This text aims to show the linguistic variety that exists within the Italian language, as well as describing its main systematic linguistic features, offering detailed coverage of both sociolinguistic and linguistic topics.

The authors present the Italian language not as it is prescribed in grammars and dictionaries, but as it is actually written and spoken.

Taking as its theme the interaction between Italian and other languages, and marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of Weinreich's seminal work Languages in Contact, this volume provides an up-to-date survey of the role of linguistic and cultural interaction in the process of language change. The range of contributions covers theoretical issues; phenomena of languages in contact in Medieval and Renaissance Italy; dialect transition and diversity in the North and in the South of Italy; lexical and morphological borrowings; register and syntactic loans in the Romance area; old and new...

First Published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.