4
Mixing methods in linguistic classification
A hidden agenda against multilingualism? The contestedness of Gallo-“Italic” languages within the Romance
family
The scholarly literature unanimously describes Gallo-“Italic” as showing all the structural traits that distinguish Gallo-Romance from the other Romance varieties.
Nonetheless, while some scholars classify Gallo-“Italic” as Gallo-Romance, others classify it as Italo-Romance
(‘pro-Italo- scholars). These two labels (‘Gallo-Romance’ and ‘Italo-Romance’) are irreconcilable, as they are
normally used in the family tree model to name two cousin taxa: Gallo-Romance is a Western Romance daughter, while
Italo-Romance is an Eastern Romance daughter. In this chapter I argue that this problem can best be understood by
applying Kloss’s distinction of Abstand vs. Ausbau. I will show that, in their
proposed classifications, the pro-Italo- scholars mix the Abstand and the Ausbau
criteria and that this is inconsistent with the aims of classificatory science. In fact, following Kloss (1993), the status of Abstand language and that of
Ausbau language are defined on two dimensions – namely, according to two variables – that are
ontologically and conceptually independent (see also Tamburelli 2014).
Indeed, however a linguistic variety is classified along one of these two dimensions, it does not affect its
classification along the other dimension. Therefore, Abstand and Ausbau must be seen
as classificatory criteria for two independent classifications. I argue that, in science, classifications have an
informative function, and that by employing mixed criteria, pro-Italo- scholars have provided a
flawed “classification” that is informative neither of the Abstand nor of the Ausbau
status of the varieties being classified, hence it is not useful for scientific purposes and should therefore be
rejected. The final section sketches out how future research might consider how the acknowledgment of Gallo-“Italic”
as Gallo-Romance collides with assumptions of nationalism, possibly constituting a taboo, which
suggests that the unexpected classification of Gallo-“Italic” as Italo-Romance may be due to extra-linguistic reasons. In a preliminary analysis, I propose that contesting the Gallo-Romance genealogical-structural profile of Gallo-“Italic” varieties
could be a means of preventing (many of) their speakers from developing awareness of the fact that they speak
languages distinct from Italian (and not “Italian dialects”, as the
nationalist rhetoric assumes), and consequently, inhibiting or containing a possible movement claiming the right of
these languages to official public support.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Geographical introduction
- 1.2Problem statement. Two competing groupings for Romance varieties
- 1.3Some representative contributions of the two competing traditions
- 1.4Ausbau vs. Abstand
- 1.5Classificatory criteria and distinct classifications
- 1.6Possible causes for the disagreement between pro-Gallo- and pro-Italo- traditions
- 1.6.1First possible cause
- 1.6.2Second possible cause
- 1.6.3The third possibility
- 2.Issues with the “Mixed criterion tradition”
- 2.1Scientific classifications
- 2.2The ontological problem in Pellegrini (1975), ‘The five systems of
Italo-Romance’
- 2.3Pellegrini and the exceptional “diversity of the ‘Italo-Romance’ idioms”
- 2.4The ad hoc problem in Loporcaro (2009), ‘Linguistic
profile of Italian dialects’
- 2.4.1The misleading use of the expression “roof-language” in Loporcaro
(2009)
- 3.Preliminary conclusions
- 4.Some considerations and questions for future research
-
Notes
-
References
References
Alinei, Mario
2000 Origini delle lingue d’Europa. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Bartoli, Matteo Giulio
1936 Caratteri Fondamentali delle Lingue Neolatine.
Archivio Glottologico Italiano 28: 97–133.
Bailey, Kenneth D.
1994 Typologies and taxonomies: an introduction to classification techniques. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.
Bec, Pierre
1970–1971 Manuel pratique de philologie romane. Paris: Picard.
Berruto, Gaetano
1995 Fondamenti di sociolinguistica. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
Campbell, Lyle
1998 Historical linguistics: an introduction. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Coluzzi, Paolo
2007 Minority language planning and micronationalism in Italy. Bern: Peter Lang.
Coluzzi, Paolo
2009 Endangered minority and regional languages (‘dialects’) in Italy.
Modern Italy 14 (1): 39–54.
Devitt, Michael
2008 Resurrecting biological essentialism.
Philosophy of Science 75(3): 344–382.
Devoto, Giacomo, and Gabriella Giacomelli
1972 I dialetti delle regioni d’Italia. Firenze: Sansoni.
Diez, Friedrich
1838–1872 Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen. Bonn: Weber.
Ehret, Christopher, and Margaret Kinsman
1981 Shona dialect classification and its implications for Iron Age history in southern
Africa.
The International Journal of African Historical Studies 14 (3): 401–443.
Fishman, Joshua A.
2008 Rethinking the Ausbau–Abstand dichotomy into a continuous and multivariate system.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language 191: 17–26.
Gensini, Stefano
2005 Breve storia dell’educazione linguistica dall’Unità a oggi. Roma: Carocci.
Gigante, Claudio
2011 ‘Fatta l’Italia, facciamo gli Italiani’. Appunti su una massima da restituire a
d’Azeglio.
Incontri. Rivista europea di Studi Italiani 26 (2): 5–15.
Goebl, Hans
2008 La dialettometrizzazione integrale dell’AIS: presentazione dei primi risultati.
Revue de Linguistique Romane 285: 25–113.
Graffi, Giorgio, and Sergio Scalise
2002 Le lingue e il linguaggio. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Greenberg, Joseph Harold
1950 Studies in African linguistic classification: VII. Smaller families; Index of
languages.
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6 (4): 388–398.
