The destiny of the Latin vowels may be summarily examined. Whereas the Latin dis tinguished its vowels by quantity. Italian dis tinguishes them by quality, though long and short vowels exist also in Italian. In Latin there were a, T. .4. i. and, among others. diphthongs ce = e, and cc = e. What be came of them depended mainly on their pos session or lack of stress. A remained in al most all eases (eantare). I. too. usually held its own, if long (rino) : if short it often fell, thus giving rise to new consonantal groups (doming > donna); or it changed to a close e (e), as in fedc. from fidem. E, long, usually, became a close e (e) ; but e, when not blocked, usually became ie (fet > tole, raus > rieto). 0 long oftenest became close o (o) ; but o. when not blocked, was generally diphthonged to no (b6num > buono). G long remained. but short u usually was changed to o rvillgus > rolgol• in a short sketch one can only observe certain tendencies. If we carried our study farther, we should learn that almost innumerable causes have been at work in changing Old Latin to Modern Latin or Italian. Analogy and popular etymology. as we may see in the words suonare, instead of songrc, or Campidoglio for Capitoglio. are con stantly at work. Furthermore, it is highly im portant to observe what accent, or rather stress, has to do with the fate of a vowel: for otherwise we could not understand such apparent inconsistencies as fleet: from ferit, and fence from prire, or gli (from illi in hiatus), as in gli ho t-eduti, with /i (from il/i not in hiatus). as in /i redo.
It has already been stated that Italian gram mar is a development of Latin grammar; we may add that it is a simplification thereof. There are still the two numbers, singular and plural, for substantives, but, except for certain pronouns, case distinctions have disappeared. Like Spanish, but unlike French, Italian ordinarily feels no need of au expressed subject-pronoun. since the ter mination of the verb-form sufficiently marks its person and number.
The Roman tradition was much stronger in Italy than elsewhere, and the new speech did not depart so far from Latin as to make the latter difficult to understand. The first continuous bits of Italian are found in a document of the year 960 (the Carta Capuana). Other phrases in the vulgar tongue occur in a document of 964, and about a century later certain inscriptions in Italian were written on a wall of the lower basilica of San Clemente at Rome. The first im portant appearance of written Tuscan thus far noted is iu certain banking registers of Florence, which seem to date from about 1211. The be ginning of the fourteenth century brought Dante. who in his Dirina Commedia gave to Tuscan its supremacy over the other dialects of the Penin sula. A little later Petrarch and Boccaccio proved further the suppleness and artistic ade quacy of the new speech, and since their day Italian has suffered no very material alterations. Now and then authors intruded dialectal pe culiarities into texts written essentially in Tus can; but in the early :sixteenth century the Itcgolc grammaticali della volgar lingua of For tunio (1516), the rolgari elegam:ic of Niccolo Liburnio, and the Prose della rolqar lingua of Pietro Bembo (1525) introduced an element of greater rigidity. requiring absolute purity of
idiom in the writing of Tuscan as the true lit erary Dalian. The Accademia della Crusca com pleted their work in 1612 by publishing, its dic tionary of Tuscan as the standard national lan guage.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. D'Ovidio and Meyer-Liffike. Bibliography. D'Ovidio and Meyer-Liffike. "Die italienisehe Sprache." in Groeber. Grundriss der rontanischen Philologie, vol. i. (Strasburg, 1SSS) ; Demattio. Origins, formazione ed elemcnti della lingua italiana (2d ed. Innsbruck, 1s7s) ; Morandi, Originc della lingua italiana (5th ed. Citta di Castello, 1S91) ; Gorra. Linyne veolafme (Milan, 1894) ; Caix, sulfa storia della lingua e dei' dialetti Parma, 1872) : Ntudi di ctimologia italiana e romann (Flor ence, 1878) ; id.. Origini della lingua poctica italiana ISSO) Monaci, Crestoma.-..ia itali ana dci priori secoli (1st fascienle. citta di Cas tello, 1S89; 2d faseicule, ib., 1897: a third faseieule, with a vocabulary, is to follow) ; the article on dialects in Archirio glottologico itg/i nuo, edited by Ascoli, vol. viii. (Turin. 1873 et seq.).
Grammars: Fornaciari. Gram matica storica della lingua italiana (Turin, 1s731 : i L, Grain matiea italiana. etc. ( ib.. 18801 ; id.. .'tiniaRgi dell' uso italiano n,oderno (Florence. 1Ss7) ; Grand gent, Italian Grammar (3d ed.. Boston. I591 et ,eq.) ; Bl•ne, Grammatik der itatienisehen Sprache 1844) ; Voekeradt. Lehrburh der italicnischen Sprache ( Berlin. 18781 ; Diez, Gram matik der romanisehen Spraehei: (5th ed., Bonn, 18S2, English translation by Cayley. London. 1562) Meyer-Liibke, Italienische Grammatik, (Leipzig, 1890) ; id., Grammatik der romanisehen Spruchcn (3 vols., Leipzig, 1890-99), a fourth volume of which is in preparation.
Dictionaries: Petroeehi. :Coro dizionariu della lingua Hallam' (Milan, 188(-91), one of the best of the dictionaries wholly in Italian, also pub lished in an abridged form; Tommaseo e Bollini, Dizionario della lingua italiana (Turin. 1865 79) ; Rigutini and Fanfani, l'ocabo/ario ito/iuno dells Iingun pariah! (3(1 ed., Florence, 1393) ; Fanfani, Foca hula rio t1,11a. lingua it a Ha na (3d ed., Florence, 1891) ; id., l'ocabolario della pro nunzia toscana (lb., 1803) ; id., l'om bola rio dell' t WWII no (11)., 18(i3) ; 111a1•, lario duntesco (Leipzig, 1852; Italian trans., 2d ed., 1877, and since). The Italian-English and English-ttalian dictionaries of Baretti and Hillhouse are unsatisfactory; a better one is that of Edgren (New York, 1902). A good Italian-Gcrman dictionary is that of Valentini. There are numerous dictionaries of Italian dia lects, some of which are mentioned in Groeber, Grundriss, vol. i. (Strassburg. I S+S). For fur ther bibliography, this last-named work may be consulted.