Early evidence for Tuscanisation in the letters of Milanese merchants in the Datini Archive, Prato, 1396-1402 Volume 1 Joshua Brown BA (Hons), BEcon This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia School of Humanities Italian Studies 2011 ii Abstract The process of Tuscanisation, understood here as the adoption of Tuscan linguistic forms in non-Tuscan regions, affected different areas of medieval Italy at different times. In the linguistic history of Lombardy, this is generally considered to have become discernible in literary texts during the late Trecento. In non-literary texts, the earliest time that has been suggested is during the late Quattrocento. This thesis examines a corpus of letters sent from Milan by merchants between 1396-1402 to show that a process of Tuscanisation was occurring even earlier. These letters, written to the ‘merchant of Prato’ Francesco Datini and his associates around the Mediterranean, seem to show a strong presence of Tuscan or Tuscanised forms. These letters have been published by Frangioni (1994) and are subjected to a linguistic analysis for the first time here. I define a corpus of five Milanese writers based on biographical information taken from economic histories of medieval Milan and Italy, studies of medieval anthroponomy as well as family histories, and highlight evidence of Tuscanisation in both the phonology and morphology in the letters from these five merchants. Both phonology and morphology present a wide variety of outcomes. Uncertainty regarding ‘correct’ Tuscan usage is evident in hypercorrect occurrences of certain phenomena, such as diphthongs. Consonants, too, show much variation and a strong presence of Latin or Latinizing forms. Tuscan or Tuscanised forms are found to be present in all areas of morphology. Overall, I find that the language is essentially Tuscan, with clearly identifiable Lombard and Latin forms less evident. The strong presence of Tuscan in this corpus of letters by Milanese merchants may suggest a process of accommodation towards their Tuscan interlocutors. Chapter 1 provides a description of the principal linguistic developments in Lombardy during the 14th and 15th centuries, namely, the formation of the pan- Lombard koinè and the adoption of Tuscan as a linguistic model. The chapter surveys various datings proposed in the literature for the emergence of Tuscanisation in the linguistic history of Lombardy. Chapter 2 gives a brief introduction to the structure of Francesco Datini’s trade network and a description of the role which Datini’s major employees played in Milan. This information iii serves as a context for the description of all merchants from Milan whose correspondence is housed in the Archive, which is the object of the following chapter. Chapter 3 defines a homogeneous set of letters taken from Frangioni’s 1994 edition of the 810 Milanese letters, by providing biographical information on the writers from Milan. It defines the corpus of letters to be used for a linguistic analysis in the following two chapters. Chapter 4 analyses the phonology and orthography from the corpus while noun and verb morphology is dealt with in Chapter 5. Forms present in the corpus are contrasted against contemporary variants of Lombard and Tuscan in order to determine their attribution to either a Lombard or Tuscan form. Cases where attribution is impossible due to a similarity of forms between these vernaculars and Latin are also highlighted. Chapter 6 provides some concluding remarks. All letters in the corpus have been checked against original manuscripts and all amendments proposed to Frangioni’s edition are outlined in the Appendix. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of the history of the vernacular in Lombardy as well as the presence of Tuscan in merchant writing. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Volume 1 Abstract ii Acknowledgments xi Chapter 1: From ‘scriptae’ to ‘koinai’: the formation of the Lombard koinè during the Tre- and Quattrocento and the presence of Tuscan. 