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135-647: Assemini ( Italian: [asˈsɛːmini] ; Sardinian : Assèmini [aˈsemini] ) is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Cagliari in the Italian region Sardinia , located about 12 kilometres (7 mi) northwest of Cagliari in the plain of the Cixerri , Flumini Mannu and Sa Nuxedda rivers. It includes notable forest area which are part of the Sulcis Regional Park. It has also

270-414: A Basque precursor have been questioned by some Basque linguists. According to Terracini, suffixes in - /ài/ , - /éi/ , - /òi/ , and - /ùi/ are common to Paleo-Sardinian and northern African languages . Pittau emphasized that this concerns terms originally ending in an accented vowel, with an attached paragogic vowel; the suffix resisted Latinization in some place names, which show a Latin body and

405-493: A paragogic vowel (such as the toponym Bunnànnaru ). Rohlfs, Butler and Craddock add the suffix - /ini/ (such as the toponym Barùmini ) as a unique element of Paleo-Sardinian. Suffixes in / a , e , o , u / + - rr - found a correspondence in north Africa (Terracini), in Iberia (Blasco Ferrer) and in southern Italy and Gascony (Rohlfs), with a closer relationship to Basque (Wagner and Hubschmid). However, these early links to

540-638: A Nuragic suffix . According to Bertoldi, some toponyms ending in - /ài/ and - /asài/ indicated an Anatolian influence. The suffix - /aiko/ , widely used in Iberia and possibly of Celtic origin, and the ethnic suffix in - /itanos/ and - /etanos/ (for example, the Sardinian Sulcitanos ) have also been noted as Paleo-Sardinian elements (Terracini, Ribezzo, Wagner, Hubschmid and Faust). Some linguists, like Max Leopold Wagner (1931), Blasco Ferrer (2009, 2010) and Arregi (2017 ) have attempted to revive

675-461: A city subject to Aragonese repopulation and where, according to Giovanni Francesco Fara ( Ioannes Franciscus Fara / Juanne Frantziscu Fara ), for a time Catalan took over Sardinian as in Alghero , was emblematic, so much so as to later generate idioms such as no scit su catalanu ( ' he does not know Catalan ' ) to indicate a person who could not express themselves "correctly". Alghero

810-499: A complete retention of the underlying syntactic structure of their L1. Notably, they exhibited the V2, verb second, word order present in most Germanic languages, except English. This rule requires the tense-marked verb of a main clause to occur in the second position of the sentence, even if that means it comes before the subject (e.g. there is an adverb at the beginning of the sentence). These speakers' ability to form sentences with V2 word order

945-408: A decrease of language proficiency. The current consensus is that it manifests itself first and most noticeably in speakers' vocabulary (in their lexical access and their mental lexicon), while grammatical and especially phonological representations appear more stable among speakers who emigrated after puberty. The study of language attrition became a subfield of linguistics with a 1980 conference at

1080-491: A different impact on possible fossilization and/or deterioration of the linguistic system. Frequency of use has been shown to be an important factor in language attrition. Decline in use of a given language leads to gradual loss of that language. In the face of much evidence to the contrary, one study is often cited to suggest that frequency of use does not correlate strongly with language attrition. Their methodology, however, can be called into question, especially concerning

1215-547: A foreign language. The study involved 26 out of 30 initial participants who were native Dutch (L1) speakers who had little to no prior knowledge of Italian (L3), and proficiency in English (L2) as their second language. The experiment involved all participants learning 70 non-cognate Italian words over two days, with no EEG taken. On the third day, an EEG was recorded for the entire session while participants attempted to retrieve half of their learned Italian words in English, and then took

1350-533: A high level of political organization, and would manage to only partly supplant the pre-Latin Sardinian languages, including Punic . Although the colonists and negotiatores (businessmen) of strictly Italic descent would later play a relevant role in introducing and spreading Latin to Sardinia, Romanisation proved slow to take hold among the Sardinian natives, whose proximity to the Carthaginian cultural influence

1485-524: A knowledge of what other peoples say about them"). The Muslim geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi , who lived in Palermo , Sicily at the court of King Roger II , wrote in his work Kitab Nuzhat al-mushtāq fi'khtirāq al-āfāq ( ' The book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands ' or, simply, ' The book of Roger ') that "Sardinians are ethnically Rūm Afāriqah , like the Berbers ; they shun contacts with all

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1620-625: A language where their knowledge of it is less extensive than a native speaker's; therefore testing for attrition is difficult. L1 attrition is the partial or complete loss of one's first, often native, language. This can often result from immigration to an L2-dominant region, daily activities in L2-dominant environments, or motivational factors. L2 attrition is the loss of one's second language, which can result from cross-interference from L1 or even from an additional third learned language ("L3"). Unlike L1 learning and attrition, L2 learning and attrition

1755-722: A long tradition in the production of ceramics, lasting from the Carthaginian domination. Assemini is part of the Cagliari metropolitan area and borders the following municipalities: Cagliari , Capoterra , Decimomannu , Elmas , Nuxis , San Sperate , Santadi , Sarroch , Sestu , Siliqua , Uta , Villa San Pietro . Sardinian language Sardinian or Sard ( endonym : sardu [ˈsaɾdu] , limba sarda , Logudorese : [ˈlimba ˈzaɾda] Sardinian : [ˈlimba ˈzaɾða] (Nuorese), or lìngua sarda , Campidanese : [ˈliŋɡwa ˈzaɾda] )

1890-399: A long war between the latter and, to the cry of Helis, Helis , from 1353, the previously allied Judicate of Arborea , in which the Sardinian language was to play the role of an ethnic marker. The war had, among its motives, a never dormant and ancient Arborean political design to establish "a great island nation-state, wholly indigenous" which was assisted by the massive participation of

2025-494: A number of traces of the linguistic substratum predating the Roman conquest of the island: several words and especially toponyms stem from Paleo-Sardinian and, to a lesser extent, Phoenician - Punic . These etyma might refer to an early Mediterranean substratum, which reveal close relations with Basque . In addition to the aforementioned substratum, linguists such as Max Leopold Wagner and Benvenuto Aronne Terracini trace much of

2160-475: A part of the culture they are trying to assimilate into. This type of attrition is not to be confused with contact-induced change since that would mean speech production changes due to an increased use of another language and not due to the less frequent use of the L1. Lambert and Moore attempted to define numerous hypotheses regarding the nature of language loss, crossed with various aspects of language. They envisioned

