La pratica della scrittura come forza sociolinguistica dinamica
La nascita e lo sviluppo di comunità di discorso italiane tra la tarda Antichità e il Medioevo, e il loro impatto sulle lingue e sulle società

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The relationship between Latin and the other Indo-European languages of central Italy has been a topic of discussion and debate since Devoto (1929). Most scholars now agree that Latin, Faliscan and the so-called Sabellian languages (Oscan, Umbrian and others) together form a sub-group of the Indo-European family. However, Devoto's contention that there has been linguistic convergence among the languages of central Italy has also been supported by recent studies on a number of specific phenomena. Latin and the Sabellian languages may therefore have both formed an early subgroup and subsequently undergone a period of linguistic contact. In this paper I shall ask whether it is possible to separate out shared features which arose from prehistoric genetic unity from those which reflect prehistoric language contact. In particular, I shall consider developments in the verbal system of Latin and Sabellian which have been seen as diagnostic for their linguistic prehistory.