Thesis title: Grammatica del dialetto di Cannalonga (SA): un'analisi diagenerazionale
In this work, entitled "Grammar of the Cannalonga (SA) dialect: a diagenerational analysis", a diachronic and synchronic description has been prepared, organized by levels of analysis (phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon), of the dialect of Cannalonga (SA), a village located in the heart of the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park, within the administrative boundaries of the province of Salerno. This is the first complete grammar of a Cilento dialect, according to the analytical tools of modern linguistics. The investigation of linguistic phenomena took place through structured interviews addressed to 21 informants belonging to three age groups: 20-30 years (GA), 40-55 years (FM) and over-seventies (A), which allowed us to consider the variation of the data over apparent time. The peculiar characteristics of the Cannalonga's dialect are found above all in phonetics and phonology; in fact, although the inventory of vowel phonemes in tonic position belongs to the "common Romance" type - the most widespread in central-southern Italy - the atonic vocalism is rather conservative: in the protonic position five phonemes are recorded (/a e i o u/), reduced to three (/a i o/) in the internal postonic position; in the final position, however, a Tuscan-type system with four timbres is recorded: -/a/, -/e/, -/i/, -/o/, where the continuators of -Ī and -Ŭ, i.e. -i and -u (> -o) trigger metaphonies. Many cases of anetymological final -[i] have also been found, where one would expect -[e] (< -Ĕ(M), -ĂS/AE), probably due to a readjustment starting from a three-timbre system /a i u/ or due to partial interference, lexically widespread, from neighbouring Sicilian-type systems. Other interesting aspects concern grammatical gender: as in many upper-southern areas, in addition to the masculine and feminine, the mass neuter and the alternating neuter are also found. On a morphological level, it should also be noted that demonstratives (pronouns and adjectives) present three degrees of closeness: in addition to the continuators of ECCU + ISTU(M) and ECCU + ILLU(M), there are continuators of ECCU+IPSU(M). With regard to the system of tonic personal pronouns, it has been observed that it is rather distant from standard Italian: in the variety of bands A and FM, the I and II SG present a four-form case opposition, as in Logudorese and Nuorese Sardinian; the youngest, instead, resort to a system with three oppositions (the continuators of MECŬM and TECŬM remain for the comitative, while the distinction between direct and indirect object is lost). At the syntactic level, instead, the most relevant phenomena concern the system of perfective auxiliary – described in the theoretical perspective of Perlmutter’s Unaccusative Hypothesis – the agreement of the past participle, the positioning of clitics in the sentence and allocutive constructions. Finally, a glossary of about two hundred lexemes (nouns and some verbs) has been prepared, mostly belonging to the archaic lexicon, fallen into disuse in the GA range. The selected entries fall into three categories: names of plants and animals; nouns and verbs relating to the domestic environment and local gastronomy; lexemes relating to agriculture and pastoralism.