2295-421: A particular language is often assumed adequate to maintain the native language system intact. However, research has often failed to confirm this prediction. A person's age can predict the likelihood of attrition; children are demonstrably more likely to lose their first language than adults. The process of learning a language and the methods used to teach it can also affect attrition. A positive attitude towards

2430-474: A period of almost five centuries, the Greek language only lent Sardinian a few ritual and formal expressions using Greek structure and, sometimes, the Greek alphabet. Evidence for this is found in the condaghes , the first written documents in Sardinian. From the long Byzantine era there are only a few entries but they already provide a glimpse of the sociolinguistical situation on the island in which, in addition to

2565-425: A picture of an item in front of the participant and ask them to name it, or by measuring lexical diversity in the speaker's spontaneous speech (speech that is unprompted and improvised). In both cases, attriters performed worse than non-attriters. One hypothesis suggests that when a speaker tries to access a lexical item from their L1 they are also competing with the translation equivalents of their L2 and that there

2700-684: A recall test twice on all 70 learned Italian words. Incorrectness, partial correctness, and total correctness was used as a scoring guideline for these tests. This experiment tested attrition of the participants' L3 compared to their L2. When analyzing the EEGs of the participants, the experimenters observed an enhanced early anterior negative deflection (N2), a peak on the EEG often observed during language switching, for items that took longer to recall in Italian. These are interpreted to represent interfering responses, possibly

2835-553: A result of interference between English and Italian. Another peak, the late positive component (LPC), which is often interpreted as an indicator of interference, was reduced for interfered items compared to non-interfered items. Lastly, theta bands on an EEG, which have previously been associated with semantic interference and active retrieval efforts, showed up more prominently when participants were asked to recognize words that they had retrieved both in English and Italian. While these must be further studied, these results give clues to what

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2970-426: A scant and fragmentary knowledge of their native and once first spoken language, limited in both scope and frequency of use, Sardinian has been classified by UNESCO as "definitely endangered ". In fact, the intergenerational chain of transmission appears to have been broken since at least the 1960s, in such a way that the younger generations, who are predominantly Italian monolinguals, do not identify themselves with

3105-475: A score of expeditions to the island, from which they would get considerable booty and a hefty number of Sardinian slaves, the Arab assailants were in fact each time forcefully driven back and would never manage to conquer and settle on the island. Although the surviving texts come from such disparate areas as the north and the south of the island, Sardinian then presented itself in a rather homogeneous form: even though

3240-675: A script that had long fallen out of use on the European continent and F. Casula believes may have been adopted by the Sardinians of Latin culture as their own "national script" from the 8th until the 12th century, prior to their receiving outside influence from the arrival of mainly Italian notaries. Old Sardinian had a greater number of archaisms and Latinisms than the present language does, with few Germanic words, mostly coming from Latin itself, and even fewer Arabisms, which had been imported by scribes from Iberia; in spite of their best efforts with

3375-469: A second language. Attriters are outperformed by native speakers of the second language in proficiency. A 2009 study tested the Swedish proficiency of Swedish speakers who had attrited knowledge of Spanish. These participants did show almost but not quite native-like proficiency when compared to native Swedish speakers, and they did not show an advantage when compared with bilingual Swedish-Spanish speakers. On

3510-733: A series of graduate workshops and panels at international conferences, such as the International Symposium on Bilingualism (2007, 2009), the annual conferences of the European Second Language Association, and the AILA World Congress (2008). The outcomes of some of these meetings were later published in edited volumes. The term first language attrition (FLA) refers to the gradual decline in native language proficiency. As speakers use their L2 frequently and become proficient (or even dominant) in it, some aspects of

3645-432: A structural change to underlying linguistic knowledge (that is, to an emerging representational deficit of any kind). This assumption is in line with a range of investigations of L1 attrition which argue that this process may affect interface phenomena (e.g. the distribution of overt and null subjects in pro-drop languages) but will not touch the narrow syntax. Phonological attrition is a form of language loss that affects

3780-418: A test may confound testing what was not acquired with what was lost. Lambert, in personal communication with Köpke and Schmid, described the results as 'not substantial enough to help much in the development of the new field of language skill attrition'. The use of translation tests to study language loss is inappropriate for a number of reasons: it is questionable what such tests measure; too much variation ;

3915-429: A test to be given to American State Department employees that would include four linguistic categories ( syntax , morphology , lexicon , and phonology ) and three skill areas ( reading , listening , and speaking ). A translation component would feature on a sub-section of each skill area tested. The test was to include linguistic features that are the most difficult, according to teachers, for students to master. Such

4050-526: A theoretical connection with Basque by linking words such as Sardinian idile ' marshland ' and Basque itil ' puddle ' ; Sardinian ospile ' fresh grazing for cattle ' and Basque hozpil ' cool, fresh ' ; Sardinian arrotzeri ' vagabond ' and Basque arrotz ' stranger ' ; Sardinian golostiu and Basque gorosti ' holly ' ; Gallurese (Corso-Sardinian) zerru ' pig ' (with z for [dz] ) and Basque zerri (with z for [s] ). Genetic data have found

4185-495: A theoretical or explanatory framework. Both order of acquisition and order of attrition need to be put into the larger context of linguistic theory in order to gain explanatory adequacy. Keijzer (2007) conducted a study on the attrition of Dutch in Anglophone Canada. She finds some evidence that later-learned rules, such as diminutive and plural formation, indeed erode before earlier learned grammatical rules. However, there

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4320-612: Is a Romance language spoken by the Sardinians on the Western Mediterranean island of Sardinia . Many Romance linguists consider it, together with Italian , as the language that is the closest to Latin among all Latin's descendants. However, it has also incorporated elements of Pre-Latin (mostly Paleo-Sardinian and, to a much lesser degree, Punic ) substratum , as well as a Byzantine Greek , Catalan , Castilian , and Italian superstratum . These elements originate in

4455-426: Is also considerable interaction between the first and second language and so a straightforward 'regression pattern' cannot be observed. Also, parallels in noun and verb phrase morphology could be present because of the nature of the tests or because of avoidance by the participants. In a follow-up 2010 article, Keijzer suggests that the regression hypothesis may be more applicable to morphology than to syntax. Citing

4590-447: Is an optimal time period for humans to acquire language, and after this time language acquisition is more difficult (though not impossible). Language attrition also seems to have a time period; before around age 12, a first language is most susceptible to attrition if there is reduced exposure to that language. Research shows that the complete attrition of a language would occur before the critical period ends. All available evidence on

