Italian language
From KneeQuickie
Italian is a Romance language spoken primarily in Italy and famous for its association in the popular imagination with music, pasta, and organized crime.
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Phonology
The consonantal inventory of Italian resembles those of most other Indo-European languages, particularly in the Romance branch. In common with Spanish and French, it possesses a limited set of palatal sonorants.
| bilabial | dental | post-alveolar | palatal | velar | |
| stop | p | t | c | ||
| voiced | b | d | g | ||
| fricative | f | s | sc(i) | ||
| voiced | v | ||||
| africate | z | c(i) | |||
| nasal | m | n | gn | ||
| liquid | l | gl(i) | |||
| trill | r |
Italian vowels are famously crisp and pure, so much so that it is not uncommon to see them used as a point of reference in grammars for other languages.
/a e E i o O u/
Impure /s/
Nouns
Nouns in Italian possess two genders, masculine and feminine. Typically, the ending -o indicates a masculine noun while the ending -a indicates a feminine one. Nouns ending in -e may be either, though the ending -ione usually indicates a feminine noun. Nouns ending in -a may be masculine, however, particularly if they are among certain Greek loans (such as programma) and it is not unheard of for -o nouns to be feminine.
Italian nouns generally pluralize with a change to the final vowel, with -o becoming -i and -a becoming -e. The ending -e and -a in masculine nouns usually change to -i as well. Nouns ending in consonants or stressed vowels usually remain unchanged in the plural, their only indication being the altered article. Some nouns deviate from this system, however, and may behave irregularly.
Articles in Italian vary for gender, number, and often the initial phoneme of the noun. The most common definite articles are il and la, for masculine and feminine nouns respectively, becoming i and le in the plural. For masculine nouns beginning with impure s or a vowel, two different articles exist, lo and and its plural gli. Before a vowel, lo cliticizes with the following word, and la does the same for feminine nouns beginning in a vowel.
- Il ragazza - the boy
- I ragazzi - the boys
- La ragazza - the girl
- Le ragazze - the girls
- L'otacu - the otaku
- L'Evangelione - the Evangelion
Indefinite articles also vary with gender and initial consonant (but not with number as they do not appear in the plural). Masculine nouns take un normally, but those with impure s take uno instead. Feminine nouns take una before consonants and a cliticized un' before vowels.
- Un gallo - a rooster
- Uno psicologo - a psychologist
- Una ragazza - a girl
- Un'università - a university
Adjectives
Adjectives agree with nouns in number and usually gender. Typically, an adjective changes its ending to match the noun it agrees with. Adjectives ending in -o/-a match the gender of their nouns, but those ending in -e only change for number.
Verbs
Italian, like many Romance languages, has a fairly elaborate fusional verbal morphology augmented with a system of auxiliary verbs.
Syntax
Like most modern Romance languages, Italian tends strongly toward an SVO word order, due to its relative lack of case marking or other means of contrasting subject and object besides syntax.
L'anaconda mangia i uomini nella giungla. - The anaconda eats the men in the jungle.
Sound changes
Vulgar Latin > Italian
r > 0 /a_ju#
tVk > dZ /[-stress]
au > o
au > u /#_ (sporadically, e.g. audire > udire)
k > tS /_i,e,E
kVl > kkj /[-stress]
kt > tt
E > jE /[+stress] (not before /dZ/, /L/ or /J/, however)
g > 0 /a_V
j > dZ /#_, V_V
g > dZ /_i,e,E
dj > dZ
gj > dZ
lj > L
nj > J
gn > J
O > uo /[+stress] (not after /j/, nor before /dZ/ or /L/)
b > v /V_
l > j /#C_
Cj > CCj /V_V
sj > dZ
{t k d m n s} > 0 /_#
r > 0 /_# (in polysyllables only)
ta:te > "ta /_#
t > d /V_r
k > g /V_r
skj > S
stj > S
ssj > S
tj > ts
ks > ss
w > gw
Nota bene, not all changes are chronological in order and do not address certain sporadic changes.
Bibliography
- Boyd-Bowman, Peter From Latin to Romance in Sound Charts
