Re: [tied] Maximum diversity [was: Woof]

On 2006-05-18 10:40, tgpedersen wrote:

> Rome was taken over by the Romans in 759 BC. Italian is less
> conservative than Sardinian.

It isn't conservativeness that matters for the argument; it's the
maximum of _early_ diversity. OK, one of the oldest division lines is
_between_ mainland Italy and Sardinia; another one is the "La
Spezia/Rimini Line" separating Northern Italy (with Piedmontese,
Lombard, Ligurian, Venetian, Friulan, Emiliano-Romagnolo) from the
central and southern dialects (Tuscan, Romanesco and a host of related
local dialects, Neapolitan, Calabrian, Sicilian, not to mention some
minor ones). Most of them are distinct enough from one another (and from
Standard Italian) to be, at least potentially, regarded as separate
languages, and have their own subdialects.

See, e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_language

and the examples at the bottom of the article.

Piotr

>> I would have thought it was not the early time of colonisation that
>> mattered, but the relative remoteness from the centres of
> linguistic
>> innovation in the early middle ages.
>>
>
> Those centers seem to have been all over the place, k > c^ and
> further before front vowel and loss of -t in 3rd sg (Greek influence)
> happened everywhere except Sardinia. Odd.
>
>
> Torsten
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