Linguistica storica romanza e intercomprensione: una prospettiva didattica

Historical Romance linguistics is a privileged terrain in which one can experiment with pan-Romance inherited Latin vocabulary and how it can highlight the usefulness of the systematic nature of certain processes of phonetic evolution from Latin through the inductive method to reach the mutual intelligibility between Romance languages. The possible dialogue between Romance linguistics and «Intercomprehension» (IC) method, provides students with a solid linguistic preparation that combines knowledge of languages and language skills, starting with the identification of correspondences at a synchronic level and allowing them to trigger a series of diachronic inferences. Our starting point will be pan-Romance vocabulary, that is, the set of words of Latin origin common in all or most of the Romance languages. The traditional division between learned words and words of popular transmission dating back directly to vulgar Latin finds its relevance within the IC method. Very often, learned forms (or Latinisms), transmitted into writing, appear more “transparent” because they have not undergone the changes that characterise the lexicon transmitted orally. Here are some examples of learned or semi-learned words: lat. AUREUS > it. aureo, pg. sp. áureo; lat. FLORA > it. pg. sp. flora, fr. flore, rom. floră; lat. GLORIA > it. sp. gloria, pg. glória, fr. gloire, rom. glorie. Among the inherited Latin words, some are immediately transparent like vino in Italian, which is vino in Spanish, vi in Catalan, vinho in Portuguese and vin in French, Provencal and Romanian (< Lat. VINUM). Others appear to be more “opaque”, i.e., speakers cannot easily trace them back to forms of their own language (or another known language) due to the fact that they look quite different from one another. Nevertheless, all inherited Latin words are the result of constant evolutions that we can learn to recognise synchronically and allow us to define the so-called «rules of passage» described by IC specialists (Dabène, 1996). Starting from these assumptions, our contribution will focus on the inherited Latin vocabulary, which is the least immediately decipherable sector of the pan-Romance lexicon; e.g., lat. PLENUM > pg. cheio sp. lleno fr. plein, it. pieno, ro. plin; lat. FLAMMA > pg. chama sp. llama, fr. flamme, it. fiamma. By observing these forms, we will try to reveal how, through the inductive method, the identification of correspondences on a synchronic level is able not only to strengthen the awareness of the structural and lexical cognacy between the Romance languages but also trigger a series of diachronic inferences regarding the phonological change processes that characterised the transition from Latin to the Romance languages. Specularly, from the perspective of IC, the regularity of phonological change puts speakers in a position to grasp the systematic nature of some correspondences between their own language and other Romance languages and allows them to formulate generalisations and interpretative hypotheses on unknown forms and constructs.