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44-669: Given the political background of its creation and implementation, the Prontuario has remained a politically contentious topic between the German-speaking and the Italian-speaking communities in South Tyrol. In the 1890s Ettore Tolomei founded a nationalist magazine "The Italian Nation", and in 1906 the "Archivio per l'Alto Adige". His intention was to create the impression that South Tyrol had originally been an Italian territory, that

88-592: A change operates unconditionally (in all environments), the context in which it applies must be specified: For example: Here is a second example: The symbol "#" stands for a word boundary (initial or final) and so the notation "/__#" means "word-finally", and "/#__" means "word-initially": That can be simplified to in which P stands for any plosive . In historical linguistics , a number of traditional terms designate types of phonetic change, either by nature or result. A number of such types are often (or usually) sporadic, that is, more or less accidents that happen to

132-564: A creation which would become the official Italian designation for the province after World War I up to this day. In 1904 Tolomei climbed the 2,911 m (9,551 ft) high Klockerkarkopf or Glockenkarkopf , which he believed to be the northernmost mountain on the main watershed in the Tyrolean Alps. In fact, the northernmost point of the Adrian drainage basin is not the Klockerkarkopf, but

176-558: A distant substitute to the area, the Tuscan dialect, on which Standard Italian is based, rather than examining a variant of Italian dialect closer to the Alpine region (local Romanic traditions). A case in point is the name Vipiteno , derived from Latin Vipitenum . Tolomei preferred this Latin name to Sterzen , the name commonly used by Italians at that time. In doing so, however, he unwittingly chose

220-424: A few particular words, without any apparent regularity. The Neogrammarian linguists of the 19th century introduced the term sound law to refer to rules of regular change, perhaps in imitation of the laws of physics, and the term "law" is still used in referring to specific sound rules that are named after their authors like Grimm's law , Grassmann's law , etc. Real-world sound laws often admit exceptions, but

264-590: A legend U.S President Woodrow Wilson , for this reason believed that South Tyrol was an Italian land . In 1938 Tolomei was given the title "Conte della Vetta" (Count of the Summit) by the Italian King Vittorio Emanuele III. To further his goals, in 1906 Tolomei founded the Archivio per l'Alto Adige , a magazine which moved along the same propagandistic lines as La Nazione Italiana , but focused solely on

308-558: A name which had undergone Germanization . The original Alpine-Romanic name would have been Vibidina ; the German sound change in the 8th century changed this into Wipitina . As such it was first mentioned in the medieval Latin manuscripts, and in the more recent ones it was further Latinized into Vipitenum , a name which sounded as if it could have been of ancient Roman origin and thus was chosen by Tolomei. Some academics like Giovan Battista Pellegrini or Johannes Kramer have positively judged

352-544: A universality that is unrealistic for sound change. A sound change that affects the phonological system or the number or the distribution of its phonemes is a phonological change . The following statements are used as heuristics in formulating sound changes as understood within the Neogrammarian model. However, for modern linguistics, they are not taken as inviolable rules but are seen as guidelines. Sound change has no memory : Sound change does not discriminate between

396-526: A year after Italy, instigated by Allied promises and its own nationalist tendencies, entered the First World War , a commission was set up to find Italian names for places in the "soon to be conquered territory". The commission (composed of Tolomei himself, the Professor of Botany and Chemistry Ettore De Toni as well as the librarian Vittorio Baroncelli) reported almost 12,000 Italian place and district names on

440-402: Is denigrated as "the gravedigger of South Tyrol" by the German-speaking group in the area. Sound change In historical linguistics , a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic change ) or a more general change to

484-417: Is inevitable : All languages vary from place to place and time to time, and neither writing nor media prevents that change. A statement of the form is to be read as "Sound A changes into (or is replaced by, is reflected as, etc.) sound B". Therefore, A belongs to an older stage of the language in question, and B belongs to a more recent stage. The symbol ">" can be reversed, B < A, which also means that

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528-470: Is no longer phonological but morphological in nature. Sound change is exceptionless : If a sound change can happen at a place, it will affect all sounds that meet the criteria for change. Apparent exceptions are possible because of analogy and other regularization processes, another sound change, or an unrecognized conditioning factor. That is the traditional view expressed by the Neogrammarians. In

572-572: The Archivio per l'Alto Adige which soon enjoyed a large readership in Italy, was the creation of an Italian name for every village and geographical feature in South Tyrol. As World War I neared, toponymy assumed increasing importance. The toponymic studies were presented as a re-Italianization of names which, according to Tolomei and his collaborators, had been Germanized not many generations before. The result of these activities, called Prontuario dei nomi locali dell'Alto Adige , would be published in 1916 by