Hall, Robert Anderson
1976 Proto-Romance phonology. New York, London, Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Hull, Geoffrey
1982 The Linguistic Unity of Northern Italy and Rhaetia. PhD Thesis, University of Sidney. Published in 2017. Sydney: Beta Crucis Editions.
Hull, Geoffrey
1990 Idealist Nationalism and Linguistic Dogma in Italy. In
The shared horizon: essays in Italian language and literature, ed. by
Tom O’Neill, 149–183. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.
Kloss, Heinz
1952 Die Entwicklung neuer germanischer Kultursprachen von 1800 bis 1950. München: Pohl.
Kloss, Heinz
1993 ‘Abstand Languages’ and ‘Ausbau Languages’, Vol. 35, No. 1/4,
A retrospective of the Journal Anthropological Linguistics: selected papers,
1959–1985, 158–170. First published in
Anthropological Linguistics 1967, 9 (7): 29–41.
Kloss, Heinz
1969 Research possibilities on group bilingualism: a report. Quebec (Canada): International Centre for Research on Bilingualism.
Kloss, Heinz and Grant D. McConnell
(eds.) 1978 The written languages of the world: a survey of the degree and modes of use. Quebec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval.
Lausberg, Heinrich
1965 Lingüística románica, Biblioteca Románica Hispánica, Editorial Gredos, Madrid. Original title: alemán:
Romanische Sprachwissenschaft. Zweite, durchgesehene Auflage. Berlin: de Gruyter 1963 First published by
De Gruyter, Berlin 1956.
Lewis, Paul, Gary Simons, and Charles Fennig
(eds.) 2013 Ethnologue: languages of the world, 18th edition. Dallas: Texas: SIL International.
Lipson, Ephraim
1921 Europe in the nineteenth century, London: Black.
Loporcaro, Michele
2009 Profilo linguistico dei dialetti italiani. Bari: Laterza.
Manzoni, Alessandro
1868 Dell’unità della lingua e dei mezzi di diffonderla.
Nuova antologia 7: 425–441.
Merlo, Clemente
1937 Lingue e dialetti d“Italia. Vallardi.
Moseley, Christopher
(ed.) 2010 Atlas of the world’s languages in danger, 3rd edition. Paris: UNESCO Publishing.
Muljačić, Žarko
1984 Il fenomeno Überdachung “Tetto”,“copertura” nella sociolinguistica (con esempi
Romanzi).
Linguistica 24 (1): 77–96.
Muljačić, Žarko
1990 Sul ruolo della koinè nell’elaborazione linguistica. In
Koinè in Italia dalle origini al Cinquecento, ed. by
Glauco Sanga, 185–194. Bergamo: Pierluigi Lubrina Editore.
Pellegrini, Giovan Battista
1975 I cinque sistemi dell’italo-romanzo. In
Saggi di linguistica italiana. Storia, struttura, società, ed. by
Giovan Battista Pellegrini, 55–87. Torino: Boringhieri. First published in
Revue roumaine de linguistique 1973, 18.2: 105–129.
Pellegrini, Giovan Battista
1992 Il ‘cisalpino’ e l’italo-romanzo.
Archivio Glottologico Italiano 77: 272–296.
Posner, Rebecca
1996 The Romance languages. Cambridge: University Press.
Rohlfs, Gerhard
1967 L’Italia dialettale (dal Piemonte in Sicilia).
Nuovi argomenti 5: 22–28. Roma: Editori Riuniti.
Salamon, Eszter
2011 Minorities without language hinterland on the basis of the Friulian and Sardinian minorities in
Italy, Ms., Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary.
Sanga, Glauco
1990 La lingua lombarda. Dalla koinè alto-italiana delle origini alla lingua cortegiana. In
Koinè in Italia dalle origini al Cinquecento, ed. by
Glauco Sanga, 79–163. Bergamo: Lubrina Editore.
Schmid, Heinrich
1956 Über Randgebiete und Sprachgrenzen.
Vox Romanica 15 (2): 19–80.
Simpson, George Gaylord
1945 The principles of classification and a classification of mammals.
Bulletin of American Museum of Natural History 85: 1–350. Reprinted 1962.
Soria, Claudia
(
2015)
Assessing the effect of official recognition on the vitality of endangered languages: A case study
from Italy. In
Policy and planning for endangered languages, ed. by
Mari C. Jones, 123–137. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tamburelli, Marco
2014 Uncovering the ‘hidden’ multilingualism of Europe: an Italian case study.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 35 (3): 252–270.
Tamburelli, Marco, and Lissander Brasca
2017 Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach.
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 33 (2): 442–455.
Thiesse, Anne-Marie
1999 La création des identités nationales. Europe XVIIIe–XXe siècle. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Tosco, Mauro
2004 The case for a laissez-faire language policy.
Language & Communication 24 (2): 165–181.
Tosco, Mauro
2011 Between endangerment and Ausbau. In
Language contact and language decay. Socio-political and linguistic perspectives, ed. by
Emanuele Miola and
Paolo Ramat, 227–246. Pavia: IUSS Press.
Trudgill, Peter
1992 Ausbau sociolinguistics and the perception of language status in contemporary
Europe.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics 2 (2): 167–177.
Wartburg, Walther von
1936 La posizione della lingua italiana nel mondo neolatino: tre conferenze. Leipzig: Keller.
Wartburg, Walther von
1967 La fragmentation linguistique de la Romania. Paris: Klincksieck 1967 (translated from German
Die Ausgliederung der RomanischenSprachräume (Bern: Verlag Francke: 1950) by
Jacques Allières and
Georges Straka).
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Screti, Francesco
2024.
Contested languages in the contemporary Italian press: an analysis of language ideology.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development ► pp. 1 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.