Limba Sarda Comuna and

the traditional varieties of Sardinian

Roberto Bolognesi (University of Amsterdam)Computational analysis by Wilbert Heeringa

(Meertens Instituut)

Sardinian language, Sardinian Sardo,  Romance language spoken on the Italian-ruled island of Sardinia; it is most similar to Vulgar Latin of all the modern Romance languages. Major dialects of Sardinian are Logudorian, spoken in central Sardinia; Campidanian, spoken in the south; Sassarian, spoken in the northwest; and Gallurian, spoken in the northeast. There is no standard form of Sardinian except the Sardo illustre, a literary language used mostly for folk verse, based on the Logudorian dialect. Italian is the official language of the island, and literature in Sardinian is virtually nonexistent.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/524166/Sardinian-language

Sardegna fra tante lingue (Bolognese & Heeringa, 2005)

http://www.sardegnadigitallibrary.it/index.php?xsl=626&id=296882

1999: first standardization committee: centre-left regional government

2000: confirmation of the first standardization committee: centre-right regional government

2006: second standardization committee: centre-left regional government

Result: LSU (classical standard: rejected)

Result: LSC (no official standard; free lexicon)

Limba Sarda Comuna (common Sardinian)

LSC is the language adopted by the Sardinian Regional Government for its own documents addressing the public.

Strictly speaking, LSC is NOT standard Sardinian

Political conditions posed to the committee

1-to-1 correspondence between phones and graphemes(“natural spelling”)

Linguistic centrality

Criticisms against LSC “Cosa buona e lodevole […], se non fosse che per un parlante

nativo di Mogoro la Limba Sarda Comuna non è altro che un puro e semplice logudorese, in pratica più estraneo dell'italiano a un

marmillese di oggi, specialmente se scritto.

Giulio Angioni:http://www.altravoce.net/2007/03/25/preoccuparsi.html

“Sa limba non si fa in ufficio, quindi morirà: «È una lingua fatta in laboratorio e non entrerà mai nell’uso corrente

[…] Dovrebbe avere «le caratteristiche di una varietà linguistica naturale» .”

Paolo Pillonca: il Sardegna 19 aprile 2005

[LSC] is a good and praiseworthy thing, if it were not for the fact that, for a native speaker of Mogoro Sardinian, it is nothing more than plain Logudorese, for all purposes more alien than Italian to a contemporary Marmillese, specially if written.

You cannot make Sardinian in an office, so it will die: “It is a laboratory language and it will not achieve common use”.

[…] It should have the features of a”natural language variety.”

The first criticism can be translated as follows: “If LSC is not “campidanese”, it has to be “logudorese”!”

The second criticism can be translated as follows: “If LSC is not a traditional variety, it has to be artificial!”

But is Sardinian divided in two?

LSC contains elements of both southern and northern dialects

"La percezione tradizionale dei dialetti sardi viene registrata nel Settecento dal naturalista Francesco Cetti nell'introduzione ai Quadrupedi di Sardegna [1774, ora in Cetti 2000: 70]. […]. Per Cetti il complesso linguistico sardo si divide nel dialetto del Capo di Sopra (detto anche Capo di Sassari) e in quello del Capo di Sotto (o del Capo di Cagliari), cioè il campidanese in senso lato. Egli fornisce anche le principali 'isoglosse' in base alle quali si operano (tradizionalmente?) tali distinzioni: l'articolo determinativo plurale is del campidanese è indifferente ai generi, mentre i dialetti del Capo di sopra oppongono sos~sas; in secondo luogo, alla desinenza -ai dell'infinito campidanese corrisponde -are nel Capo di sopra; a queste differenze se ne potrebbero aggiungere altre "di parole, e di pronunzia" [per altre annotazioni fatte dal Cetti 'linguista' v. Lőrinczi 1993, ma soprattutto il Cetti stesso, recentemente ripubblicato]".

http://people.unica.it/mlorinczi/files/2007/04/5-sappada2000-2001.pdf

“di fronte al logudorese, il quale è spezzettato in tante varietà dialettali, il campidanese ha il vantaggio di una maggiore unità e uniformità” (Wagner, 1951:56).

“Compared to Logudorese, which is divided in so many local varieties, Campidanese has the advantage of a greater unity and uniformity” (Wagner, 1951:56).

“The traditional perception of Sardinian dialects is recorded in the 18th century by the natural scientist Francesco Cetti in the introduction to Quadrupeds of Sardinia [1774, now in Cetti 2000: 70]. […]. According to Cetti the Sardinia linguistic area is divided into the dialect of Capo di Sopra (Upper-head Sardinian) and into that of Capo di Sotto (Lower-head Sardinian), that is Campidanese, in a broader sense. He gives also the main 'isoglosses' on the base of which such distinctions are (traditionally?) made: the plural article is of campidanese is indifferent to gender, while the dialects of Capo di sopra oppose sos~sas; moreover, to the desinence -ai of the campidanese infinitive corrisponds -are in Capo di sopra; to these differences others can be added consisting of “words and of pronunciation."

http://people.unica.it/mlorinczi/files/2007/04/5-sappada2000-2001.pdf

“[...] onde in luogo medesimo si trova chi si ascrive al Capo di sopra, e chi a quel di sotto.”