616-508: The German history of South Tyrol was merely a short interruption and that as a consequence the land rightfully belonged to Italy . Toponymy played a major part in Tolomei's struggle right from the beginning. In the articles he wrote for The Italian Nation he already used Italianized names, although these early attempts lacked the method and purpose of his later activities. In those days he would use

660-633: The Italian irredentism ), after his studies in Florence and Rome Tolomei became associated with the nationalistic Dante Alighieri Society . After graduation in 1888 he taught in Italian schools at Tunis , Thessaloniki , İzmir and Cairo . He returned to Italy in 1901 and was appointed Inspector General of Italian Schools Abroad by the Foreign Ministry's Office. His nationalistic activities had begun in 1890 with

704-643: The Reale Società Geografica Italiana la prima . In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Tolomei fled to Rome in order to avoid being drafted by the Austrian army. By this time, he had succeeded in giving the region between the Brenner pass and the Salurner Klause an appearance of Italianness. The Archivio had become the reference work for all matters regarding South Tyrol, and during the war became

748-422: The (more recent) B derives from the (older) A": The two sides of such a statement indicate only the start and the end of the change, but additional intermediate stages may have occurred. The example above is actually a compressed account of a sequence of changes: * [t] first changed to [θ] (like the initial consonant of English thin ), which has since yielded [f] and can be represented more fully: Unless

792-401: The Italian language and culture, although there were already thoughts of a possible resettlement. Also in 1915, he published his programmatic points for the "annexation and adaptation" of South Tyrol in the Archivio per l'Alto Adige . In its Volume 11 of 1916 appeared the Prontuario dei nomi locali dell'Alto Adige , a translation of over 10,000 village and place names. "[...] for the first time,

836-554: The Paris Peace Conference, strengthening the impression that this was really an old Italian region. After the occupation of Tyrol by Italian troops, Tolomei vigorously advocated decisive measures to radically alter the ethnic situation so that South Tyrol would become permanently Italian. Although he was nominated Commissario alla Lingua ed alla Cultura in Alto Adige - Commissioner for language and culture in Alto Adige, during

880-453: The Romanic roots still present in the German name. Apart from the frequent mistakes and inconsistencies of Tolomei's toponymy, according to critics, its main fault is the loss of historical information contained in the historically grown geographical names, an effect which was fully intended by Tolomei. Instead of bringing back Alpine Romanity which spoke a Rhaeto-Romance language, he superimposed

924-580: The South Tyrolean issue. The Archivio propagated the Italianness of South Tyrol in articles that claimed scientific authority and objectivity, but were in fact deeply tinged with ideology and propagandistic intent, and for Tolomei a tool for personal promotion and narcissistic gratification. An important instrument in the struggle for the Italianization of South Tyrol, apart from the scholarly articles in

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968-415: The basis of Tolomei's studies. In June 1916, this list was published as Volume XV, Part II of Memorie of the Reale Società Geografica Italiana as well as in the Archivio per l'Alto Adige . Tolomei explained the methodology for creating Italian names in his introduction to the Prontuario . The main principles are: This methodology was however not applied in a uniform, consistent manner, so that often

1012-455: The choice of name were criticised to have been arbitrary — thus increasing the perception of imposition. While the aim of Tolomeis toponymy was that of bringing the Latin history back to the surface, more often than not it has been perceived as to bury the Romanic roots of historically grown names even deeper due to the relative linguistic incompetence of Tolomei and his team. This can be exemplified by

1056-560: The end of the century neared, Tolomei's activities began to focus on the northern boundaries of Italy. To him, this natural boundary was the main watershed of the Alps near Reschen Pass and Brenner Pass , even though few Italians lived in this mostly German-speaking area of the Austrian Empire. In this early phase, he saw the Ladins (a group speaking a Rhaeto-Romance language which inhabited

1100-588: The entire Central office for the new provinces. It was 'de facto' the end of all democratic policies in the area of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol between the wars: supported by Benito Mussolini , Tolomei enforced his policy of Italianization from 1923 onwards. The names of some 8,000 towns and places were changed, and Italian was made the only official language. His program totalled 32 points, publicly presented by Tolomei in Bolzano's Civic Theatre in July 1923, of which some of

1144-489: The entirety of the indigenous nomenclature of place names, including the names of geographical features and farmsteads, were transformed into another language through one man's act of will". In 1916 and 1917, he collaborated with the Istituto Geografico De Agostini (now De Agostini ) to prepare maps for the region which would show it as being part of Italy. These maps were used by the Italian delegation at

1188-435: The expectation of their regularity or absence of exceptions is of great heuristic value by allowing historical linguists to define the notion of regular correspondence by the comparative method . Each sound change is limited in space and time and so it functions in a limited area (within certain dialects ) and for a limited period of time. For those and other reasons, the term "sound law" has been criticized for implying

