venetian language 949
educated classes of the city;47 and 2) Venetian is a new mixed “koiné” dialect
that evolved from intersecting linguistic currents deriving from the north-
eastern and central-southern Veneto.48 neither of these theories had been
tested systematically. in carrying out my investigation i employed models
of koineization as they relate to the formation of new language varieties,
on largely virgin territory, from the intermingling of populations speaking
related, but not identical, dialects. the main processes predicated by the
koineization model are, sequentially: the mixing of related feeder dialects
on new territory, with initial high variability; face-to-face accommodation
to each other of speakers, leading to leveling and restructuring of the ini-
tial variants in the mix; and the subsequent focusing of structural traits.
the model goes on to predict that over several generations, relative struc-
tural stability is achieved. the resultant koiné shows selection of variant
features from one or other of the original feeder-dialects; the presence
of intermediate forms found in none of the original varieties; and a ten-
dency to structural simplification. Re-allocated “rejected” forms from the
initial mix may survive in geographical (“diatopic”) and class (“diastratic”)
sub-dialects and may linger for a considerable time alongside the stable
koiné norm.49
My research methodology involved interrogating fine-grained detail
from comparative corpora of eV and early mainland-Veneto texts. i iso-
lated and contrasted, over a controlled time-span, a range of structural
traits in both. in this way i was able to evaluate initial variability patterns
and also to track in detail shifts from variability to stability in Venetian
writing between c.1300 and c.1400. Finally, i sought and isolated reallo-
cated residues in lower-register texts from trecento to Cinquecento.50
47 this hypothesis was proposed by giovan Battista Pellegrini, in “L’individualità
storico-linguistica della regione Veneto,” in giovan Battista Pellegrini, ed., Studi di dialet-
tologia e filologia veneta (Pisa, 1977), pp. 11–31; and elsewhere.
48 Suggested by tuttle, particularly in edward tuttle, “Profilo linguistico del Veneto,”
in Lorenzo Renzi and Michele Cortelazzo, eds., La linguistica italiana fuori d’Italia (Rome,
1997), pp. 125–59. the koiné hypothesis is also implicit in alfredo Stussi, “La lingua,” in
Storia di Venezia, vol. 2: L’età del comune, ed. Cracco and Ortalli, pp. 783–801; and Žarko
Muljačić, “Dal veneziano al veneto,” in giuliano Staccioli and irmgard Osols-Wehden, eds.,
“Come l’uom s’etterna”: Beiträge zur Literatur-, Sprach-, und Kunstgeschichte Italiens und der
Romania (Berlin, 1994), pp. 178–99.
49 For the concrete application of the koineization methodology to other cases see
anthony Lodge, “Convergence and Divergence in the Development of the Paris urban
Vernacular,” Sociolinguistica 13 (1999), 51–68 (Parisian French); and Ralph Penny, Variation
and Change in Spanish (Cambridge, 2000).
50 Details of the comparative corpora and selected features are in Ferguson, A Linguis-
tic History of Venice, pp. 177–86.