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 The development of the Lombard koinè 2 from the Tre- to the Quattrocento 5 1.2.1 The Trecento 8 1.2.2 The Quattrocento 13 1.2.3 Diastratic variation of the koinè 18 1.3 Tuscanisation and the presence of Tuscan in Lombardy from the Tre- to the Quattrocento 21 1.3.1 The Trecento 21 1.3.2 The Quattrocento 24 1.4 Conclusion 30 Chapter 2: A description of the correspondence from Milan in the Datini Archive. 32 2.1 Francesco Datini and Milan 36 2.2.1 Francesco Datini and the Pescina family 38 2.2.2 Tieri di Benci 43 2.2.3 Tommaso di ser Giovanni 44 2.3 Letters from Lombardy 45 2.4 Letters from Milan 46 2.5 Conclusion 50 v Chapter 3: Defining the corpus: biographical information on writers who sent letters from Milan. 52 3.1 Information on individual senders 53 3.1.1 Balducci Lemmo e Ghiesello di Bindo 53 3.1.2 Cristofano e Arrighino Billi 54 3.1.3 The Borromei family 55 3.1.4 Caseria (da) Giovanni di Lando 58 3.1.5 Cavagera (da) Simone 58 3.1.6 de’ Vulpis Antonio 59 3.1.7 Dugnano (da) Giovannino 60 3.1.8 Filippo di messer Iacopo 61 3.1.9 Forteguerra Dino 61 3.1.10 Francesco di Maso 62 3.1.11 Grasso, Domenico e Giannino 63 3.1.12 Manni Manno di ser Iacopo e comp. 64 3.1.13 Maino (del) Gasparollo 65 3.1.14 The Micheli family 66 3.1.15 Monza (da) Gasparino 67 3.1.16 Morigia Stefano 68 3.1.17 Pessano (da) Giovanni 69 3.1.18 The Pescina family 69 3.1.19 Pietro di messer Lorenzo and Piero di messer Lorenzo 74 3.1.20 Strada (da) Stefanolo 76 3.1.21 Tanso, Petruolo e Francesco 77 3.1.22 Tommasi Taddeo di Paolo 78 3.2 Conclusion and definition of the corpus 79 Chapter 4: Language: phonology and orthography. 84 4.1 Phonology and Orthography 92 4.1.1 Stressed vowels 92 vi Ī 92 Ĭ 93 Ē 94 Ĕ 95 Ă, Ā 98 Ŏ 99 Ō 100 Ŭ 102 Ū 103 Metaphony and anaphonesis 104 4.1.2 Unstressed vowels 106 4.1.2.1 Pretonic 106 I 106 E 106 A 112 O 113 U 113 4.1.2.2 Post-tonic 114 I 114 A 114 U 114 Suffixes 115 4.1.2.3 Word-final position 116 I 117 E 118 A 119 O 119 4.1.3 Concluding remarks on vowels 120 4.1.4 Consonants 122 4.1.4.1 -BR- 122 4.1.4.2 C- (VELAR) 122 vii 4.1.4.3 -C- (VELAR) 123 4.1.4.4 C- (PALATAL) 125 4.1.4.5 -C- (PALATAL) 126 4.1.4.6 -CT- 127 4.1.4.7 C AFTER L 129 4.1.4.8 C AFTER -N-, -R- 129 4.1.4.9 -D- 130 4.1.4.10 F- 131 4.1.4.11 G- (PALATAL) 131 4.1.4.12 -G- (PALATAL) 132 4.1.4.13 -G- (VELAR) 132 4.1.4.14 H- 133 4.1.4.15 J- 133 4.1.4.16 DJ- 135 4.1.4.17 -J- 135 4.1.4.18 -CJ- 136 4.1.4.19 -DJ- 137 4.1.4.20 -LJ- 137 4.1.4.21 -NJ- 139 4.1.4.22 -SJ- 139 4.1.4.23 -TJ- 140 4.1.4.24 -CTJ- 142 4.1.4.25 -NTJ- 142 4.1.4.26 -STJ- 143 4.1.4.27 -L- 143 4.1.4.28 -CL- 145 4.1.4.29 CL- 145 4.1.4.30 FL- 145 4.1.4.31 PL- 146 4.1.4.32 L BEFORE T 147 4.1.4.33 -P- 147 4.1.4.34 -PL- 148 4.1.4.35 -PR- 148 4.1.4.36 -PS- 149 viii 4.1.4.37 -PT- 150 4.1.4.38 Q- 150 4.1.4.39 S- 151 4.1.4.40 -S- 151 4.1.4.41 -NS- 153 4.1.4.42 ST- AND -ST- 154 4.1.3.43 -SC- + PALATAL VOWEL 154 4.1.3.44 -T- 155 4.1.5 Single and double consonants 157 4.1.5.1 Double consonants due to etymology 157 4.1.5.2 Double consonants due to hypercorrection 163 4.1.6 Other phenomena 167 4.1.6.1 Apheresis 167 4.1.6.2 Apocope 168 4.1.6.3 Epenthesis 169 4.1.6.4 Metathesis 170 4.1.6.5 Prothesis 170 4.1.6.6 Syncope 172 4.1.7 Concluding remarks on consonants 172 Chapter 5: Language: morphology. 174 5.1 Noun morphology 174 5.1.1 Articles 174 5.1.2 Nouns and adjectives 177 5.1.2.1 Noun metaplasms 177 5.1.3 Prepositions and articulated prepositions 178 5.1.4 Demonstratives 179 5.1.5 Personal Pronouns 181 5.1.6 Possessive adjectives and pronouns 185 5.1.7 Indefinite pronouns 188 5.1.8 Adverbs 189 ix 5.1.9 Numerals 190 5.2 Verb morphology 192 5.2.1 Present indicative 192 5.2.1.1 Verb metaplasms 195 5.2.2 Future and conditional 196 5.2.3 Passato remoto 202 5.2.4 Imperfect indicative 205 5.2.5 Present subjunctive 206 5.2.6 Imperfect subjunctive 209 5.2.7 Imperatives 211 5.2.8 Past Participles 212 5.2.9 Infinitives and gerunds 214 Conclusion 217 References 220 Volume 2 Appendix: Critical edition of letters included in the corpus.