- ホーム
- > 洋書
- > 英文書
- > History / World
Full Description
This volume presents the first linguistic and philological analysis and edition (with English translation) of a fifteenth-century vernacular manuscript from Renaissance Italy, written by an author from the city of Cremona, in northern Italy. The text is a libro d'abbaco, used to teach practical business mathematics to young boys. The vernacular language of these texts has been largely neglected. The libri d'abbaco, however, reveal much about the native language of the ordinary people and the language of banking, and artisan sectors in the major Italian cities of the time. Our textbook serves as a starting point to reflect upon some key linguistic, cultural, and intellectual developments in fifteenth-century Lombardy. We provide a thorough comparative-historical analysis of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the work, together with a detailed scrutiny of the lexicon, including specialist vocabulary and distinctively dialectal terms.
The volume broadens the understanding and mode of engagement with vernacular technical registers and early pedagogical works, and aims to throw light on the little-explored question of the language of the vernacular libri d'abbaco, in ways of interest to linguists, philologists, textual scholars, and historians.
Contents
1. Introduction: text and context
Valentina Ferrari
2. Text and translation
2.1 The manuscript: characteristics
2.2 The manuscript: contents
2.3 Editorial criteria
2.4 The translation
2.5 Abbreviations
2.6 The text: transcription and translation
Valentina Ferrari - Translation by Martin Maiden
3. Linguistic analysis
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Phonology and orthography
3.2.1 Introduction
3.2.2 Vowels
3.2.2.1 Stressed vowels
3.2.2.2 Unstressed vowels
3.2.3 Consonants
3.2.3.1 Voicing of intervocalic voiceless consonants
3.2.3.2 Shortening of long consonants
3.2.3.3 Original palatals and affricates
3.2.4 Other phenomena
3.3 Morphology
3.3.1 Nouns and adjectives
3.3.1.1 Number and gender marking
3.3.1.2 Numerative morphology (and remnants of a neuter gender)
3.3.2 Possessive adjectives
3.3.3 Articles
3.3.4 Pronouns
3.3.4.1 The system
3.3.4.2 Clitic pronouns
3.3.5 Demonstratives
3.3.6 Relative and interrogative forms
3.3.7 Verb
3.3.7.1 Inflexional paradigms
3.3.7.2 Conjugation classes
3.3.7.3 Person and number
3.3.7.4 Auxiliary selection
3.4 Syntax
3.3.1 Basic word order
3.3.2 The position of clitics
3.4.2.1 General principles
3.4.2.2 Clitic climbing
3.4.2.3 Clitic clusters (sequences of clitics)
3.4.2.4 Clitic doubling
3.4.3 Position of auxiliary verbs
3.4.4 Position of adverbs
3.5 Negation
3.6 Causatives
3.7 Complementation
3.8 Gerundial subordinate clauses
3.9 Presentative constructions
3.10 Relative constructions
3.11 The structure of comparative and superlative constructions
3.12 Agreement of verb with subject
3.13 Agreement of the past participle
3.14 Use of tenses
3.15 Position of numerals
3.16 Position of determiners
3.17 Anacolutha?
Martin Maiden
4. The Lexicon and Phraseology
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The mathematical language of the libro d'abbaco
4.2.1 Introduction
4.2.2 The language of arithmetic
4.2.2.1 Introduction
4.2.2.2 The system of numbering
4.2.2.3 Addition
4.2.2.4 Subtraction
4.2.2.5 Multiplication
4.2.2.6 Division
4.2.2.7 Operators
4.2.2.8 Expression of the result
4.2.2.9 Exquisire
4.2.3 The language of algebra
4.2.3.1 Introduction
4.2.3.2 The 'unknown' and its powers
4.2.3.3 The rule of the double false position and its lexicon
4.2.3.4 The grande guisa
4.2.4 The lexicon of calculations of net weight, gross weight, tare
4.2.5 The language of geometry
4.3 The northern Italo-Romance dialectal lexicon of the libro d'abbaco
4.4 Special uses of two common words: capitolo, mano.
4.5 Units of measurement and currency
4.5.1 Introduction
4.5.2 Units of measurement
4.5.3 Units of currency
4.6 Phraseology and discourse
4.6.1 Rhetorical characteristics
4.6.2 Structure of the text
4.6.3 Addressing the reader and giving instructions
Valentina Ferrari
5. Conclusion
Martin Maiden
6. References and bibliographical abbreviations
