Giulio Lepschy – författare

Italian as a national spoken language is a new experience for Italians; until very recently it was normal for the majority of the people to speak in a dialect, and Italian was a literary language used only by a minority. The first section of this book provides an outline of the language, and a sketch of the dialects. The authors also describe the formation of the modern standard language in its varieties (regional, social, and occupational).Part two is a reference grammar of contemporary educated Italian, presented in the way it is actually used, rather than according to traditional prescription.The book concentrates on contemporary usage and will enable the reader to understand and use appropriately a wide range of expressions, characterized where necessary according to their level of formality or their regional nature.The illuminating combination of historical perspective and contemporary grammer make this a unique contribution to Italian linguistics, and an invaluable reference book for all students and scholars in the field of Italian.The second edition has been revised throughout to bring it completely up to date.

Italian is unique among modern European languages, for although it has a history going back eight centuries, it has only consolidated as a spoken national language during the twentieth century. Previously, it was a written, literary language, and people spoke regional dialects that were strikingly different from each other. This has intriguing implications for understanding notions such as mother tongue, native speaker, and literary language, and Giulio Lepschy discusses these and other issues in this collection of six scholarly essays on the Italian language.Lepschy also explores a little understood aspect of Italian prosody (the system of secondary stresses), and analyzes a Venetian play of the Renaissance, La Veniexiana, in which a 'gendered' reading helps to clarify some grammatically controversial passages. These aspects of the play had been examined by Carlo Dionisotti, the eminent Italianist whose life and works are the subject of the final essay. Lepschy's approach combines the insights of modern linguistic theory and the findings of fresh and original philological investigations. His essays will be essential to anyone interested in the Italian language.