English loans in written Italian: a regional perspective
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Costanza Asnaghi
Abstract
Contemporary Italian includes many lexical terms borrowed from English. While some of these terms do not have a corresponding word in Italian, as in the case of personal computer, most English borrowings tend to replace a pre-existing/co-existing Italian word (e.g. weekend/fine settimana). The assumption on which this chapter develops is that, as for many other linguistic features, the distribution of borrowings varies on a regional basis. This chapter surveys the patterns of regional diffusion of the English borrowings in contemporary written Italian through site-restricted web searches, a continuous computational model for geographic information retrieval rooted in the tradition of corpus linguistics by which to analyze regional lexical variation. The values of 34 continuous lexical alternation variables (e.g. welfare/stato sociale, volleyball/pallavolo) are automatically gathered through site-restricted web searches in about 500 online newspaper websites based in over 150 locations in Italy and then calculated as proportions. The automation of the retrieval is made possible by a Python script that queries Google Search for the pages that contain the variants in a specified newspaper domain. Statistical techniques analyze global and local spatial autocorrelation values. In particular, local spatial autocorrelation results are similar to isogloss drawing, therefore providing a picture of the geographical distribution for the preference of the English and the Italian version for each onomasiological concept.
Abstract
Contemporary Italian includes many lexical terms borrowed from English. While some of these terms do not have a corresponding word in Italian, as in the case of personal computer, most English borrowings tend to replace a pre-existing/co-existing Italian word (e.g. weekend/fine settimana). The assumption on which this chapter develops is that, as for many other linguistic features, the distribution of borrowings varies on a regional basis. This chapter surveys the patterns of regional diffusion of the English borrowings in contemporary written Italian through site-restricted web searches, a continuous computational model for geographic information retrieval rooted in the tradition of corpus linguistics by which to analyze regional lexical variation. The values of 34 continuous lexical alternation variables (e.g. welfare/stato sociale, volleyball/pallavolo) are automatically gathered through site-restricted web searches in about 500 online newspaper websites based in over 150 locations in Italy and then calculated as proportions. The automation of the retrieval is made possible by a Python script that queries Google Search for the pages that contain the variants in a specified newspaper domain. Statistical techniques analyze global and local spatial autocorrelation values. In particular, local spatial autocorrelation results are similar to isogloss drawing, therefore providing a picture of the geographical distribution for the preference of the English and the Italian version for each onomasiological concept.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Preface VII
- List of Contributors IX
- List of Figures XIII
- List of Tables XV
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Introduction
- On the development of a new standard norm in Italian 3
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Part I: Restandardization tendencies
- What is changing in Italian today? Phenomena of restandardization in syntax and morphology: an overview 31
- Changes from below, changes from above: relative constructions in contemporary Italian 61
- Everyone has an accent. Standard Italian and regional pronunciation 89
- Evaluating regional variation in Italian: towards a change in standard language ideology? 118
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Part II: Regional standards
- How standard regional Italians set in: the case of standard Piedmontese Italian 145
- Italian in Bozen/Bolzano: the formation of a ‘new dialect’ 176
- Tuscan between standard and vernacular: a sociophonetic perspective 213
- Contact between Italian and dialect in Sicily: the case of phrasal verb constructions 242
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Part III: Crossing the borders
- Anglicisms in Italian. Typologies of language contact phenomena with particular reference to word-formation processes 269
- English loans in written Italian: a regional perspective 293
- Italian in Switzerland: the dynamics of pluricentrism 321
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Epilogue
- The neo-standard of Italy and elsewhere in Europe 365
- Index 375
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Preface VII
- List of Contributors IX
- List of Figures XIII
- List of Tables XV
-
Introduction
- On the development of a new standard norm in Italian 3
-
Part I: Restandardization tendencies
- What is changing in Italian today? Phenomena of restandardization in syntax and morphology: an overview 31
- Changes from below, changes from above: relative constructions in contemporary Italian 61
- Everyone has an accent. Standard Italian and regional pronunciation 89
- Evaluating regional variation in Italian: towards a change in standard language ideology? 118
-
Part II: Regional standards
- How standard regional Italians set in: the case of standard Piedmontese Italian 145
- Italian in Bozen/Bolzano: the formation of a ‘new dialect’ 176
- Tuscan between standard and vernacular: a sociophonetic perspective 213
- Contact between Italian and dialect in Sicily: the case of phrasal verb constructions 242
-
Part III: Crossing the borders
- Anglicisms in Italian. Typologies of language contact phenomena with particular reference to word-formation processes 269
- English loans in written Italian: a regional perspective 293
- Italian in Switzerland: the dynamics of pluricentrism 321
-
Epilogue
- The neo-standard of Italy and elsewhere in Europe 365
- Index 375
