Italian Lexicography 69
Agreement (in gender and number) provides cohesion
among words within phrases, and a certain degree of
mobility freedom for the phrases themselves. Instead,
single words are less free to move compared to words
in more inflecting languages, such as Latin, for in-
stance, (Simone, 1993). Whereas in Latin, the use of
cases allows to signal on each word its relational
syntactic functions, thus rendering it relatively auton-
omous within the phrase, in Italian the analytic ex-
pression (through prepositions) of syntactic relations
demands the proximity and the reciprocal ordering
of words within the phrases. Thus, order variation
occurs primarily at the level of the reciprocal ordering
of phrases (many instances of topicalization, cleft
sentences, postverbal subject position). Adjectives
stand out from other word classes for a higher degree
of movement freedom within the phrases. Even
though the unmarked position of the qualifying ad-
jective is postnominal (according to the basic order
SVO), this may vary, which at times effects a change
in meaning (cf. famiglie numerose ‘large families’ and
numerose famiglie ‘several families’).
See also: Arabic as an Introflecting Language; Chinese as
an Isolating Language; Finnish as an Agglutinating Lan-
guage; Italian; Morphological Typology; Morphological
Universals; Morphophonemics; Natural Morphology.
Bibliography
D’Achille P & Thornton A M (2003). ‘La flessione del nome
dall’italiano antico all’italiano moderno.’ In Maraschio
N & Poggi Salani T (eds.) Italia linguistica anno mille
Italia linguistica anno duemila. Rome: Bulzoni.
Italian Lexicography
A Alonge, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The birth of Italian monolingual lexicography can
be traced back to the end of the 15th century, when
the first lists of vernacular words were compiled. The
first printed monolingual inventory, Le tre fontane
by Niccolò Liburnio, was published in Venice some
time later, in 1526. Partly following Bembo’s propo-
sals with respect to the querelle de la langue (accord-
ing to which Petrarch’s language should have been the
model for poetry and Boccaccio’s language for prose),
Liburnio lists and defines terms taken from the works
of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Other dictionaries
published in those years had the same purpose, to
encode and define the lexicon of the 14th-century
Dressler W U (1985). ‘Typological aspects of natural
morphology.’ Acta Linguistica Academiae Scientiarum
Hungaricae 35, 51–70.
Dressler W U, Kilani-Schoch M, Spina R & Thornton A M
(2003). ‘Le classi di coniugazione in italiano e in francese.’
In Giacomo-Marcellesi M & Rocchetti A (eds.) Il verbo
italiano. Rome: Bulzoni.
Greenberg J H (1954). ‘A quantitative approach to the mor-
phological typology of language.’ In Spencer R F (ed.)
Method and perspective in anthropology. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Grossmann M & Rainer F (eds.) (2004). La formazione
delle parole in italiano. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Matthews P H (1970). ‘Recent developments in mor-
phology.’ In Lyons J (ed.) New horizons in linguistics.
Harmondsworth: Pelican.
Pirrelli V & Battista M (2000). ‘The paradigmatic dimen-
sion of stem allomorphy in Italian verb inflection.’ Italian
Journal of Linguistics 12, 307–379.
Plungian V A (2001). ‘Agglutination and flection.’ In
Haspelmath M, König E, Oesterreicher W & Raible W
(eds.) Language typology and language universals. Ber-
lin, New York: De Gruyter.
Skalička V (1966). ‘Ein ‘‘typologisches Konstrukt.’’’ In
Skalička V (ed.) (1979). Typologische Studien. Braunsch-
weig: Vieweg.
Simone R (1993). ‘Stabilità e instabilità nei caratteri ori-
ginali dell’italiano.’ In Sobrero A (ed.) Introduzione
all’italiano contemporaneo. Rome-Bari: Laterza.
Thornton A M (2001). ‘Some reflections on gender and
inflectional class assignment in Italian.’ In Schaner-
Wolles C et al. (eds.) Naturally! Turin: Rosenberg &
Sellier.
Vincent N (1988). ‘Italian.’ In Harris M & Vincent N (eds.)
The Romance languages. London: Routledge.
Tuscan classics, to be imitated by those aspiring to
linguistic elegance: e.g., Lucilio Minerbi’s Vocabu-
lario (Venice, 1535); Francesco Alunno’s Le Osserva-
zioni sopra il Petrarca (Venice, 1539; 1550), and Le
ricchezze della lingua volgare sopra il Boccaccio
(1543).