4725-399: Is detrimental as the language is not learned in a meaningful way that reinforces cognitive understanding. Conversational-style homework and classroom settings, along with focuses on receptive skills, could make one's fluency less susceptible to attrition. Another potential method of prevention is to alter the duration of instruction for a new language. According to Bardovi-Harlig and Stringer,

4860-455: Is either a problem with activating the L1 due to infrequent use or with the inhibition of the competing L2. Grammatical attrition can be defined as "the disintegration of the structure of a first language (L1) in contact situations with a second language (L2)". In a study of bilingual Swedes raised outside of Sweden who, in their late twenties, returned to their home country for schooling, the participants demonstrated both language attrition and

4995-417: Is equal to the Sardinians' own force ' ). Dante Alighieri wrote in his 1302–05 essay De vulgari eloquentia that Sardinians were strictly speaking not Italians ( Latii ), even though they appeared superficially similar to them, and they did not speak anything close to a Neo-Latin language of their own ( lingua vulgaris ), but resorted to aping straightforward Latin instead. Dante's view on

5130-504: Is not a linear phenomenon and can begin in multiple ways: vocabulary loss, weakened syntax, simpler phonetic rules, etc. In Hansen and Reetz-Kurashige (1999), Hansen cites her own research on L2-Hindi and Urdu attrition in young children. As young pre-school children in India and Pakistan, the subjects of her study were often judged to be native speakers of Hindi or Urdu; their mother was far less proficient. On return visits to their home country,

5265-754: Is occurring synaptically in the brain during language interference, and how that impacts attrition of a foreign language. The above factors all affect the likelihood of language attrition in individuals, but an additional factor is the method of language learning and how that affects the possibility of language attrition. Therefore, strategies in the classroom and any other learning environment become an important part of preventing language attrition. Many researchers believe that language production skills, specifically writing and speaking, are significantly more susceptible to attrition than receptive skills, like listening and reading. Under this belief, one method of prevention would be to focus on literacy and receptive learning in

5400-590: Is often simply split into two distinct forms: the instrumental and the integrative. Instrumental motivation, in the case of attrition, is the desire to maintain a language in order to complete a specific goal, i.e. maintaining a language to maintain a job. Integrative motivation, however, is motivation that comes from a desire to fit in or maintain one's cultural ties. These inferences can be drawn, as strategies for knowledge maintenance will, by definition, precisely oppose actions that lead to forgetting. There are differences in attrition related to motivation depending on

5535-715: Is still a Catalan-speaking enclave on Sardinia to this day. Nevertheless, the Sardinian language did not disappear from official use: the Catalan juridical tradition in the cities coexisted with that of the Sardinians, marked in 1421 by the Parliamentary extension of the Arborean Carta de Logu to the feudal areas during the Reign of King Alfonso the Magnanimous . Fara, in the same first modern monograph dedicated to Sardinia, reported

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5670-674: The Basques to be close to the Sardinians . Since the Neolithic period, some degree of variance across the island's regions is also attested. The Arzachena culture , for instance, suggests a link between the northernmost Sardinian region ( Gallura ) and southern Corsica that finds further confirmation in the Natural History by Pliny the Elder . There are also some stylistic differences across Northern and Southern Nuragic Sardinia, which may indicate

5805-598: The Genoese too started carving their own sphere of influence in northern Sardinia, both through the mixed Sardinian-Genoese nobility of Sassari and the members of the Doria family. A certain range of dialectal variation is then noted. A special position was occupied by the Judicate of Arborea , the last Sardinian kingdom to fall to foreign powers, in which a transitional dialect was spoken, that of Middle Sardinian. The Carta de Logu of

5940-564: The Iberian and the Italian peninsula . In the eighth and seventh centuries, the Phoenicians began to develop permanent settlements, politically arranged as city-states in similar fashion to the Lebanese coastal areas. It did not take long before they started gravitating around the Carthaginian sphere of influence, whose level of prosperity spurred Carthage to send a series of expeditionary forces to

6075-762: The Italian-American linguist Mario Pei , analyzing the degree to which six Romance languages diverged from Vulgar Latin with respect to their accent vocalization, yielded the following measurements of divergence (with higher percentages indicating greater divergence from the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin): Sardinian 8%, Italian 12%, Spanish 20%, Romanian 23.5%, Occitan 25%, Portuguese 31%, and French 44%. The study emphasized, however, that it represented only "a very elementary, incomplete and tentative demonstration" of how statistical methods could measure linguistic change, assigned "frankly arbitrary" point values to various types of change, and did not compare languages in

6210-636: The Nuragic language (s). Etruscan elements, formerly thought to have originated in Latin, would indicate a connection between the ancient Sardinian culture and the Etruscans. According to Pittau, the Etruscan and Nuragic language(s) are descended from Lydian (and therefore Indo-European ) as a consequence of contact with Etruscans and other Tyrrhenians from Sardis as described by Herodotus . Although Pittau suggests that

6345-587: The Serbo-Croatian and the Albanian that are spoken in various Calabrian and Sicilian villages. The question, however, takes on a different nature when considered from a linguistic perspective. Sardinian cannot be said to be closely related to any dialect of mainland Italy; it is an archaic Romance tongue with its own distinctive characteristics, which can be seen in its rather unique vocabulary as well as its morphology and syntax, which differ radically from those of

6480-746: The Sherden , one of the Sea Peoples . Other sources trace instead the root s(a)rd from Σαρδώ , a legendary woman from the Anatolian Kingdom of Lydia , or from the Libyan mythological figure of the Sardus Pater Babai ("Sardinian Father" or "Father of the Sardinians"). In 1984, Massimo Pittau claimed to have found the etymology of many Latin words in the Etruscan language , after comparing it with

6615-533: The late Middle Ages into the Iberian sphere of influence , during which Catalan and Castilian became the island's prestige languages and would remain so well into the 18th century. Finally, from the early 18th century onward, under the Savoyard and contemporary Italian one, following the country's linguistic policies which, to the detriment of Sardinian and the local Catalan, led to diglossia . The original character of

6750-813: The 1080 "Logudorese Privilege", the 1089 Torchitorius' Donation (in the Marseille archives), the 1190–1206 Marsellaise Chart (in Campidanese Sardinian) and an 1173 communication between the Bishop Bernardo of Civita and Benedetto, who oversaw the Opera del Duomo in Pisa. The Statutes of Sassari (1316) and Castelgenovese ( c.  1334 ) are written in Logudorese Sardinian. The first chronicle in lingua sive ydiomate sardo , called Condagues de Sardina ,

