Linguistic patterns of the Iberian Peninsula in Sicilian and other Southern Italian dialects.

Abstract

The question of Iberian linguistic influence in Sicily and elsewhere in Southern Italy has usually been dismissed in cavalier fashion as nebulous and even nonexistent by most Italian scholars. This is because they consider Spanish culture and civilization inferior to Italian. Hence, they are more prone to attribute foreign additions to the lexicon to French, and even to what they term an "analogous glottal instinct." Yet, seventy years ago, Avolio stated that sixty percent of the foreign words in Sicilian were borrowed from Castilian. More recently, Grassi-Privitera, in a highly subjective and uncritical article, listed hundreds of Sicilian words and phrases which he calls "somiglianze" with respect to Catalan and Castilian.

This dissertation is intended to fill the need for a clear, coherent and unified picture of the numerous and varied linguistic evidences that connect Iberia with Sicily and Southern Italy. To this end, the best available dialect dictionaries and grammars have been consulted, and the known, as well as the probable, Iberianisms which have found their way into the Italian dialects in question have been recorded. [TRUNCATED]