“[...] therefore in the same place one can find those who ascribe themselves to Capo di sopra, and those who to the same with Capo di sotto.”

“E’ inoltre rilevante che l’argomento di tale domanda si colloca ad un livello tassonomico basso: la domanda, cioè, teneva conto del fatto che i parlanti delle varietà locali non hanno e non possono (ancora) avere una diffusa consapevolezza (colta, dotta) dell’appartenenza del sardo, se preso complessivamente, ad un livello tassonomico corrispondente a un diasistema o ad una macrolingua (il sardo, per il momento, è e va considerato una macrolingua); quanto meno tale consapevolezza risulta essere labile. Secondo quanto precisava Anna Oppo durante la nostra conversazione, persino le etichette della classi «campidanese», «logudorese» ecc. (che sono taxa intermedi riconosciuti scientificamente come tali) erano scarsamente applicabili al livello di consapevolezza dei parlanti, i quali spesso preferivano usare glottonimi o circonlocuzioni glottonimiche relativi alla stretta arealità locale (regione storica, località). Ciò si collegava alla ridotta familiarità dei soggetti intervistati con le tematiche di politica linguistica.”

(http://people.unica.it/mlorinczi/files/2011/05/Lorinczi-Valencia.pdf)

“…even the labels of the classes «campidanese», «logudorese» ecc. (which are intermediate taxa scientifically recognized as such) were scarcely applicable to the level of consciousness of the speakers, who often prefered the use of glottonyms o glottonymic circonlocutions concerning strictly local dialects (historical region , specific place). This was related to the reduced familiarity of the interviewed individuals with the issues of linguistic policy.”

Computational dialectology

http://www.let.rug.nl/~heeringa/

200 randomly selected words77 dialects + LSCLevenstein distance between the wordsthe data: http://www.let.rug.nl/~heeringa/sardegna/

The dialects

Quantitative Dialectological Map (Bolognesi & Heeringa, 2005)

Relations between dialects

Qualitative Dialectological Map (Contini, 1987)

Quantitative Dialectological Map

Multidimensional Scaling

5 varieties of Sardinian?

8 varieties of Sardinian?

12 varieties of Sardinian?

20 varieties of Sardinian?

Quantitative Dialectological Map

Most representative varieties of Sardinian

1 Atzara 19,24%

2 Gesturi 19,64%

3 Teulada 19,68%

4 Escolca 19,73%

5 Samassi 19,77%

6 Burcei 19,83%

7 Furtei 19,99%

8 Quartu Sant'Elena 20,03%

9 Setzu 20,17%

10 Nurri 20,19%

11 Abbasanta 20,20%

Multidimensional Scaling

Atzara is the geographical and linguistic centre of Sardinia

Gesturi/San Giovanni Suergiu (most distant southern dialects): 14,23%.

Number of southern dialects: 37 of 77.

16 of them show a distance of less than10% and the other 20 do not reach 15%.

The furthest dialect from Atzara is Sant'Antioco with a distance of 25,74%, while Orune exhibits 23,37%.

The distance between Atzara e Abbasanta is already 10,57%

77 Orune 28,40%76 Bitti 27,68%75 Orani 26,71%74 Orgosolo 26,60%73 Fonni 25,95%72 Ollolai 25,38%71 Lodé 25,3670 Nuoro 24,49%69 Siniscola 24,14%68 Luras 23,23%67 Torpe 23,21%66 San Giovanni Suergiu 22,91%65 Sant'Antioco 22,61%64 Nule 22,42%63 Nughedu San Nicolo 22,40%62 Narcao 22,38%61 Berchidda 22,35%60 Illorai 22,28%

Least representative varieties of Sardinian

Multidimensional Scaling, including LSC

The relation between LSC and the traditional varieties of Sardinian

Distances between LSC and other varieties

1 Abbasanta 9,97%

2 Sedilo 11,35%3 Ghilarza 11,50%4 Atzara 11,94%5 Pattada 12,11%6 Budduso 12,59%7 Bono 13,10%8 Oschiri 13,11%9 Romana 13,14%10 Bortigali 13,27%11 Scano Montiferro 13,27%12 Borore 13,41%13 Ozieri 13,50%14 Nughedu San Nicolo 13,50%15 Olmedo 13,59%

The furthest northern dialect: Orune 22,04%

The closest southern dialect: Gesturi 22,80%

The furthest southern dialect: S. Giovanni Suergiu 28,20%

variety vowel reduction obstruent lenition

“Campidanesu” + +“Nugoresu”

- -“Logudoresu” - +

Definition of the varieties from a phonological point of vieuw

Most representative varieties, excluding the lexicon

1 Atzara 15,472 LSC 15,713 Teulada 16,04

16,05

4 Abbasanta

5 Gesturi 16,23

How many varieties of Sardinian?