6885-482: The Aragonese winners from the brutal conflict would then move on to destroy the pre-existing documentary production of the still living Sardinian Judicate, which was predominantly written in Sardinian language along with other ones the chancery was engaged with, leaving behind their trail only "a few stones" and, overall, a "small group of documents", many of which are in fact still preserved and/or refer to archives outside

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7020-668: The Byzantines were fully focused on reconquering southern Italy and Sicily, which had in the meanwhile also fallen to the Muslims , their attention on Sardinia was neglected and communications broke down with Constantinople ; this spurred the former Byzantine province of Sardinia to become progressively more autonomous from the Byzantine oecumene , and eventually attain independence. Pinelli argues that "the Arab conquest of North Africa separated Sardinia from that continent without, however, causing

7155-431: The Italian dialects. As an insular language par excellence, Sardinian is considered the most conservative Romance language , as well as one of the most highly individual within the family; its substratum ( Paleo-Sardinian or Nuragic) has also been researched. In the first written testimonies, dating to the eleventh century, Sardinian appears as a language already distinct from the dialects of Italy. A 1949 study by

7290-601: The Kingdom of Arborea, one of the first constitutions in history drawn up in 1355–1376 by Marianus IV and the Queen, the ' Lady Judge ' ( judikessa in Sardinian, jutgessa in Catalan, giudicessa in Italian) Eleanor , was written in this transitional variety of Sardinian, and would remain in force until 1827. The Arborean judges' effort to unify the Sardinian dialects were due to their desire to be legitimate rulers of

7425-583: The Korean adoptees, those who were adopted the earliest essentially lost their Korean and those adopted later still retained some of it, although it was primarily their comprehension of Korean that was spared. A 2007 study looked at Korean adoptees in France and found that they performed on par with native French speakers in French proficiency and Korean. Attrition of a first language does not guarantee an advantage in learning

7560-444: The L1 and actual attrition of the L1. Since all bilinguals experience some degree of cross linguistic influence , where the L2 interferes with the retrieval of the speaker's L1, it is difficult to determine if delays and/or mistakes in the L1 are due to attrition or caused by CLI. Also, simultaneous bilinguals may not have a language that is indistinguishable from that of a native speaker or

7695-444: The L1 can deteriorate or become subject to L2 influence. Research on L2 attrition is lacking, as most research focused on L1 attrition. Only during the 1970s and early 1980s did research on L2 attrition and memory start to appear. However, there are many overlaps between L1 attrition and L2 attrition. To study the process of language attrition, researchers initially looked at neighboring areas of linguistics to identify which parts of

7830-433: The L1 system attrite first; lacking years of direct experimental data, linguists studied language contact , creolization , L2 acquisition , and aphasia , and applied their findings to language acquisition. Language loss caused by aging, brain injuries, or neurological disorders is not considered part of language attrition. One issue that is faced when researching attrition is distinguishing between normal L2 influence on

7965-454: The L2 environment have an additive requirement for the maintenance of the L1 and the development of the L2 (Opitz, 2013). There have been cases in which adults have undergone first language attrition. A 2011 study tested adult monolingual English speakers, adult monolingual Russian speakers and adult bilingual English-Russian speakers on naming various liquid containers (cup, glass, mug, etc.) in both English and Russian. The results showed that

8100-411: The L2, especially in terms of phonological production, and for those who have immersed themselves and built a connection to the culture of the country for the L2. A sociolinguistic approach to this phenomenon is that the acquisition of a native-like L2 accent and the subsequent loss of one's native accent is influenced by the societal norms of the country and the speakers' attempt to adapt in order to feel

8235-508: The Romance idioms; George Bossong summarises thus: "be this as it may, from a strictly linguistic point of view there can be no doubt that Sardinian is to be classified as an independent Romance language, or even as an independent branch inside the family, and so it is classed alongside the great national languages like French and Italian in all modern manuals of Romance linguistics". Sardinia's relative isolation from mainland Europe encouraged

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8370-588: The Sardinian language among the Romance idioms has long been known among linguists. After a long strife for the acknowledgement of the island's cultural patrimony, in 1997, Sardinian, along with the other languages spoken therein, managed to be recognized by regional law in Sardinia without challenge by the central government. In 1999, Sardinian and eleven other "historical linguistic minorities", i.e. locally indigenous, and not foreign-grown, minority languages of Italy ( minoranze linguistiche storiche , as defined by

8505-438: The Sardinian language with regard to the politically dominant ones did not change until fascism and, most evidently, the 1950s. The origins of ancient Sardinian, also known as Paleo-Sardinian, are currently unknown. Research has attempted to discover obscure, indigenous, pre-Romance roots . The root s(a)rd , indicating many place names as well as the island's people , is reportedly either associated with or originating from

8640-455: The Sardinian rebels latrones mastrucati ( ' thieves with rough wool cloaks ' ) or Afri ( ' Africans ' ) to emphasize Roman superiority over a population mocked as the refuse of Carthage. A number of obscure Nuragic roots remained unchanged, and in many cases Latin accepted the local roots (like nur , presumably cognate of Norax , which makes its appearance in nuraghe , Nurra , Nurri and many other toponyms). Barbagia ,

8775-540: The Sardinians believed they had one single king ' ). The conflict between the two sovereign and warring parties, during which the Aragonese possessions making up the Kingdom of Sardinia were first administratively split into two separate "halves" ( capita ) by Peter IV the Ceremonious in 1355, ended after sixty-seven years with the Iberian victory at Sanluri in 1409 and the renunciation of any succession right signed by William II of Narbonne in 1420. This event marked

8910-564: The Sardinians, however, is proof of how their language had been following its own course in a way which was already unintelligible to non-islanders, and had become, in Wagner's words, an impenetrable "sphinx" to their judgment. Frequently mentioned is a previous 12th-century poem by the troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras , Domna, tant vos ai preiada ("Lady, so much I have endeared you"); Sardinian epitomizes outlandish speech therein, along with non-Romance languages such as German and Berber , with

9045-520: The Tirrenii landed in Sardinia and the Etruscans landed in modern Tuscany , his views are not shared by most Etruscologists. According to Bertoldi and Terracini, Paleo-Sardinian has similarities with the Iberic languages and Siculian ; for example, the suffix - ara in proparoxytones indicated the plural. Terracini proposed the same for suffixes in - /àna/ , - /ànna/ , - /énna/ , - /ònna/ + /r/ +

9180-614: The United States, both children appeared to lose all their L2 while the mother noticed no decline in her own L2 abilities. Twenty years later, those same young children as adults comprehend not a word from recordings of their own animated conversations in Hindi-Urdu; the mother still understands much of them. Yamamoto (2001) found a link between age and bilinguality. In fact, a number of factors are at play in bilingual families. In her study, bicultural families that maintained only one language,

