CHANGEMENT ET RÉSISTANCE DANS LE “PHONOSYMBOLISME” ITALIEN
CHANGE AND RESISTANCE IN ITALIAN ‘PHONOSYMBOLISM’

Summary/Abstract: Change and Resistance in Italian ‘Phonosymbolism’. I have studied the etymology and phonosymbolism of three verbs used in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell to describe the act of eating a skull: manducare, mangiare, manicare. In popular Italian, "eat" seems to have been inherited from the verb magnare, and /GN/ is simply the expressive popular trait of that verb. Linguists tend to focus on the /GN/ as a "degeneration" of the /NG/ group, but they do not focus enough on the resistance of the /NG/ group. My goal here is to demonstrate that mangiare-magnare does not form a couple. These two entities are following their own history, independently of one another. Therefore, the traditional and consolidated fact that magnare would be an "expressive degeneration" of mangiare could be reviewed.

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