The Vocabulario di cinquemila Vocabuli Toschi
by Fabricio Luna (Naples, 1536) has been described
as the first true Italian dictionary, ordered alphabeti-
cally and listing 5000 terms taken from the works of
various authors of different cultural and geographical
origins, but also from contemporary usage. Alberto
Acarisio’s Vocabolario, grammatica, et ortographia
de la lingua volgare (Cento, 1543) is interesting both
for the richness of data encoded for each lemma
(compared to other works of the time, Acarisio’s
work pays more attention to scientific terminology
70 Italian Lexicography
and to phraseology) and for an attempt to encode
many lemmas that are not found in the works of the
14th-century classics. Other prominent lexicographi-
cal works of the time are Alunno’s Fabrica del mondo
(Venice, 1548), which is divided into 10 sections and
may be considered the first methodical Italian dic-
tionary, and Giacomo Pergamini’s Memoriale della
lingua, first published in Venice in 1602 and then
reprinted various times.
The first Vocabolario degli accademici della Crusca
was published in Venice in 1612 and became a model
for monolingual European lexicography. It con-
formed to new and scientific criteria: orthographical
and grammatical norms were stated, more coherent
modes of defining entries were used, and various
standardizing expedients were adopted. Again, the
main aim of the work was to indicate the best linguis-
tic norm, by referring to the three main 14th-century
writers, but also to other texts written in Florence in
the same period, following proposals put forward by
Leonardo Salviati. The Vocabolario was enlarged and
republished many times until 1923 and, although
criticized because of the limits it imposed on contem-
porary language use, it contributed substantially to
the definition and diffusion of a national language.
A new project, initiated in 1965, aims at historical
documentation and is now realized by the Opera
del Vocabolario Italiano, an institute of the C.N.R.
(Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche).
Various dictionaries were compiled in the 17th
and 18th centuries aimed at contesting the primacy
of the Tuscan language, while other works fol-
lowed fundamental principles which had inspired
the Crusca dictionary, indicating possible additions
and innovations to it.
In the 19th century, while the querelle de la langue
was still engaging personages like Alessandro Man-
zoni and Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, new dictionaries
were produced that included new technical terms,
referred to new sources and took into account current
colloquial usage. However, the most important work
of the time is the Dizionario della lingua italiana
(Torino, 1861–1879) by Niccolò Tommaseo and
Bernardo Bellini: notwithstanding some limitations
of the work (e.g., etymologies are often ill-founded),
the richness of examples still makes it a useful
lexicographical tool.
Among the many dictionaries of Italian published
from the beginning of the 20th century up to now,
we find both large scholarly dictionaries and more
practical ones. The Grande Dizionario della lingua
italiana (1961–2002), founded by Salvatore Batta-
glia, is an unsurpassed historical dictionary (UTET,
Turin) comprising 21 volumes. The Lessico Uni-
versale Italiano (Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana,
Rome, 1968–1981), in 24 volumes, has qualities
of both an encyclopedia and a dictionary. Another
great dictionary is the Grande dizionario d’uso della
lingua italiana directed by Tullio De Mauro and
containing 263 000 lemmas: first published in 1999
(UTET), it was updated in 2003, when the seventh
volume was published. Among the many practical
dictionaries, just two examples may be mentioned:
Nicola Zingarelli’s Vocabolario della lingua Italiana,
first published in 1917, then reprinted and updated
many times up to the present day, most recently by
Miro Dogliotti and Luigi Rosiello (Zanichelli, Milan,
2004); and the Dizionario della lingua italiana
by Giacomo Devoto and Gian Carlo Oli, first printed
in 1967 and also republished many times: the
2004–2005 edition is by Luca Serianni and Maurizio
Trifone (Le Monnier, Florence). While electronic ver-
sions of these and other contemporary dictionaries are
also published, pioneering work has been carried
out (notably at the ILC-CNR [Istituto di Linguistica
Computazionale-Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche],
Pisa) to produce online lexical resources, first of all
the Dizionario-macchina dell’italiano. Another lexical
online resource recently developed (ILC, 1996–2001)
is ItalWordNet, a thesaurus-like resource, basically
structured in the same way as WordNet, a system
whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic
theories of human lexical memory, developed at the
Cognitive Science Laboratory at Princeton University
in the United States.
Beside monolingual dictionaries, other lexicographi-
cal works are worthy of mention: etymological diction-
aries (e.g., the one by M. Cortelazzo and P. Zolli,
recently republished in 1999 by Zanichelli); frequency
lexicons (LIF [Lessico italiano di frequenza], by
U. Bortolini, C. Tagliavini, and A. Zampolli, for
Garzanti-IBM, Milan, 1972; LIP [Lessico di frequenza
dell’italiano parlato], T. De Mauro, F. Mancini,
M. Vedovelli, M. Voghera, for Etas, Milan, 1993);
regional dictionaries (a notable example is the Vocabo-
lario Siciliano, founded by G. Piccitto and subsequently
directed by G. Tropea, 1977–2002).
