Course code

GRR6623.HT

old course code

GRR6623

Course title in Estonian

Itaalia keele ajalugu

Course title in English

History of Italian Language

ECTS credits

4.0

Assessment form

Examination

lecturer of 2023/2024 Spring semester

Not opened for teaching. Click the study programme link below to see the nominal division schedule.

lecturer of 2024/2025 Autumn semester

Not opened for teaching. Click the study programme link below to see the nominal division schedule.

Course aims

Knowledge of the development of the Italian language from different Latin speeches (volgari), its use in early written documents up to the unification of Italy, looking for the reasons of the success of the 14th century Florence's popular speech and its development into Italian literary language.

Brief description of the course

The course is based on the analyses of documents dating from different periods. Attention is payed parallelly to the formation of Italian literary language in literature and the presence of Italian popular speech in written tradition, having in mind that Italian has always been the language of a small elite, while the ordinary people were using only the dialect of their birthplace. Special attention is payed to the etymology of words, in order to relate the history of the language to the history of Italy in general and to show how other languages, spoken in Italy before and after latin, have played an important part in the development of Italian. Together with the development of language also the so-called questione della lingua or the theoretical discussion on the language norms from Dante up to the 19th century is treated.

Learning outcomes in the course

Upon completing the course the student:
Knowledge of the development of the Italian language and of the question of language norms.
Capacity to read and analyse written documents of different epoques.
Ability to distinguish lexical, ortographic, morphologic and syntactic characteristics of the texts of different epoques.

Teacher

Professor Daniele Monticelli

Study programmes containing that course

Romance Languages and Cultures (GRRB/15.HT)
Liberal Arts in Humanities (KKLHB/15.HT)
Liberal Arts in Humanities (KKLHB/14.HT)
Romance Languages and Cultures (GRRB/14.HT)
Romance Languages and Cultures (GRRB/13.HT)
Liberal Arts in Humanities (KKLHB/13.HT)
Romance Languages and Cultures (GRRB/12.HT)
Liberal Arts in Humanities (KKLHB/12_1.HT)
Romance Languages and Cultures (GRRB/00.HT)