Mother Tongues & Other Reflections on the Italian Language, by Giulio Lepschy.

Mother Tongues is based on the Goggio Public Lectures given at the University of Toronto in the autumn of 2000. Chapter one discusses the notions of ‘mother tongue’ and ‘native speaker’, underlining their centrality for modern linguistic theory and identifying the particularly problematic aspects they acquire in an Italian context. Chapters two and three explore the linguistic situation of modern Italy, including the variety of idioms used and the spread of ‘popular Italian’. In chapter four Lepschy puts forward some hypotheses on secondary stress in modern Italian phonology, developed during the preparation of the Grande Dizionario italiano dell’uso published in 1999. The final chapters cover dialectology and the history of linguistic and philological thought.

Such a ‘bald and unconvincing narrative’ does no justice to this book, which is a mine of fascinating insights and connections. The non-specialist might assume, for example, that the meaning of ‘native speaker’ is clear. Not so: ‘the notion remains elusive and hazy and its history difficult to ascertain’ (p. 4). Differing definitions of ‘mother tongue’ are listed. Discussing the births and deaths of languages the author includes sections on Latin and the Vernacular, Hebrew, and extensively, as one might expect, on Italian. Especially fascinating is the tussle between local dialects and ‘proper’ Italian (documented in a dictionary inspired by Alessandro Manzoni and based on ‘the ordinary language of the educated middle classes in Florence’ which, however, ‘did not contribute to the emergence of native Italian speakers... It is only during the second half of the [20th] century that a sizeable part of the population started using only or mainly Italian, and we therefore find children who can be described as native speakers of Italian rather than dialect’ (pp. 19-20).

With wide-ranging and detailed understanding of linguistics Lepschy presents examples from several languages, with extraordinary personal insights that illuminate the text. For example, considering himself to be a native speaker of Italian as well as of Venetian, Lepschy still has problems reconciling apparent grammatical differences (or expectations). ‘Although my intuition seems fairly clear as far as my own usage is concerned, it becomes less straightforward if I am trying to evaluate another speaker’s sentence’ (pp.24-25). One does not always encounter scholarly modesty.

The last few pages of the opening chapter touch on the language of poetry, questioning the assumption that ‘an Italian native speaker is better qualified than an English Dantist to understand The Divine Comedy or that a native speaker of English is better suited than an Italian Shakespeare scholar to understand Hamlet’ (p. 27). One senses that Lepschy is right when he comments that ‘no one is a native speaker of the language of poetry’ and (quoting the Triestine poet, Virgilio Giotti) that ‘dialect is the language of poetry’ (p. 27). One imagines that this is because dialect is visceral; one sees and names ‘viscerally’, only applying conscious reasoning later.

Chapter two deals with linguistic variety in Italy (the standard, the dialects and the minority languages); how much, by whom and in what circumstances Italian and dialects are used; and how far the rights of linguistic minorities are guaranteed by Italian law. One knows that languages are always in a state of flux. Pronunciation and vocabulary change as well as structure and use. Yet, if Italian dialects derive from spoken Latin, why did it not develop into one single vernacular in Italy? Current theories suggest that this has to do with ‘the different ways in which Latin was learnt by the populations that inhabited Italy... who imposed onto Latin certain features (particularly phonological ones) of their original languages’ (p. 38). Interesting, too, in the context of the refugee and asylum issues currently facing the European Union, to glimpse the controversies provoked by a proposed bill for the protection of linguistic minorities.

Chapter three contrasts notions of ‘popular Italian’ with those of regional Italian and spoken Italian, including examples from phonology, spelling, morphology, vocabulary and syntax. It is surprising to note that, under the impact of television in the 1950s and 1960s, ‘For the first time in history the Italian population was in daily contact with a spoken language, used in the same way throughout the country. People born after 1950 could acquire Italian (rather than a dialect) as a mother tongue’ (p. 66). One wonders why radio (invented, after all, by an Italian!) did not have the same impact earlier.

Chapter four is the most esoteric in the collection, dealing with stress levels in Italian, paying particular attention to secondary stress (words that have a second stress lighter than the main one). Chapter five is one of the ‘Other Reflections’ in the book’s title. It discusses La Veniexiana, ‘an anonymous play of the first half of the sixteenth century, which I consider to be in many ways the most striking play of the Italian Renaissance’ (p. 93). Apart from the history of the play and its authorship, this chapter throws light on the female characters (who, unusually, are its chief protagonists) and their language, which conveys ‘a female perspective... that is, as far as I know, unique in Italian premodern literature’ (p. 104).

The last chapter is an important memoir (appearing, as it does, in English) of Carlo Dionisotti (1908-98), ‘commonly considered the greatest Italian literary historian of his age’ (p. 119). This is a sympathetic and vivid tribute to a man who ‘could be ruthless in his criticism, particularly of people who were pompous and tried to conceal behind verbiage and nebulous theoretical jargon the poverty or shoddiness of their scholarship’ (p. 123). Such failings are not those of the author of Mother Tongues, whose learning and clear-sightedness far outweigh what might otherwise seem ‘a difficult read’. Copious notes and references identify sources and offer further comment.

Mother Tongues is not a book for the layperson unversed in the pursuits of language and linguistics, but neither is it exclusively for the Italian specialist. It is also for a wider public, who will find it stimulating and provocative. Its insights are those of a humanist who probes the functionality of language as a key to understanding social and cultural relationships. Voltaire would have enjoyed reading it.

Review by Philip Lee, WACC, London.