Binding function of syllable and place of the lombard dialect in the italian dialect continuum

Abstract

The article considers the function of syllable as an important element of the language system that reflects its typological features; this premise is revealed on the basis of the works by Y. Maslova, R. Potapova, I. Fogel and others. In linguistic science, there is a certain conflict between the fact that a syllable is recognized as a speech unit, but is studied mainly as part of lexicalized words (according to M. Morozova and E. Lubkova); the article asserts the need to transfer the syllable to the sphere of speech studies, a relatively new branch of linguistics dealing with the parametric analysis of texts. Setting themselves the goal of studying the Lombard syllabemes and clarifying the place of the Lombard dialect in the linguo-geographic continuum, the authors chose as the subject of research the Italian dialectal texts, which were selected, processed and analyzed taking into account the theoretical postulates of N. Trubetskoy, M. Lekomtseva and A. Dulichenko. Taking into account the theoretical developments of the latter, the area covered by the texts is not so much the Italian dialect continuum as the continuum of Italian literary micro languages. The subject of the article is the syllables formed at the junction of neighboring syntactic units; the term "final-initial syllables" is introduced to define them. According to the authors' hypothesis, the relative share of these syllables in the general body of the text may indicate the importance of the cementing role of the syllable for a given language system, and this, in turn, due to the typological characteristics of the latter. The obtained quantitative data showed that the proportion of final-initial syllables in the texts gradually decreases from the north-west to the north-east through the lower point of the south, therefore the point of the maximum difference in values is situated between the neighboring regions – Lombardy and Veneto, which reverses the traditional ideas about the linear division of Italy into dialects of the North, Center and South. The Italian dialectal continuum takes the form of an inverted triangle, which generally corresponds to the geographical configuration of Italy itself. The Lombard dialect, or micro language, is defined as the northwest extremum of the triangle, opposed to the other two peaks – the south and northeast. Analysis of the final-initial syllabemes of the Lombard dialect showed a strong correlation between the number of syntactic elements involved in the formation of such syllables and the quality of their segmental composition: the higher the number of syntactic units in a word, the more likely it is that this syllable will never be found in the root of the words of this dialect. The results of the research might turn out to be useful and interesting for language typology, phonology, speech and text linguistics, Romance philology and Italian dialectology experts.