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This reference grammar of modern Italian provides an overview of the latest research results in Italian linguistics, covering the fields of scientific grammar, grammar textbooks, and grammar handbooks for foreigners.
It describes the grammatical and syntactic structures of current Italian. While striving to be exhaustive and scientifically precise, it remains straightforward and accessible to non-specialists. Theoretical notions are kept to a bare minimum and technical terms have been almost entirely avoided. Traditional divisions have been maintained only where truly useful in practice with spoken and written Italian.
Several facets of grammar and nearly all facets of syntax have been treated without recourse to traditional classifications, such as “Parts of Speech,” “The Sentence,” “The Clause,” and so forth. Rather, these issues have been distributed into practical working chapters, starting from the titles used to describe them:
# How to indicate tense, place, and mood;
# How to express purpose, cause or result;
# How to state a hypothesis;
# How words and the like are formed.
At the end of the volume, a section devoted to 80 syntax outlines takes up traditional notions of phrase syntax and clause syntax for readers not yet ready for a novel approach (treating subjects, predicates, objects, main clauses, types of subordinate clauses, etc.). An extensive and detailed index allows rapid identification of all topics dealt with in the text. This work gives ample space to the numerous innovations and changes that are taking place in modern Italian, the issues that arise daily among speakers and writers, such as the proper feminine form for the name of a profession like lawyer: avvocatessa, avvocata, donna avvocato or avvocato donna? Should we say or write alla manifestazione c’era un centinaio di persone or alla manifestazione c’erano un centinaio di persone? Is it better to say or write è dovuto partire or ha dovuto partire? Is non si è voluto alzare preferable to non ha voluto alzarsi?
Part of this overall picture is a feature that represents an absolute first among currently available Italian grammars. An entire chapter clearly and effectively illustrates the constructions of more than 1,600 Italian verbs, from abbandonare to zoppicare. By referring to the list of constructions governed by these verbs, the reader can tell that one might adempiere il proprio dovere but also adempiere al proprio dovere, that it is possible to allearsi a qualcuno but also to allearsi con qualcuno, that some paperwork might afferire all’ufficio reclami whereas it cannot be said to afferire l’ufficio reclami, and so forth.
Concern for proper Italian usage reaches into issues of “good language manners” that are often left out of grammar books but are indispensable in everyday communication: standard greetings, forms of courtesy, time and date formats, the order of first names and last names in introductions and signatures, and so on.
Grammatica di riferimento dell’italiano contemporaneo is designed not only for university students but also — especially — for a relatively well-educated readership (professionals, executives, white-collar workers) that has to deal with Italian writing and speech on a daily basis, either at work or out of mere curiosity.
Giuseppe Patota is full professor of Italian linguistics at the Università di Siena-Arezzo. He is a member of the Associazione per la Storia della Lingua Italiana (ASLI) and of the Société Internationale Leon Battista Alberti (SILBA), as well as scientific chairman of the PLIDA, which manages the PLIDA certification program in Italian as a foreign language, on behalf of the Società Dante Alighieri worldwide.
Patota’s books and articles cover topics such as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary Italian, the history of Italian syntax, the history of grammar, and the historical grammar of Italian. Outside of Italy, he has published in France and Japan. Since 2004 Giuseppe Patota has been the editorial director of the Grande Dizionario Italiano Garzanti.
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