Talk:La Spezia–Rimini Line

Vowel instability
User:Ihcoyc wrote in the article: "Instability of short vowels is also a trait of western Romance; as shown above, Latin lupus/lupum becomes lobo in Spanish, showing both voicing and the merger of short Latin /u/ and /o/, while in Italian the short /u/ is preserved"


 * This is clearly false: lobo shows a perfect Romance vowel quality, since lǔpu(m) in Latin had a short vowel. Italian lupo is instead problematic: it should have been lopo, as it actually is in many Central dialects (and lovo in Venetian). Almost all Italian (Tuscan) words coming directly from Latin show the merger of short Latin /u/ and (long) /o/ (and short /i/ and long /e/): for example, la pǔteu(m) -> it pozzo; la ǔlmu(m), -> it olmo; la nǐve(m) -> it neve (snow).


 * Some linguists have thought it could have been taken from Latin in Medieval times, from written sources (in this case there's no difference between short and long vowels, as they weren't distinguished graphically in Latin) or from some onomatopoeic expression such as il lupo ulula (the wolf howls). These explanations seem not to meet the requested criteria: the wolf was a very common animal in Italy to get a Latinized name and onomatopoeic altered words are extremely rare in Italian. A better example of "vowel instability" in western Romance languages could have been the loss of final vowels in French, Northern Italian dialects and Catalan and the strong reduction of medial vowels in the same languages: for example Latin-Gallic Augustodunum-> French Autun. Carnby 14:10, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Northern Italy
The parenthesis "excluding the Northern Italian dialects, which could have had it in past times" is unclear. Why does the line run through Italy? Are the Northern Italian dialects more like French than like standard Italian? Or is this a historical line and the Northern Italian dialects arose later when those areas came under Italian rule? Joriki 06:43, 20 September 2005 (UTC)


 * The line is mostly a phonetic one, concerning voicing of intervocalic consonants; there are old North Italian texts with /Cl/ clusters intact and even some with /-s/ to mark the plural; however many texts are anonymous and it is difficult to say whether there was actually a preservation of Latin structures or simply a latinized writing fashion. It has been suggsted that North Italian dialects were similar to Rhaeto-Romance languages (Romansh, Ladin, Friulian), but this is only a hypothesis.Carnby 20:40, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Why do linguists suppose Northern Italian dialects had a sigmatic plural and therefore put them in teh same group as the other western romance languages, when none of them has such a characteristic now?

Romanian viaţă
I'd like to point out that the Romanian word viaţă (life) does not derive from Latin vīta, as it is suggested in the table with plural examples. Latin vīta gave Romanian vită, which means cattle. Well, it might be difficult to imagine how life changed into cattle :P and maybe vită has another etymology, but in any case, the normal evolution of Latin vīta is Romanian vită. Now, viaţă is derived from the word viu (alife, from Latin vīvus) with the suffix -eaţă (from Latin -itia, corresponding to French -esse, Spanish -ez etc.).

