This book evaluates the predictions of syllable-based analyses of Italian in three domains: native speaker intuition of consonant cluster syllabification, definite article allomorphy, and segment duration, and tests the claimed convergence of multiple phenomena on the same syllable structure.

This volume contains a selection of papers which have been revised and extended for publication from two working groups held at conferences at Galway (1992) and Göteborg (1993) which celebrated the quincentenary of Columbus' discovery of America in 1492. The pre-Columbian period of language contact is covered by articles on Old Norse in the Faroes, Scotland and Ireland, the Shetland dialect and Norn, and placenames in Iceland and Greenland. The articles on the post-Columbian period are wide-ranging and cover, in the Scandinavian context, the Scandinavian emigration, American Swedish, American Finnish, Swedish-Spanish and various aspects of Norwegian in America and also in Spitzbergen; in the British colonial context, English dialects in New England, Scottish Gaelic in Nova Scotia and Scots in North America (Maryland, the Appalachians and Virginia); in the context of the later continental mass emigration, American Dutch, Texas German, Croatian and Italian. Two papers deal with reverse emigration, that of Sicilian and Calabrian dialects, and the special case of Krio in Sierra Leone.

This volume focuses on how English, through false Anglicisms, influences several European languages, including Italian, Spanish, French, German, Danish and Norwegian. Studies on false Gallicisms are also included, thus showing how English may be affected by false borrowings.

This work provides insights into the physical and human geography of Sardinia, the second largest Mediterranean island, with its complex, varied, changing and often hidden features. The title, “Surrounded by Water”, recalls the identity of a land whose coastlines and surrounding seas have symbolically represented social, economic, political, cultural bridges or walls, meeting or colliding places, over its long and difficult history. Landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes are presented and analysed, together with other aspects, through a descriptive focus and original contributions provided by some local experts, in order to offer scholars and students across the globe a complex and multi-dimensional view of the reality of Sardinia through the lens of its geography. Each chapter of the book offers an in-depth and concise analysis of a specific topic, through the description of its characteristics and its current variations within the territory of the island. These descriptive aspects will be complemented with insights related to the research experiences and findings provided by the authors. This book will contribute to stirring new and modern interest about Sardinia, about further regional geographic studies, and about academic, scientific and cultural exchanges, among peoples and countries with both similar and different histories, identities, issues and hopes.

This manual contains overviews on language acquisition and distinguishes between first- and second-language acquisition. It also deals with Romance languages as foreign languages in the world and with language acquisition in some countries of the Romance-speaking world. This reference work will be helpful for researchers, students, and teachers interested in language acquisition in general and in Romance languages in particular.

This volume is dedicated to Maria Antonietta Pinto’s research across the past five decades. The title reflects not only the dominance of metalinguistic awareness in Pinto’s work but also the pathway through which this construct has been elaborated over the years. Under the influence of two great mentors, Jean Piaget for the cognitive aspects, and Renzo Titone for the psycholinguistic aspects, Pinto created an original construct of metalinguistic awareness and instruments to measure it at different developmental stages. The volume pays tribute, among other aspects, to the heuristic value of this construct and its use in international research.

This book is a collection of innovative studies on language contact. It contains novel works on unexplored issues related to language contact in different settings and aims to contribute multi-perspective insights to the current state of the art on language contact. Novel approaches to contact-related change, variation, attrition, and emergence of new varieties are explored from the lens of sociolinguistic, typological, synchronic, and diachronic perspectives. The contact settings vary from official and majority languages to minority, endangered and/or non-official varieties in different parts of the world.

The Romance languages offer a particularly fertile ground for the exploration of the relationship between language and society in different social contexts and communities. Focusing on a wide range of Romance languages – from national languages to minoritised varieties – this volume explores questions concerning linguistic diversity and multilingualism, language contact, medium and genre, variation and change. It will interest researchers and policy-makers alike.