La Spezia–Rimini Line



The La Spezia–Rimini Line (also known as the Massa–Senigallia Line), for the linguistics of the Romance languages, is a line that demarcates a number of important isoglosses that distinguish Romance languages south and east of the line from Romance languages north and west of it. The line runs through northern Italy, approximately between the cities of La Spezia and Rimini. Romance languages south and east of it include Italian and the Eastern Romance languages (Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanian), whereas Catalan, French, Occitan, Portuguese, Romansh, Spanish, and the Gallo‒Italic languages are representatives of the Western group. The Sardinian language is not part of either Western or Eastern Romance.

It has been suggested that the origin of these developments is to be found during the last decades of the Western Roman Empire and the Ostrogothic Kingdom (c. 395–535 AD). During this period, the area of Italy north of the line was dominated by an increasingly Germanic Roman army of (Northern) Italy, followed by the Ostrogoths; the Roman Senate and Papacy became the dominant social elements south of the line. As for the provinces outside Italy, the social influences in Gaul and Iberia were broadly similar to those in Northern Italy, whereas the Balkans were dominated by the Byzantine Empire at this time (and later, by Slavic peoples).

Some linguists say that the line actually runs between Massa and Senigallia, about 40 kilometres further to the south, and would be termed more accurately the Massa–Senigallia Line.

In either case, it coincides approximately with the northern range of the Apennine Mountains, which could have helped the development of these linguistic differences.

Generally speaking, the western Romance languages have common innovations that the eastern Romance languages tend to lack. The three isoglosses considered traditionally are:
 * formation of the plural form of nouns.
 * the voicing or not of some consonants.
 * Pronunciation of Latin c before e/i as /(t)s/ or /tʃ/ (ch).

To these should be added a fourth criterion, generally more decisive than the phenomenon of voicing:
 * preservation (below the line) or simplification (above the line) of Latin geminate consonants.

Plural of nouns
North and west of the line (excluding all Northern Italian varieties) the plural of nouns was adapted from the Latin accusative case, and is marked with /s/ regardless of grammatical gender or declension. South and east of the line, the plurals of nouns are marked by changing the final vowel, either because these were taken from the Latin nominative case, or because the original /s/ changed into a vocalic sound (see the Romance plurals origin debate). Compare the plurals of cognate nouns in Aromanian, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French, Sardinian and Latin:

Result of ci/ce palatalization
The pronunciation of Latin ci/ce, as in and, has a divide that roughly follows the line: Italian and Romanian use /tʃ/ (as in English church), while most Western Romance languages use /(t)s/. The exceptions are some Gallo-Italic languages immediately north of the line, as well as Mozarabic and (partially) Norman.

Voicing and degemination of consonants
Another isogloss boundary that coincides with the La Spezia–Rimini Line deals with the restructured voicing of voiceless consonants, mainly Latin sounds, and , which occur between vowels. Thus, Latin ('chain') becomes catena in Italian, but cadeia in Portuguese, cadena in Catalan and Spanish, cadéna/cadèina in Emilian, caéna/cadéna in Venetian and chaîne in French (with loss of intervocalic [ð]). Voicing, or further weakening, even to loss of these consonants is characteristic of the western branch of Romance; their retention is characteristic of eastern Romance.

However, the differentiation is not totally systematic, and there are exceptions to the isogloss: Gascon dialects in south-west France and Aragonese in northern Aragon, Spain (geographically Western Romance) also retain the original Latin voiceless stop between vowels. The presence in Tuscany and elsewhere below the line of a small percentage but large number of voiced forms both in general vocabulary and in traditional toponyms also challenges its absolute integrity.

The criterion of preservation vs. simplification of Latin geminate consonants is more definite. The simplification illustrated by Spanish boca /boka/ 'mouth' vs. Tuscan bocca /bokka/, both continuations of Latin, typifies all of Western Romance and is systematic for all geminates except /s/ (pronounced differently if single/double even in French), /rr/ in some locales (e.g. Spanish carro and caro are still distinct), and to some degree for earlier /ll/ and /nn/ which, while not preserved as geminates, did not generally merge with the singletons (e.g. /n/ > /n/ but /nn/ > /ɲ/ in Spanish, > /aɲo/ 'year'). Nevertheless, the La Spezia-Rimini line is real in this respect for most of the consonant inventory, although simplification of geminates to the east in Romania spoils the neat east-west division.

Indeed, the significance of the La Spezia–Rimini Line is often challenged by specialists of both Romance dialectology and Italian dialectology. One reason is that while it demarcates preservation (and expansion) of phonemic geminate consonants (Central and Southern Italy) from their simplification (in Northern Italy, Gaul, and Iberia), the areas affected do not correspond consistently with those defined by voicing criterion. Romanian, which on the basis of lack of voicing, i-plurals and palatalisation to /tʃ/ is classified with Central and Southern Italian, has experienced simplification of geminates, a defining characteristic of Western Romance, after the rhotacism of intervocalic.