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Brazilian Bergamasch: an Italian Language Spoken in Botuverá (Santa Catarina, Brazil)

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Brazilian Bergamasch: an Italian Language Spoken in Botuverá (Santa Catarina, Brazil) Brazilian Bergamasch: an Italian language spoken in Botuverá (Santa Catarina, Brazil) Giulia Paganessi S1746464 Date: August 2017 Supervisor: Dr. E. I. Crevels Second reader: Dr. M. Parafita Couto A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Research Master of Arts in Linguistics Acknowledgments I would first like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Mily Crevels, for the invaluable help that she offered me during the planning and writing of this thesis. The dedication that she puts in her work and the constant support that she gave me in these months played a huge role in the completion of this project. I would also like to thank my second reader Dr. Mari Carmen Parafita Couto, for accepting to read and evaluate this thesis. I also thank Prof. Roberta D’Alessandro, whose project on microcontact introduced me to Italian immigration languages of the Americas. A very heartfelt thanks to the community of Botuverá for their incredible help and friendliness. First and foremost, many thanks to my language consultant Seu Pedro Bonomini, who patiently introduced me to the linguistic and cultural treasures of the town. His enthusiasm and passion for the language and its maintenance are inspiring and infectious. I also wish to thank Dona Nené and Seu Zenor, the whole Martinenghi family, Seu Ismar, Dona Margarete, and everybody who kindly accepted to spend their time to help me collecting the data and who made me feel at home in Botuverá. I hope that this modest contribution will help in the maintenance of this beautiful language that bridges the Bergamasch people of both continents. Gràsie e buna sòrt! I am also very grateful for receiving the Uhlenbeck scholarship and the Lustra+ scholarship that made my fieldwork trip possible. Finally, I must thank my fellow students, and especially Sophie, Jens, Anne, þorbjórg, Wei-Wei, and the Lost Linguists for sharing the troubles and joys of studying at Leiden University, and for making these two years exciting and inspiring. I have to express my immense gratitude to my parents and my sister, whose love and support always encouraged me to do my best and make them proud. Thanks to Rafael for, well, pretty much everything. Thanks to Lorenzo, to whose memory I dedicate this thesis. iii Abstract This thesis proposes a sketch description of Brazilian Bergamasch, a Gallo-Italian language spoken in the town of Botuverá, in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. Brazilian Bergamasch is a non-standard variety of Bergamasch, an Italian language currently spoken in the Italian region of Lombardy, which was brought to Brazil by Italian immigrants in the late 19th century. This thesis has two main goals. Firstly, it aims to provide a grammatical and sociolinguistic sketch of the language, since Brazilian Bergamasch is currently undescribed. The description focuses on the analysis of the sociolinguistic situation present in the community, as well as on the main linguistic structures of the language (lexicon, phonology, morphology, syntax). In both cases, emphasis is given to the features that diverge from the standard variety spoken in Italy. On the basis of numerous discrepancies due to the geographic origins of the community founders on the one hand, and language internal and contact induced change on the other hand, it is argued that Brazilian Bergamasch can in fact be classified as a linguistic system independent from Standard Bergamasch. Secondly, the thesis provides a short wordlist of the basic lexicon of the language. The wordlist, which counts around 770 items, is organized by semantic fields and aims to contribute to projects of language maintenance that are currently being discussed and implemented by the community. iv Table of contents Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... iii Abstract ................................................................................................................................... iv List of tables ........................................................................................................................... vii List of maps and figures ........................................................................................................ viii List of glosses and abbreviations ............................................................................................ ix 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Brazilian Bergamasch: the language and its speakers ..................................................... 1 1.1.1 The town and its history ............................................................................................ 1 1.1.2 The Italians of Botuverá ........................................................................................... 5 1.1.2 The language and its earlier sources ......................................................................... 7 1.2 Methodology .................................................................................................................... 9 2. The sociolinguistics of Brazilian Bergamasch ............................................................... 14 2.1 Linguistic repertoire ....................................................................................................... 14 2.2 Italiàn ............................................................................................................................. 15 2.3 Language use ................................................................................................................. 16 2.3.1 Use of Bergamasch ................................................................................................. 16 2.3.2 Bergamasch and its contact languages: bilingualism and codeswitching ............... 19 2.4 Language attitudes and ideologies ................................................................................. 21 2.4.1 A language of traditions .......................................................................................... 21 2.4.2 Botuverá and the world: a broader perspective ...................................................... 22 2.5 An endangered language ................................................................................................ 23 2.5.1 Shifting .................................................................................................................... 24 2.5.2 Is there a future for italiàn? .................................................................................... 25 2.6 Brazilian and Standard Bergamasch: a sociolinguistic comparison .............................. 26 3. The lexicon ......................................................................................................................... 29 3.1 Non-native lexicon: core and cultural borrowings ........................................................ 30 3.1.1 Portuguese ............................................................................................................... 30 3.1.2 Italian languages ..................................................................................................... 33 3.2 Native lexicon ................................................................................................................ 34 3.2.1 The geographic origins of Brazilian Bergamasch native lexicon ........................... 34 3.2.2 An ever-changing lexicon: adaptations and neologisms ......................................... 36 3.3 Brazilian Bergamasch lexicon: a preliminary classification ......................................... 37 4. Phonology and orthography ............................................................................................. 39 4.1 Segmental inventory ...................................................................................................... 39 4.1.1 Consonants and minimal pairs ................................................................................ 39 4.1.2 Vowels and minimal pairs ...................................................................................... 41 4.2 Phonotactics ................................................................................................................... 42 4.2.1 Distribution of consonants ...................................................................................... 42 4.2.2 Distribution of vowels ............................................................................................ 45 4.3 Syllables ......................................................................................................................... 48 4.4 Stress .............................................................................................................................. 49 4.5 A phonetic and phonological comparison of Standard and Brazilian Bergamasch ....... 51 4.6 Orthography ................................................................................................................... 52 5. Morphology and parts of speech ...................................................................................... 55 5.1 Parts of speech ............................................................................................................... 55 5.2 The nominal system ....................................................................................................... 56 5.2.1 Definiteness ...........................................................................................................
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