DAI TESORI DELL’ITALIANO SCOMPARSO: LE CONGIUNZIONI
FROM THE TREASURES OF ANCIENT ITALIAN: CONJUNCTIONS

Summary/Abstract: Languages change continuously: the changes occur in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon and semantics. Over time, a treasure trove of new words is created, but also another one containing lost words or, in any case, words with a more or less altered meaning. It also includes forms that have disappeared from use, but which have maintained their vitality for centuries. In this paper, we have considered a category of syncategorematic or grammatical words - conjunctions: their form is often conditioned not only by the function performed but also by the sequence in which they are placed. Their diachronic changes, both in form and function, therefore depend on the syntax, which sometimes modifies their phonetic structure and sometimes their grammatical value. Their changes have a different or perhaps broader influence, because they affect not only the changes in the lexical repertoire, but also in syntactic structures. Analyzing Italian conjunctions in this diachronic light, we found four groups of phenomena that led to the disappearance of variants, forms or meanings: changes in the lexical list of conjunctions and the disappearance of phono-orthographic variants replaced by one form with the result of homologation of the system in contemporary Italian; changes in the semantics of some conjunctions (some forms survive at the lexical level, but with the meaning changed); the disappearance of forms in the contemporary language (where the form survives only in literary use or in certain formal registers) and the definitive disappearance of forms. Behind the Italian language we use, there is another that dates back to the past, to the medieval period. Much has remained and a large part of that is still alive but a not inconsiderable part has been lost through the natural needs of change. We allude to that incessant linguistic change of which even Dante was aware in De Vulgari Eloquentia (I 9) and in the Convivio (I 5 8-9). These changes are slow and only the lexicon of a language can undergo somewhat more rapid transformations, observable in the course of a human life, and particularly in spoken languages, which are without or almost without a written tradition, as was the case with the nascent vulgar Italian. The written language, on the other hand, and especially the Italian one, has persistently preserved its grammatical rules, forms and constructs, but that is not really the case for the words. The system changes seem to have been few because usually we notice more what remains than what is lost. However, checking texts from only a century ago, we found changes that affected not only words, but also forms and constructs. Such changes involve gains and losses. In this occasion we will talk about the losses which, fortunately, are less extensive than the gains. We will deal with losses which, however, did not cause deficiencies but instead created new opportunities for reproduction. In another paper we analyzed words with autonomous meaning - abstract nouns and nomina actionis suffixed with the varieties of coexisting forms in old Italian, trying to explain the reasons for the plurality of forms that existed during the early stages of the development of Italian, and the reasons for their disappearance. This time, we have taken into consideration a category of syncategorematic or grammatical words (which do not have a real stable and autonomous meaning, but mainly perform a function, or have a variable meaning depending on the function) which conditions how the words relate to each other and determine their grammatical function and syntactic role: their form is often conditioned not only by the function performed but also by the sequence in which they are placed. Their diachronic changes, both in form and function, therefore depend on the syntax that modifies their phonetic structure or their grammatical value. We have therefore dealt with a grammatical category without syntactic and semantic autonomy that performs a function in a broader structural context - conjunctions. Their changes have a different or maybe larger influence, because they affect not only changes in the lexical repertoire, but also in syntactic structures. Considering the well-known and delicate question of the identity of ancient Italian (caused by the existence of a large number of vulgaris in circulation and in both written and spoken use across the Italian peninsula), we specify that the Tuscan-Florentine literary texts up to the age of the norm (between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) are considered in this paper. The research is mainly based on the following sources: Corpus OVI (www.ovi.cnr.it) with the related dictionary TLIO (tlio.ovi.cnr.it), Treasure of the Italian language of the origins; GDLI (Grande dizionario della lingua italiana) and GRADIT (Grande dizionario dell’italiano dell’uso). Some examples are also taken from the Grammatica dell’italiano antico (The Grammar of Ancient Italian). From the analyzes, it emerges that the disappearances that occurred in the category of conjunctions reflect a general tendency towards a shrinking of the system, to the reduction of the number of forms with the elimination of numerous phono-orthographic variants (which also occurred in other grammatical categories) but also with the fall into disuse of very vital lexical units in the Middle Ages. The analysis of the sample shows that some types of conjunctions, particularly concessive, causal and temporal ones, had a "superabundance" of forms that were eliminated over time, felt increasingly archaic starting from the sixteenth century and fell into disuse entirely in the nineteenth century. The most significant and emblematic example are probably concessive conjunctions. In the first prose in ancient Italian the number of units (and their frequency of use) was rather scarce (for example, in the Novellino we have identified only six concessive conjunctions: ancorché, avvegna che, benché, quanto che, quantunque and (con) tutto che). With the great authors of the fourteenth century, the system was enriched both in the variety of units and in the frequency to such an extent that in the Decameron we recorded 23 different concessive conjunctions (ancorché, avvegna che, benché, che che, come che, donde che, dove che, dovunque, eziandio se, malgrado, nonché, nonostante che, onde che, ove che, perché, per quanto, posto che, quando pur, quanto che, quantunque , sebbene, se pure and (con) tutto che). Today, however, only 14 are fully active. A similar situation also occurs in the other types of conjunctions. According to what has been shown, the shrinking process is still ongoing and we could expect other reductions in the number of units in use which today are beginning to prove archaic (allorché, allorquando, ancorché, appena che, checché, conforme che, donde, quasiché).

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