2018/09/29 by Josef Eskhult · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Historical Linguistics and Language Studies #Linguistic Studies and Language Acquisition #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Vernacular #Italian Renaissance #Classics #Humanism #Literature #History #Romance languages #Historiography #Philology #Medieval Latin #Variety (cybernetics) #The Renaissance #Art #Philosophy #Linguistics #Sociology #Archaeology #Art history #Theology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1515/joll-2018-0006
openalex publication_date 2018/09/29 · openalex created_date 2018/12/11 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Abstract This article explores the formation of Vulgar Latin as a metalinguistic concept in the Italian Renaissance (1435–1601) considering its continued, although criticized, use as a concept and term in modern Romance and Latin linguistics (1826 until the present). The choice of this topic is justified in view of the divergent previous modern historiography and because of the lack of a coherent historical investigation. The present study is based on a broad selection of primary sources, in particular from classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. Firstly, this article traces and clarifies the prehistory of the concept of Vulgar Latin in ancient and medieval linguistic thought. Section 2 demonstrates that the concept of Vulgar Latin as a low social variety does not exist in pre-Renaissance linguistic thought. Secondly, this article describes and analyzes how, why and when the concept of Vulgar Latin emerged and developed in the linguistic thought of the Italian Renaissance. Section 3 surveys the historical intellectual contexts of the debates in which this concept was formed, namely questione della lingua in the Latin and Vernacular Italian Renaissances. Section 4 demonstrates how the ancient concept and term of sermo vulgaris as a diaphasic variety was revived, but also modified, in the Latin Renaissance of the fifteenth century, when the leading humanists developed new ideas on the history, nature and variability of ancient Latin. Section 5 demonstrates how a diglossic concept of Vulgar Latin was formed in the vernacular Italian Renaissance of the sixteenth century, when Italian philologists more carefully approached the topic of the historical origin and emergence of Italian. Thirdly, Section 6 presents a synthesis of the historiographical results that are attained and revises modern historiography on some important points.