9315-541: The University of Pennsylvania called "Loss of Language Skills". The aim of the conference was to discuss areas of second language attrition and to discuss ideas for possible future research. The conference revealed that attrition is a wide topic, with numerous factors and taking many forms. Decades later, the field of first language attrition gained new momentum with two conferences held in Amsterdam in 2002 and 2005, as well as

9450-671: The Vandal presence had "estranged Sardinia from Europe, linking its own destiny to Africa's territorial expanse" in a bond that was to strengthen further "under Byzantine rule, not only because the Roman Empire included the island in the African Exarchate, but also because it developed from there, albeit indirectly, its ethnic community, causing it to acquire many of the African characteristics" that would allow ethnologists and historians to elaborate

9585-505: The Way of Straw ' ) also recurs in the Berber languages . To most Italians Sardinian is unintelligible, reminding them of Spanish, because of the way in which the language is acoustically articulated; characterized as it is by a sharply outlined physiognomy which is displayed from the earliest sources available, it is in fact considered a distinct language, if not an altogether different branch, among

9720-474: The aforementioned Cartas and condaghes . The first document containing Sardinian elements is a 1063 donation to the abbey of Montecassino signed by Barisone I of Torres. Another such document (the so-called Carta Volgare ) comes from the Judicate of Cagliari and was issued by Torchitorio I de Lacon-Gunale in around 1070, written in Sardinian whilst still employing the Greek alphabet . Other documents are

9855-451: The age effect for L1 attrition, therefore, indicates that the development of susceptibility displays a curved, not a linear, function. This suggests that in native language learning there is indeed a critical period effect, and that full development of native language capacities necessitates exposure to L1 input for the entire duration of this CP. The regression hypothesis, first formulated by Roman Jakobson in 1941 and originally formulated on

9990-512: The ages of 8 through 13. Before this time period, a first language can attrite under certain circumstances, the most prominent being a sudden decline in exposure to the first language. Various case studies show that children who emigrate before puberty and have little to no exposure to their first language end up losing the first language. In 2009, a study compared two groups of Swedish-speaking groups: native Swedish speakers and Korean international adoptees who were at risk of losing their Korean. Of

10125-494: The bilinguals had attrited Russian vocabulary because they did not label these liquid containers the same way as the monolingual Russian speakers. When grouped according to Age of Acquisition (AoA) of English, the bilinguals showed an effect of AoA (or perhaps the length of exposure to the L2) in that bilinguals with earlier AoA (mean AoA 3.4 years) exhibited much stronger attrition than bilinguals with later AoA (mean AoA 22.8 years). That is,

10260-501: The brain, making that language more stable and less susceptible to attrition. Under this hypothesis, language attrition is believed to first affect lexical words and then grammar rules, rather than grammar rules eroding first like in the regression hypothesis. It also requires a higher activation threshold to recall a word rather than recognize it, which does not indicate fluency. Children are more susceptible to (first) language attrition than adults. Research shows an age effect around

10395-485: The classroom, rather than teach students primarily to speak and write. This protects against attrition as it solidifies receptive skills. Another method is to encourage homework and practice that is not mechanical, but instead engaging and opportunistic, using high frequency items the most. Basic repetition and learning low frequency patterns and items are more susceptible to attrition, as students are unable to practice as opportunities arise and use high frequency items. This

10530-520: The community's everyday Neo-Latin language, Greek was also spoken by the ruling classes. Some toponyms, such as Jerzu (thought to derive from the Greek khérsos , ' untilled ' ), together with the personal names Mikhaleis , Konstantine and Basilis , demonstrate Greek influence. As the Muslims made their way into North Africa , what remained of the Byzantine possession of the Exarchate of Africa

10665-443: The context of attrition, however, there is strong evidence that this optionality is not indicative of any underlying representational deficits: the same individuals do not appear to encounter recurring problems with the same kinds of grammatical phenomena in different speech situations or on different tasks. This suggests that problems of L1 attriters are due to momentary conflicts between the two linguistic systems and not indicative of

10800-640: The definitive end of Sardinian independence, whose historical relevance for the island, likened by Francesco C. Casula to "the end of Aztec Mexico ", should be considered "neither triumph nor defeat, but the painful birth of today's Sardinia". Any outbreak of anti-Aragonese rebellion, such as the revolt of Alghero in 1353, that of Uras in 1470 and finally that of Macomer in 1478, celebrated in De bello et interitu marchionis Oristanei , were and would have been systematically neutralised. From that moment, " quedó de todo punto Sardeña por el rey ". Casula believes that

10935-500: The development of a Romance language that preserves traces of its indigenous, pre-Roman language(s). The language is posited to have substratal influences from Paleo-Sardinian , which some scholars have linked to Basque and Etruscan ; comparisons have also been drawn with the Berber languages from North Africa to shed more light on the language(s) spoken in Sardinia prior to its Romanization . Subsequent adstratal influences include Catalan , Spanish, and Italian. The situation of

11070-423: The difference between attriters and bilinguals is complex; activating two languages at once may cause interference. Yoshitomi attempted to define a model of language attrition that was related to neurological and psychological aspects of language learning and unlearning. She discussed four possible hypotheses and five key aspects related to acquisition and attrition. The hypotheses are: According to Yoshitomi,

11205-597: The dignity of Sardinian for official purposes was such that, in the words of Livio Petrucci, a Neo-Latin language had come to be used "at a time when nothing similar can be observed in the Italian peninsula" not only "in the legal field" but also "in any other field of writing". A diplomatic analysis of the earliest Sardinian documents shows that the Judicates provided themselves with chanceries , which employed an indigenous diplomatic model for writing public documents; one of them, dating to 1102, displays text in half-uncial ,

11340-511: The distinctive Latin character of Sardinia to the languoids once spoken by the Christian and Jewish Berbers in North Africa, known as African Romance . Indeed, Sardinian was perceived as rather similar to African Latin when the latter was still in use, giving credit to the theory that vulgar Latin in both Africa and Sardinia displayed a significant wealth of parallelisms. J. N. Adams is of

11475-477: The entire island under a single state ( republica sardisca ' Sardinian Republic ' ); such political goal, after all, was already manifest in 1164, when the Arborean Judge Barison ordered his great seal to be made with the writings Baresonus Dei Gratia Rei Sardiniee ( ' Barison, by the grace of God, King of Sardinia ' ) and Est vis Sardorum pariter regnum Populorum ( ' The people's rule

