Whitney in Italia

Maria Patrizia Bologna
Università di Pisa
Summary

The paper deals with the Italian translation of the best known book of William Dwight Whitney (The Life and Growth of Language, New York & London, 1875) by Francesco D’Ovidio (La vita e lo sviluppo del linguaggio, Milano, 1876). This translation was a sign of the interest which Italian scholars took in the work of the Sanskrit scholar and general linguist who served as a bridge between America and Europe. We have a very important evidence of that interest in Ascoli’s appraisal of 1894, the year of Whitney’s death, as he was the most influential Italian linguist of the period. The paper shows in particular that the Italian translator shared the author’s thought about language and the science of language; it investigates the main topics of the book in connection with Whitney’s basic idea that the science of language is a historical one. Topics such as conventionalism and usage as the law of speech, criticism against Schleicher’s naturalism, language and dialect, individual vs. the community of speakers, acquisition of language, linguistic change, origin of language are taken into consideration. The comparison of Whitney’s statements with passages from D’Ovidio’s writings, some of which pertain to the Italian ‘questione della lingua’, reveals the fundamental agreement of the translator with the language theory of the American scholar. D’Ovidio himself on several occasions pointed out the sound judgment of Whitney, whose main statements about language must have been in accordance with those linguistic principles that, in the opinion of the translator, who had assimilated Manzoni’s and Ascoli’s ideas, formed the good method of ‘glottology’. Attention also is paid to practical applications of linguistic science which connected Whitney with his Italian translator; among them the subject of ‘language and education’ deserves particular mention.

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