See also: Academies: Dictionaries and Standards; Ascoli,
Graziadio Isaia (1829–1907); Computational Lexicons and
Dictionaries; Computers in Lexicography; Dictionaries
and Encyclopedias: Relationship; Italian; Italy: Language
Situation; Thesauruses; WordNet(s).
Bibliography
Della Valle V (1994). ‘La lessicografia.’ In Serianni L &
Trifone P (eds.) Storia della lingua italiana. Torino:
Einaudi. 25–91.
Massariello Merzagora G (1983). La lessicografia. Bolo-
gna: Zanichelli.

Migliorini B (1961). Che cos’è un vocabolario? Firenze: Le
Monnier.
Poggi Salani T (1982). ‘Venticinque anni di lessicografia
italiana delle origini (leggere, scrivere e ‘‘politamente
parlare’’): note sull’idea di lingua.’ Historiographia
Linguistica IX. 265–297.
Rossebastiano Bart A (1986). ‘Alle origini della lessicogra-
fia italiana.’ In Buridant C (ed.) Lexique 4: La lexicogra-
phie au Moyen Age. Lille: UMR SILEX. 113–156.
Italy: Language Situation
A L Lepschy
G Lepschy
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
This article is reproduced from the previous editions,
volume 4, pp. 1792–1793, ß 1994, Elsevier Ltd.
It is traditionally taken for granted that Italy is
basically a monolingual state, and that Italian is the
national/official language, used not only in literature
but also in government, administration, newspapers,
and of course as the medium of instruction in schools
and universities.
The reality is different. It is useful to consider two
distinct sets of facts. One concerns the existence of so-
called minority languages within the Italian territory.
There are enclaves in which foreign languages are
spoken; this may result from an earlier immigration
of communities that preserved their language through
the centuries – as is the case in villages in central and
southern Italy, where the inhabitants speak Albanian
(ca. 100 000), Greek (ca. 30 000), Catalan in Alghero
(ca. 15 000), and Serbo–Croatian (ca. 3000); or it
may result from the inclusion within the Italian bound-
aries of populations speaking foreign languages – as in
the case of German in South Tyrol (ca. 280 000),
Occitan and Franco-Provençal in Piedmont (ca.
115 000), and Slovene in the Veneto (ca. 53 000).
The second set of facts concerns the use of so-called
Italian dialects. These are separate and, on the whole
mutually unintelligible, Romance languages, classifi-
able into 15 or so regional groups (Ligurian, Pied-
montese, Lombard, Venetian, Tuscan, etc.); they are
cognates (rather than varieties) of literary Italian,
which is itself based on Tuscan. Many linguists con-
sider Sardinian, Ladin, and particularly Friulian, as
separate languages. Here the situation is complicated
by the difficulty of establishing how widespread the
Italy: Language Situation 71
Tancke G (1984). Die italienischen Wörterbücher von den
Anfängen bis zum Erscheinen des ‘Vocabolario degli
Accademici della Crusca’ (1612). Bestandsaufnahme
und Analyse. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Zampolli A, Calzolari N & Cignoni L (eds.) (2003).
Linguistica Computazionale 16–17. Special Issue on
Computational Linguistics in Pisa. Pisa: Giardini.
745–792.
use of dialect is. It was calculated that at the time of
unification only a small minority (suggested figures
range between 2.5–10%) of the inhabitants of the
new state knew Italian. It appears that in the 1980s,
about half of all Italians still used a dialect at home
and with friends (this applies particularly to southern
Italy and the Veneto). The novelty is that even dialect
speakers are mostly bilingual with Italian. Although
traditionally the dialect was used in all circumstances
(some speakers employing it even in the context of
high culture), diglossia seems to prevail, Italian being
the high variety (used in public life, in official con-
texts, and for elevated topics), and dialect the low
variety (used in the home and for personal, everyday
exchanges).
The status of minority languages was, until World
War II, mostly unrecognized. Successively the regions
of Trentino–Alto Adige and of the Valle d’Aosta have
obtained full recognition for the use of German and
French, respectively, in education and in public life.
This also applies, to a lesser extent, to Sardinia and
Friuli–Venezia Giulia. Political pressure is mounting
to extend similar recognition to other ‘foreign’ minor-
ity languages, and even to some of the regional
dialects, such as Lombard or Venetian.
Complex linguistic problems are posed by new
waves of immigration, mainly from Africa, in the
late 1980s and early 1990s. As for foreign languages
studied in schools, French, which was dominant until
World War II, has since lost its primacy to English.
Bibliography
De Mauro T (1976). Ctoria linguistica dell’Italia unita.
Bari: Laterza.
Lepschy A L & Lepschy G (1991). The Italian language
today. London: Routledge.