11610-449: The existence of a Sardinian Koine which pointed to a model based on Logudorese. According to Eduardo Blasco Ferrer , it was in the wake of the fall of the Judicates of Cagliari and Gallura , in the second half of the 13th century, that Sardinian began to fragment into its modern dialects, undergoing some Tuscanization under the rule of the Republic of Pisa ; it did not take long before

11745-429: The existence of two other tribal groups ( Balares and Ilienses ) mentioned by the same Roman author. According to the archeologist Giovanni Ugas, these tribes may have in fact played a role in shaping the current regional linguistic differences of the island. Around the 10th and 9th century BC, Phoenician merchants were known to have made their presence in Sardinia, which acted as a geographical mediator in between

11880-400: The fact that any official text was written solely in Sardinian from the very beginning and completely excluded Latin, unlike what was happening – and would continue to happen – in France, Italy and Iberia at the same time; Latin, although co-official, was in fact used only in documents concerning external relations in which the Sardinian kings ( judikes , ' judges ' ) engaged. Awareness of

12015-547: The family sphere, is illustrated by the Euromosaic report, in which Sardinian "is in 43rd place in the ranking of the 50 languages taken into consideration and of which were analysed (a) use in the family, (b) cultural reproduction, (c) use in the community, (d) prestige, (e) use in institutions, (f) use in education". As the Sardinians have almost been completely assimilated into the Italian national mores, including in terms of onomastics , and therefore now only happen to keep but

12150-528: The first century BC. In terms of vocabulary, Sardinian retains an array of peculiar Latin-based forms that are either unfamiliar to, or have altogether disappeared in, the rest of the Romance-speaking world. The number of Latin inscriptions on the island is relatively small and fragmented. Some engraved poems in ancient Greek and Latin (the two most prestigious languages in the Roman Empire ) are seen in

12285-441: The five key aspects related to attrition are neuroplasticity , consolidation, permastore /savings, decreased accessibility, and receptive versus productive abilities. Given that exposure to an L2 at a younger age typically leads to stronger attrition of the L1 than L2 exposure at later ages, there may be a relationship between language attrition and the critical period hypothesis . The critical period for language claims that there

12420-419: The future, being referred to by linguists as the mere substratum of the now-prevailing idiom, i.e. Italian articulated in its own Sardinian-influenced variety , which may come to wholly supplant the islanders' once living native tongue. Now the question arises as to whether Sardinian is to be considered a dialect or a language. Politically speaking, of course, it is one of the many dialects of Italy, just like

12555-471: The impact of AoA. However, converging evidence suggests an age effect on FLA which is much stronger and more clearly delineated than the effects that have been found in SLA research. Two studies that consider prepuberty and postpuberty migrants (Ammerlaan, 1996, AoA 0–29 yrs; Pelc, 2001, AoA 8–32 years) find that AoA is one of the most important predictors of ultimate proficiency, and a number of studies that investigate

12690-665: The impact of age among postpuberty migrants fail to find any effect at all (Köpke, 1999, AoA 14–36 yrs; Schmid, 2002, AoA 12–29 yrs; Schmid, 2007, AoA 17–51 yrs). A range of studies conducted by Montrul on Spanish heritage speakers in the US as well as Spanish-English bilinguals with varying levels of AoA also suggests that the L1 system of early bilinguals may be similar to that of L2 speakers, while later learners pattern with monolinguals in their L1 (e.g. Montrul, 2008; Montrul, 2009). These findings therefore indicate strongly that early (prepuberty) and late (postpuberty) exposure to an L2 environment have

12825-472: The indigenous tongue, which is now reduced to the memory of "little more than the language of their grandparents". As the long- to even medium-term future of the Sardinian language looks far from secure in the present circumstances, Martin Harris concluded in 2003 that, assuming the continuation of present trends to language death , it was possible that there would not be a Sardinian language of which to speak in

12960-423: The individual. In order for one to maintain a low threshold, regular vocabulary and grammar usage is needed. Otherwise, an L2 that has fallen into disuse will now have a higher threshold for each language item, requiring a higher number of neural impulses to activate that item's representation in one's brain. Items that are used regularly have a lower required number of neural impulses to trigger its representation in

13095-447: The individuals with earlier AoA were the more different from monolingual Russian speakers in their labeling and categorization of drinking vessels, than the people with later AoA. However, even the late AoA bilinguals exhibited some degree of attrition in that they labeled the drinking vessels differently from native monolingual Russian-speaking adults. There are few principled and systematic investigations of FLA specifically investigating

13230-534: The island's inhabitants. As a result of this protracted and prolonged process of Romanisation, the modern Sardinian language is today classified as Romance or neo-Latin, with some phonetic features resembling Old Latin . Some linguists assert that modern Sardinian, being part of the Island Romance group, was the first language to split off from Latin, all others evolving from Latin as Continental Romance. In fact, contact with Rome might have ceased from as early as

13365-561: The island. Specifically, the Arborean documents and the palace in which they were kept would be completely set on fire on May 21, 1478, as the viceroy triumphantly entered Oristano after having tamed the aforementioned 1478 rebellion, which threatened the revival of an Arborean identity which had been de jure abolished in 1420 but was still very much alive in popular memory. Thereafter, the ruling class in Sardinia proceeded to adopt Catalan as their primary language. The situation in Cagliari ,

13500-1020: The island; although they were initially repelled by the natives, the North African city vigorously pursued a policy of active imperialism and, by the sixth century, managed to establish its political hegemony and military control over South-Western Sardinia. Punic began to be spoken in the area, and many words entered ancient Sardinian as well. Words like giara 'plateau' (cf. Hebrew yaʿar 'forest, scrub'), g(r)uspinu ' nasturtium ' (from Punic cusmin ), curma ' fringed rue ' (cf. Arabic ḥarmal ' Syrian rue '), mítza 'spring' (cf. Hebrew mitsa , metza 'source, fountainhead'), síntziri ' marsh horsetail ' (from Punic zunzur ' common knotgrass '), tzeúrra 'sprout' (from * zerula , diminutive of Punic zeraʿ 'seed'), tzichirìa ' dill ' (from Punic sikkíria ; cf. Hebrew šēkār 'ale') and tzípiri ' rosemary ' (from Punic zibbir ) are commonly used, especially in

13635-462: The last century. The Sardinian adult population today primarily uses Italian, and less than 15 percent of the younger generations were reported to have been passed down some residual Sardinian, usually in a deteriorated form described by linguist Roberto Bolognesi as "an ungrammatical slang". The rather fragile and precarious state in which the Sardinian language now finds itself, where its use has been discouraged and consequently reduced even within