I think a better word for the plurals example would be Latin aqua (water), which still exists in all Romance languages with the same meaning and makes the plural in -e in Romanian (apă - ape), which is the expected result of Latin -ae. Of course, there could be even better words. Dumiac 11:38, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Romanian viaţă derives from Popular Latin *vivitia < Latin vivus. Vită is listed as deriving from Latin vita directly. The change in meaning is not that extraordinary with the last example, because the word vită actually also means "a generic name given to any large domestic animal, especially if horned", and even more generally, it can mean "animal". You're right that the example should be replaced though; I replaced it with vită for now. Alexander 007 18:58, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Latin also had veterinus, "a draught animal"; and vitulus / vitula, "calf, foal, filly", that may be mixed up among the sources of these. If Romanian vită was taken directly from Latin, it may be a learned borrowing from Latin, not a continuous survival.  Smerdis of Tlön 19:43, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Like most languages, Romanian has lots of learned borrowings from Latin, but I have not seen one source state that vită is one (I did not say "taken directly from Latin", I said it developed directly from Latin vita, not by way of an intermediary Vulgar Latin form, as in the case of *vivitia). Latin vitulus gave rise to Romanian viţel, "calf, etc." Alexander 007 19:47, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Alexander 007, we're basicly saying the same thing; since Latin vīvus/Romanian viu and Latin -itia/Romanian -eaţă always existed in the language, the word viaţă could have been derived at any time since Vulgar Latin. I think Romanian vită is not a learnt borrowing, because it is such a common word and because its meaning changed. Romanian viţel comes from Latin vītellus (diminutive of vītulus, which in turn must be a diminutive deriving from vīta), otherwise the position of the stress and the preservation of l can't be explained. Dumiac 14:03, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Correct, vită is not what we would find in a learned borrowing: it underwent a meaning change which we do not find in learned borrowings in Romanian. Yes, viţel is by way of vitellus. Alexander 007 19:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I've deleted the comment on the meaning of now 'vită', which remained «vită [meaning] life, lives (in Romanian, "living thing")» 7:02, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

To be merged ?
The result was keep separate from Romance plurals. Discussion stale, no consensus. -- Debate   木  14:06, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Excuse for my English. I try to write 'cause I really had to say that it would be wrong to merge this article with Romance plurals. There are several differences between eastern Romance languages. The plural forms described in the article are just an important and easy example.


 * For instance, in Western Romances languages there are often voiced conosonants in intervocalic position: in Spanish you'll find jabón and in Franch savon for Englisch 'soap'. Italian, as a Eastern Romance language has sapone.


 * There are much more double consonants in Italian than in French or Spanisch. For 'cat': you've Spanisch gato and French chat, while Italian has gatto.

Sadly, at the moment this article is still incomplete. That is the only problem, but please don't merge. --Invitamia 21:38, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Alright, I see what you mean, but the different plural endings are one of the differences, aren't they? We could merge the other article into this one... FilipeS 21:43, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

--The problem is that La Spezia - Rimini doesn't withstand much scrutiny with regard to pluralization. There's the controversy of squeezing most of Northern Italy into an -s type, and while most of Sardinia normally has so-called Eastern Romance features, plurals are formed with -s. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.183.55.166 (talk) 17:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Then come up with a different title, and merge the two articles. FilipeS 19:44, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Rename?
The definition LaSpezia-Rimini is an inaccurate way to describe using supposed better known names, the Massa-Senigallia line that's the REAL line that's depicted into the picture and the real place where linguistic change happens.

It's just enough to go and ask anyone leaving in those places to find out that Carrara (administrativelly Tuscany, and south to LaSpezia) have a northern dialect, and mixtures comes from Massa to become clear and evident Tuscan at Forte dei Marmi. Anyone frequenting Versilia kows that. In the same way The changes from Romagnol to Center italian dialect happens in Senigallia. The most evident example is Valentino Rossi (the 7 time MotoGP world champion) that is from Tavullia (close to Pesaro, administratively Marche) south to Rimini but still retaining a clear Romagnol speach. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.225.224.133 (talk) 12:27, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Older, gaulish bases too?
Is it possible that the italian gaulish dialect-language of old days contribuated to the 'substrate' too, as a linguistic blog suggested it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.163.21.122 (talk) 07:40, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Exceptions?
I have been reading some Ligurian lately - to be exact, I red Tintin in Monegasque. It seemed to me that Ligurian, or at least, the Monegasque dialect, is every bit an Italian dialect, complete with plurals in -i and -e: Tintìn per munti e valade. Even so, both Monaco and Liguria lie north of the La Spezia-Rimini line. So what happened to make this inconsistency possible? Steinbach (talk) 18:42, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

The plurals??????
North italian languages don't make plurals by adding the "s"!!! South italian languages don't make plurals by changing the last vowel!!! Both make plurals by changing the vowels inside the word. I live in Apulia (south-est italy) and in the dialect spoken in my town we make plurals by changing the vowels inside the word or by adding a "re" at the end of the word. (this comes from the genitive plural ending of the first declension in latin). For example in these words we add "re": ( the "e" without the accent is silent) house - kèse houses - casere horse - cavadde horses - cavaddere

While in these words we change the vowels inside the word: snake - sèrpe snakes - sirpe boy - wagnone boys - wagnune — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.170.225.140 (talk) 23:21, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Applicability outside of Italy?
I am not a linguist so forgive me if I am being ignorant ...

