central, the Campidanese or southern and the Gallurese or northern. The third certainly indicates a Sardinian basis, but is strangely disturbed by the intrusion of other elements, among which the Southern Corsican (Sartene) is by far the most copious. The other two are homogeneous, and have great affinity with each other; the Logudorese comes more particularly under consideration here.—The pure Sardinian vocalism has this peculiarity that each accented vowel of the Latin appears to be retained without alteration. Consequently there are no diphthongs representing simple Latin vowels; nor does the rule hold good which is true for so great a proportion of the Romance languages, that the representatives of the ḗ and the í on the one hand and those of the ṓ and the ṹ on the other are normally coincident. Hence plenu (ē); deghe, decem (ĕ); binu, vino (ī); pilu (ĭ); flore (ō); roda, rota (ŏ); duru (ū); nughe, nuce (ŭ). The unaccented vowels keep their ground well, as has already been seen in the case of the finals by the examples adduced.—The s and t of the ancient termination are preserved, though not constantly: tres, onus, passados annos, plantas, faghes, facis, tenemus; mulghet, mulghent.—The formulae ce, ci, ge, gi may be represented by che (ke), &c.; but this appearance of special antiquity is really illusory (see Arch. ii. 143-144). The nexus cl, &c., may be maintained in the beginning of words (claru, plus); but if they are in the body of the word they usually undergo resolutions which, closely related though they be to those of Italian, sometimes bring about very singular results (e.g. ušare, which by the intermediate forms uscare, usjare leads back to usclare = ustlare = ustulare). Nź is the representative of nj (testimónźu, &c.); and lj is reduced to ź alone (e.g. méźus, melius; Campidanese mellus). For ll a frequent substitute is ḍḍ: massīḍḍa, maxilla, &c. Quite characteristic is the continual labialization of the formulae qua, gua, cu, gu, &c.; e.g. ebba, equa; sambene, sanguine (see Arch. ii. 143). The dropping of the primary d (roere, rodere, &c.) but not of the secondary (finidu, sanidade, maduru) is frequent. Characteristic also is the Logudorese prothesis of i before the initial s followed by a consonant (iscamnu, istella, ispada), like the prothesis of e in Spain and in France (see Arch. iii. 447 sqq.).—In the order of the present discussion it is in connexion with this territory that we are for the first time led to consider those phonetic changes in words of which the cause is merely syntactical of transitory, and chiefly those passing accidents which occur to the initial consonant through the historically legitimate or the merely analogical action of the final sound that precedes it. The general explanation of such phenomena reduces itself to this, that, given the intimate syntactic relation of two words, the initial consonant of the second retains or modifies its character as it would retain or modify it if the two words were one. The Celtic languages are especially distinguished by this peculiarity; and among the dialects of Upper Italy the Bergamasc offers a clear example. This dialect is accustomed to drop the v, whether primary or secondary, between vowels in the individual vocables (caá, cavare; fáa, fava, &c.), but to preserve it if it is preceded by a consonant (serva, &c.).—And similarly in syntactic combination we have, for example, de i, di vino; but ol vi, il vino. Insular, southern and central Italy furnish a large number of such phenomena; for Sardinia we shall simply cite a single class, which is at once obvious and easily explained, viz. that represented by su oe, il bove, alongside of sos boes, i. buoi (cf. bíere, bibere; erba).—The article is derived from ipse instead of from ille: su sos, sa sas,—again a geographical anticipation of Spain, which in the Catalan of the Balearic islands still preserves the article from ipse.—A special connexion with Spain exists besides in the nomine type of inflexion, which is constant among the Sardinians (Span. nomne, &c., whence nombre, &c.), nomen, nomene, rámine, aeramine, legumene, &c. (see Arch. ii. 429 sqq.).—Especially noteworthy in the conjugation of the verb is the paradigm cantére, cantéres, &c., timére, timéres, &c., precisely in the sense of the imperfect subjunctive (cf. A. 1; cf. C. 3 b). Next comes the analogical and almost corrupt diffusion of the -si of the ancient strong perfects (such as posi, rosi) by which cantesi, timesi (cantavi, timui), dolfesi, dolui, are reached. Proof of the use and even the abuse of the strong perfects is afforded, however, by the participles and the infinitives of the category to which belong the following examples: ténnidu, tenuto; párfidu, parso; bálfidu, valso; ténnere, bálere, &c. (Arch. ii. 432-433). The future, finally, shows the unagglutinated periphrasis: hapo a mandigare (ho a mangiare = manger-ó); as indeed the unagglutinated forms of the future and the conditional occur in ancient vernacular texts of other Italian districts. [The Campidanese manuscript, in Greek characters, published by Blancard and Wescher (Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, xxxv. 256-257), goes back as far as the last years of the 11th century. Next come the Cagliari MSS. published by Solmi (Le Carte volgari dell’ Archivio arcivescovile di Cagliari, Florence, 1905; cf. Guarnerio in Studi romanzi, fascicolo iv. 189 et seq.), the most ancient of which in its original form dates from 1114-1120. For Logoduro, the Condaghe di S. Pietro di Silchi (§§ xii.-xiii.), published by G. Bonazzi (Sassari-Cagliari, 1900; cf. Meyer-Lübke, Zur Kenntnis des Altlogudoresischen, Vienna, 1902), is of the highest importance.]