13770-525: The latter to rejoin Europe" and that this event "determined a capital turning point for Sardinia, giving rise to a de facto independent national government". Historian Marc Bloch believed that, owing to Sardinia being a country which found itself in "quasi-isolation" from the rest of the continent, the earliest documentary testimonies, written in Sardinian, were much older than those first issued in Italy. Sardinian

13905-509: The latter, due to the fierce resistance of the Sardinians, were not able to spread to the island, as they had in Africa". Michele Amari , quoted by Pinelli, writes that "the attempts of the Muslims of Africa to conquer Sardinia and Corsica were frustrated by the unconquered valour of the poor and valiant inhabitants of those islands, who saved themselves for two centuries from the yoke of the Arabs". As

14040-554: The legislator) were similarly recognized as such by national law (specifically, Law No. 482/1999). Among these, Sardinian is notable as having, in terms of absolute numbers, the largest community of speakers. Although the Sardinian-speaking community can be said to share "a high level of linguistic awareness", policies eventually fostering language loss and assimilation have considerably affected Sardinian, whose actual speakers have become noticeably reduced in numbers over

14175-419: The lively multilingualism in "one and the same people", i.e. the Sardinians, because of immigration "by Spaniards and Italians" who came to the island to trade with the natives. The long-lasting war and the so-called Black Death had a devastating effect on the island, depopulating large parts of it. People from the neighbouring island of Corsica, which had been already Tuscanised, began to settle en masse in

14310-401: The minority language, in the household, were able to raise bilingual, bicultural children without fail. Families that adopted the one parent – one language policy were able to raise bilingual children at first but when the children joined the dominant language school system, there was a 50% chance that children would lose their minority language abilities. In families that had more than one child,

14445-628: The modern Sardinian varieties of the Campidanese plain , while proceeding northwards the influence is more limited to place names, such as the town of Magomadas , Macumadas in Nuoro or Magumadas in Gesico and Nureci , all of which deriving from the Punic maqom hadash ' new city ' . The Roman domination began in 238 BC, but was often contested by the local Sardinian tribes, who had by then acquired

14580-549: The mountainous central region of the island, derives its name from the Latin Barbaria (a term meaning ' Land of the Barbarians ' , similar in origin to the now antiquated word Barbary ), because its people refused cultural and linguistic assimilation for a long time: 50% of toponyms of central Sardinia, particularly in the territory of Olzai , are actually not related to any known language. According to Terracini, amongst

14715-804: The northern Sardinian coast, leading to the birth of Sassarese and then Gallurese , two Italo-Dalmatian lects. Extract from sa Vitta et sa Morte, et Passione de sanctu Gavinu, Prothu et Januariu (A. Cano, ~1400) O Deus eternu, sempre omnipotente, In s'aiudu meu ti piacat attender, Et dami gratia de poder acabare Su sanctu martiriu, in rima vulgare, 5. De sos sanctos martires tantu gloriosos Et cavaleris de Cristus victoriosos, Sanctu Gavinu, Prothu e Januariu, Contra su demoniu, nostru adversariu, Fortes defensores et bonos advocados, 10. Qui in su Paradisu sunt glorificados De sa corona de sanctu martiriu. Cussos sempre siant in nostru adiutoriu. Amen. Language loss Several factors affect language attrition. Frequent exposure and use of

14850-448: The older child was most likely to retain two languages, if it was at all possible. Younger siblings in families with more than two other brothers and sisters had little chance of maintaining or ever becoming bilingual. The first linguistic system to be affected by first language attrition is the lexicon. The lexical-semantic relationship usually starts to deteriorate first and most quickly, driven by Cross Linguistic Interference (CLI) from

14985-463: The opinion that similarities in many words, such as acina ( ' grape ' ), pala ( ' shoulder blade ' ) and spanu(s) (' reddish-brown '), prove that there might have been a fair amount of vocabulary shared between Sardinia and Africa. According to Wagner, it is notable that Sardinian is the only Romance language whose name for the Milky Way ( (b)ía de sa báza, (b)ía de sa bálla , '

15120-461: The orthographic differences between Logudorese and Campidanese Sardinian were beginning to appear, Wagner found in this period "the original unity of the Sardinian language". In agreement with Wagner is Paolo Merci, who found a "broad uniformity" around this period, as were Antonio Sanna and Ignazio Delogu too, for whom it was the islanders' community life that prevented Sardinian from localism. According to Carlo Tagliavini, these earlier documents show

15255-490: The other Rūm nations and are people of purpose and valiant that never leave the arms". According to Wagner, the close relationship in the development of Vulgar Latin between North Africa and Sardinia might not have only derived from ancient ethnic affinities between the two populations, but also from their common political past within the Exarchate of Africa . What literature is left to us from this period primarily consists of legal and administrative documents, besides

15390-412: The other hand, L1 attrition may also occur if the overall effort to maintain the first language is insufficient while exposed to a dominant L2 environment. Another recent investigation, focusing on the development of language in late bilinguals (i.e. adults past puberty), has claimed that maintenance of the mother tongue in an L1 environment requires little to no maintenance for individuals, whereas those in

15525-407: The phonology of only Slavic languages, goes back to the beginnings of psychology and psychoanalysis. It states that which was learned first will be retained last, both in 'normal' processes of forgetting and in pathological conditions such as aphasia or dementia. As a template for language attrition, the regression hypothesis has long seemed an attractive paradigm. However, regression is not in itself

15660-508: The political history of Sardinia , whose indigenous society experienced for centuries competition and at times conflict with a series of colonizing newcomers: before the Middle Ages , the island was for a time a Byzantine possession ; then, after a significant period of self-rule with the Judicates , when Sardinian was officially employed in accordance with documentary testimonies, it came during

15795-456: The potentially attriting language or its speech community and motivation to retain the language are other factors which may reduce attrition. These factors are too difficult to confirm by research. These factors are similar to those that affect second-language acquisition and the two processes are sometimes compared. However, the overall impact of these factors is far less than that for second language acquisition. Language attrition results in

15930-402: The regions in Europe that went on to draw their language from Latin, Sardinia has overall preserved the highest proportion of pre-Latin toponyms. Besides the place names, on the island there are still a few names of plants, animals and geological formations directly traceable to the ancient Nuragic era. By the end of the Roman domination, Latin had gradually become however the speech of most of

