The Position of Sammarinese in the Romagnol Linguistic Group: an Historical and Synchronic Study of Sammarinese Phonology and Morphology

Many Italo-Romance varieties are at risk of not being recorded thoroughly and systematically before their imminent extinction. Among those dialects which scholars have largely overlooked are peripheral Romagnol varieties like Sammarinese. This book begins to fill this lacuna in Italian dialectology by providing an historical and synchronic study of Sammarinese phonology and morphology based on the examination of old and modern texts as well as copious oral data. The main purpose of the work is to delineate diatopic variation within the tiny Republic through comparative analysis, while also addressing the need for a more complete and precise definition of Sammarinese?s position in the Romagnol linguistic group. In addition to confirming Sammarinese?s status as a Borderline Romagnol variety, the study offers evidence that Sammarinese is divided geographically into two main dialectal groups: Northeastern and Southwestern. The secondary intent of the book is to provide systematic, comprehensive, and phonetically precise documentation of the phonology and morphology of a moribund language.