[3. Vegliote (Veglioto).—Perhaps we may not be considered to be departing from Ascoli’s original plan if we insert here as a third member of the group B the neo-Latin dialect which found its last refuge in the island of Veglia (Gulf of Quarnero), where it came definitively to an end in 1898. The Vegliote dialect is the last remnant of a language which some long time ago extended from thence along the Dalmatian coast, whence it gained the name of Dalmatico, a language which should be carefully distinguished from the Venetian dialect spoken to this day in the towns of the Dalmatian littoral. Its character reminds us in many ways of Rumanian, and of that type of Romano-Balkan dialect which is represented by the Latin elements of Albanian, but to a certain extent also, and especially with regard to the vowel sounds, of the south-eastern dialects of Italy, while it has also affinities with Friuli, Istria and Venetia. These characteristics taken altogether seem to suggest that Dalmatico differs as much as does Sardinian from the purely Italian type. It rejects the -s, it is true, retaining instead the nominative form in the plural; but here these facts are no longer a criterion, since in this point Italian and Rumanian are in agreement. A tendency which we have already noted, and shall have further cause to note hereafter, and which connects in a striking way the Vegliote and Abruzzo-Apulian dialects, consists in reducing the accented vowels to diphthongs: examples of this are: spuota, Ital. spada; buarka, Ital. barca; fiar, Ital. fe̱rro; nuat, Ital. no̱tte; kataina, Ital. catẹna; paira, Ital. pẹro; Lat. pĭru; jaura, Ital. ǫra; nauk, Ital. noce; Lat. nŭce; ortaika, Ital. ortica; joiva, Ital. uova. Other vowel phenomena should also be noted, for example those exemplified in prut, Ital. prato; dik, Ital. dieci, Lat. dĕcem; luk, Ital. luogo, Lat. lŏcu; krask, Ital. crḛscere; cenk, Ital. cinque, Lat. quīnque; buka, Ital. bocca, Lat. bčca. With regard to the consonants, we should first notice the invariable persistence of the explosive surds (as in Rumanian and the southern dialects) for which several of the words just cited will serve as examples, with the addition of kuosa, Ital. casa; praiza, Ital. presa; struota, Ital. strada; rosuota, Ital. rugiada; latri, Ital. ladro; raipa, Ital. riva. The c in the formula ce, whether primary or secondary, is represented by k: kaina, Ital. cena; kanaisa, Ital. cinigia; akait, Ital. aceto; plakár, Ital. piacere; dik, Ital. dieci; mukna, Ital. macina; dotko, Ital. dodici; and similarly the g in the formula ge is represented by the corresponding guttural: ghelút, Ital. gelato; jongár, Ital. giungere; plungre, Ital. piangere, &c. On the contrary, the guttural of the primitive formula cū becomes ć (ćol, Ital. culo); this phenomenon is also noteworthy as seeming to justify the inference that the ū was pronounced ü. Pt is preserved, as in Rumanian (sapto, Lat. septem), and often, again as in Rumanian, ct is also reduced to pt (guapto, Lat. octo). As to morphology, a characteristic point is the preservation of the Lat. cantavero, Ital. avrò cantato, in the function of a simple future. Cantaverum also occurs as a conditional. For Vegliote and Dalmatico in general, see M. G. Bartoli’s fundamental work, Das Dalmatische (2 vols., Vienna, 1906), and Zeitschrift für roman. Philologie, xxxii. 1 sqq.; Merlo, Rivista di filologia e d’istruzione class, xxxv. 472 sqq. A short document written about 1280 in the Dalmatic dialect of Ragusa is to be found in Archeografo Triestino, new series, vol. i. pp. 85-86.]
C. Dialects which diverge more or less from the genuine Italian or Tuscan type, but which at the same time can be conjoined with the Tuscan as forming part of a special system of Neo-Latin dialects.
1. Venetian.—Between “Venetian” and “Venetic” several distinctions must be drawn (Arch. i. 391 sqq.). At the present day the population of the Venetian cities is “Venetian” in language, but the country districts are in various ways Venetic.[1] The ancient language of Venice itself and of its estuary was not a little different from that of the present time; and the Ladin vein was particularly
- ↑ On this point see the chapter, “La terra ferma veneta considerata in ispecie ne’ suoi rapporti con la sezione centrale della zona ladina,” in Arch. i. 406-447.