16065-568: The rest of the Sardinians, i.e. those not residing within the jurisdiction of Arborea ( Sardus de foras ), as well as a widespread impatience with the foreign importation of a feudal regime, specifically " more Italie " and " Cathalonie ", which threatened the survival of deep-rooted indigenous institutions and, far from ensuring the return of the island to a unitary regime, had only introduced there " tot reges quot sunt ville " ( ' as many petty rulers as there are villages ' ), whereas instead " Sardi unum regem se habuisse credebant " ( '

16200-399: The sample with respect to any characteristics or forms of divergence other than stressed vowels, among other caveats. The significant degree to which the Sardinian language has retained its Latin base was also noted by the French geographer Maurice Le Lannou during a research project on the island in 1941. Although its lexical base is mostly of Latin origin, Sardinian nonetheless retains

16335-447: The small sample size and the reliance on self reported data. The researchers themselves state that their findings may be inaccurate. The overall evidence suggests that frequency of use is a strong indicator of language attrition. Motivation could be defined as the willingness and desire to learn a second language, or, in the case of attrition, the incentive to maintain a language. Motivation can be split into four categories, but it

16470-500: The so-called "Viper's Cave" ( Gruta 'e sa Pibera in Sardinian, Grotta della Vipera in Italian, Cripta Serpentum in Latin), a burial monument built in Caralis ( Cagliari ) by Lucius Cassius Philippus (a Roman who had been exiled to Sardinia) in remembrance of his dead spouse Atilia Pomptilla; we also have some religious works by Eusebius and Saint Lucifer , both from Caralis and in

16605-484: The speaker's L2, and it is believed to be exacerbated by continued exposure to, and frequent use of, the L2. Evidence for such interlanguage effects can be seen in a study by Pavlenko (2003, 2004) which shows that there was some semantic extension from the L2, which was English, into the L1 Russian speakers' lexicons. In order to test for lexical attrition, researchers used tests such as picture naming tasks, where they place

16740-411: The speaker's ability to produce their native language with their native accent. A study of five native speakers of American English who moved to Brazil and learned Portuguese as their L2 demonstrates the possibility that one could lose one's L1 accent in place of an accent that is directly influenced by the L2. It is thought that phonological loss can occur to those who are closer to native-like fluency in

16875-579: The studies on the regression hypothesis that have been done, Yukawa says that the results have been contradictory. It is possible that attrition is a case-by-case situation depending on a number of variables (age, proficiency, and literacy , the similarities between the L1 and L2, and whether the L1 or the L2 is attriting). The threshold hypothesis , created by Jim Cummins in 1979 and expanded on since then, claims that there are language fluency thresholds that one must reach in both one's L1 and L2 in order for bilingualism to function properly and be beneficial to

17010-626: The suffix /-a/, which is used to express an indefinite plural, and overextend this morpheme to also represent the indefinite singular. There is little evidence to support the view that there is a complete restructuring of the language systems. That is, even under language attrition the syntax is largely unaffected and any variability observed is thought to be due to interference from another language, rather than attrition. L1 attriters, like L2 learners, may use language differently from native speakers. In particular, they can have variability on certain rules which native speakers apply deterministically. In

17145-642: The theory of the Paleo-Sardinians' supposed African origin, now disproved. Casula is convinced that the Vandal domination caused a "clear breaking with the Roman-Latin writing tradition or, at the very least, an appreciable bottleneck" so that the subsequent Byzantine government was able to establish "its own operational institutions" in a "territory disputed between the Greek- and the Latin-speaking world". Despite

17280-462: The troubadour having the lady say " No t'entend plui d'un Todesco / Sardesco o Barbarì " ("I don't understand you more than a German or Sardinian or Berber "); the Tuscan poet Fazio degli Uberti refers to the Sardinians in his poem Dittamondo as " una gente che niuno non-la intende / né essi sanno quel ch'altri pispiglia " ("a people that no one is able to understand / nor do they come to

17415-504: The type at hand. Instrumental motivation is often less potent than integrative motivation, but, given sufficient incentives, it can be equally as powerful. A 1972 study by Gardner and Lambert emphasized the importance of integrative motivation in particular in regards to factors relating to language acquisition, and, by extension, language attrition. A study published in 2021 examines what language attrition looks like neurologically by studying EEGs (electroencephalograms) of students learning

17550-517: The writing style of whom may be noted the lexicon and perifrastic forms typical of Sardinian (e.g. narrare in place of dicere ; compare with Sardinian nàrrere or nàrri(ri) ' to say ' ). After a period of 80 years under the Vandals , Sardinia would again be part of the Byzantine Empire under the Exarchate of Africa for almost another five centuries. Luigi Pinelli believes that

17685-553: Was compared against L2 learners who often overproduce the rigid SVO word order rather than applying the V2 rule. Although the study did not show evidence for attrition of syntax of the person's L1, there was evidence for attrition in the expatriates' morphology, especially in terms of agreement. They found that the bilinguals would choose to use the unmarked morphemes in place of the marked one when having to differentiate between gender and plurality; also they tend to overgeneralize where certain morphemes can be used. For example, they may use

17820-540: Was noted by Roman authors. Punic continued to be spoken well into the 3rd–4th century AD, as attested by votive inscriptions, and it is thought that the natives from the most interior areas, led by the tribal chief Hospito , joined their brethren in making the switch to Latin around the 7th century AD, through their conversion to Christianity. Cicero , who loathed the Sardinians on the ground of numerous factors, such as their outlandish language, their kinship with Carthage and their refusal to engage with Rome, would call

17955-573: Was only the Balearic Islands and Sardinia . Pinelli believes that this event constituted a fundamental watershed in the historical course of Sardinia, leading to the definitive severance of those previously close cultural ties between Sardinia and the southern shore of the Mediterranean: any previously held commonality shared between Sardinia and Africa "disappeared, like mist in the sun, as a result of North Africa's conquest by Islamic forces, since

18090-518: Was published anonymously in the 13th century, relating the events of the Judicate of Torres . The 1297 feoffment of Sardinia by Pope Boniface VIII led to the creation of the Kingdom of Sardinia : that is, of a state which, although lacking in summa potestas , entered by right as a member in personal union within the broader Mediterranean structure of the Crown of Aragon , a composite state . Thus began

18225-593: Was the first Romance language of all to gain official status, being used by the four Judicates , former Byzantine districts that became independent political entities after the Arab expansion in the Mediterranean had cut off any ties left between the island and Byzantium . The exceptionality of the Sardinian situation, which in this sense constitutes a unique case throughout the Latin-speaking Europe, consists in

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