Though the similarities that make French and Spanish more closely related to each other than to Italian are obvious, it is less clear to me the argument that Italian is more closely related to Romanian than to Spanish and French. The fact that the plurals in Italian and Romanian are both formed by changing the vowel endings seems unconvincing. Romanian retains a significant portion of Latin declensions in the nouns including plural formations. Italian retains no more of this than Spanish so in terms of the complexity of noun declension it is more similar to Spanish and one could argue the fact that both Italian and Romanian change vowel endings unlike Spanish is more incidental than indicative of a closer relationship. Indeed some of Italians vowel endings seem to be an hypercorrection away from the -s ending that Spanish and French use (e.g. Latin nos became noi in Italian).

What I am saying is that from what I know of Italian and Spanish they seem to share a lot of evolutionary similarities that differ from Romanian and these strike me as more than just convergent evolution (i.e. things that cannot be easily explained only by the fact that Spain and Italy had close contact during the Middle Ages). So I wonder how much consensus there truly is that the La Spezia–Rimini Line is meaningful when talking about the Eastern Romance languages.

-- MC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.131.2.3 (talk) 22:17, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

The La Spezia–Rimini Line (also known as the Massa–Senigallia Line),
The text says "The La Spezia–Rimini Line (also known as the Massa–Senigallia Line). However, the latter line lies to the south of the former one. It would be good to say something about those two designations.S. Valkemirer (talk) 02:53, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Applicability in italy?
according to papers i've read by authors such as Daniele Vitali (most notably this one: https://www.bulgnais.com/fonetica-storica-bol.pdf), emilian does in fact have geminates, but not phonemic ones. on the la spezia-rimini line there's a phonological transfert from "vowels are short before long consonants" to "consonants are long after short vowels". the same AFAIK is the case in genoese. this would go well with lenition being allophonic all over southern/central italy and the islands (to fricatives in tuscan, tenuous stops in neapolitan, fully voiced consonants in corsican), but only fully phonemicized (and no longer productive) north of the line

besides, the paper i've linked also evidences that the picture regarding C's outcome is way more complicated than it seems.

tuscan has /tʃ/ for c, /dʒ/ for g, but /ʃ/ as an allophone for intervocalic C. conservative emilian dialects (like lizzanese) have /tʃ/ for c, /dʒ/ for g (like tuscan), but -c- has turned into a phoneme /ʒ/

in innovative emilian (bolognese), C is /θ/, G is /ð/, but -c- is /z/. this is an evolution of the conservative system. see also, in ligurian, c is /s/, g is /z/, but -c- is /ʒ/

contrast this with western languages like portuguese or french, where c is /s/, g is /ʒ/, but -c- is /z/ In these, C must have fronted before lenition took place, because both nonlenited and lenited c are fronted. meanwhile, in lizzanese, you can see lenition has taken place, but fronting hasn't yet, and the fronting seen in most gallo-italic (but visibly in bolognese and genoese) must be ulterior and have affected both C and G. The actual isogloss separating dialects that front both C and G (or neither) from those who front only C, seems to be around piedmont.

Finally, for the plural, "north of west of the line (excluding all northern italian varieties) is kind of a contradictory statement.

Maybe if someone can provide even more sources on that, the page should be updated. ΟυώρντΑρτ (talk) ΟυώρντΑρτ (talk) 10:25, 2 June 2023 (UTC)