1232-566: The first postwar years his suggestions were not received well by the liberal administration. His big moment would only arrive with the fascist takeover of the Italian state. Shortly after Italian troops had occupied the southern part of Tyrol in the wake of the Austrian-Italian Armistice of Villa Giusti in November 1918 (which was confirmed by the Treaty of St. Germain in 1919), Tolomei

1276-542: The founding of the weekly magazine La Nazione Italiana (The Italian Nation), a propagandistic publication whose aim was to popularize the positions of the Dante Alighieri Society. Its articles dwelled mainly on the issue of Trento and Trieste , then still under Austro-Hungarian rule, but covered other areas including the Levant and North Africa , anticipating the fascist dream of a new Mediterranean empire. As

1320-425: The historical introduction of an alternation (such as postvocalic /k/ in the Tuscan dialect , which was once [k] as in di [k] arlo 'of Carlo' but is now [h] di [h] arlo and alternates with [k] in other positions: con [k] arlo 'with Carlo'), that label is inherently imprecise and must often be clarified as referring to either phonemic change or restructuring. Research on sound change is usually conducted under

1364-572: The linguistic correctness of some of the new names. Ettore Tolomei Ettore Tolomei (16 August 1865, in Rovereto – 25 May 1952, in Rome ) was an Italian nationalist and fascist . He was designated a Member of the Italian Senate in 1923, and ennobled as Conte della Vetta in 1937. Born into a nationalistically oriented family (that rejected the Austrian domination of his Trentino and supported

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1408-676: The most salient were: In 1939, his work led to the South Tyrol Option Agreement that forced people to choose between remaining in Italy or emigrating to the Third Reich, the so-called "Option für Deutschland". In 1943, when Italy surrendered, he was seized by German forces and deported, first to the Dachau concentration camp then to a sanatorium in Thuringia . Because of his policies of enforcing Italian names on towns in South Tyrol, he

1452-465: The mountainous areas in what was then the eastern part of Southern Tyrol, a territory now divided between South Tyrol , Trentino and the province of Belluno ) as the Latin element through which "an Italian-Ladinic wedge " could be driven into the Germanic-speaking region, which in those days he called Alto Trentino - Upper Trentino , not having yet devised the name Alto Adige - High Adige ,

1496-651: The name Alto Trentino for South Tyrol, not having yet come upon and revived the Napoleonic creation Alto Adige , which would become the official Italian designation for the province after World War I and up to this day. Likewise, he used to call the Brenner Pass "Pirene", which in his later publications would become "Brennero". His work became more systematical with the founding of the Archivio per l' Alto Adige , through which he began to propose Italianized names for villages and geographical features in South Tyrol. In 1916,

1540-887: The name of the village Lana , which probably goes back to a Roman landholder named Leo , whose territory was called (praedium) Leonianum . In the High Middle Ages the name was pronounced Lounan . In the Bavarian dialect , the vocal ou changed to a in the 12th century, leading to Lanan , which became today's Lana in German. Contrary to his stated methodology Tolomei kept the name Lana, probably because it sounded Italian and in Italian "lana" means "wool". The correct Italianization would have been "Leoniano" (although exact reconstruction may have been abandoned in favor of pragmatism and aesthetics ). The same applies to German Trens and Terenten , derived from Latin torrens (stream), which were Italianized as Trens and Terento, not recognizing

1584-507: The nearby Westliches Zwillingsköpfl . Tolomei claimed to be the first climber and renamed the peak Vetta d'Italia - Summit of Italy (with a clear political aim), although Franz Hofer and Fritz Kögl had already climbed it in 1895. It is not clear whether Tolomei was aware of Kögl's ascent or not, although an extensive article about it had appeared in the Austrian Alpine Club magazine. Italian maps later adopted this name. According to

1628-495: The other hand, " alternation " refers to changes that happen synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's underlying system (for example, the -s in the English plural can be pronounced differently depending on the preceding sound, as in bet [s], bed [z], which is a form of alternation, rather than sound change). Since "sound change" can refer to

1672-649: The past decades, however, it has been shown that sound change does not necessarily affect all possible words. However, when a sound change is initiated, it often eventually expands to the whole lexicon . For example, the Spanish fronting of the Vulgar Latin [g] ( voiced velar stop ) before [i e ɛ] seems to have reached every possible word. By contrast, the voicing of word-initial Latin [k] to [g] occurred in colaphus > golpe and cattus > gato but not in canna > caña . See also lexical diffusion . Sound change

1716-701: The sole source of information for Italians. The idea of an Italian legal entitlement to South Tyrol had become generally accepted. As Italy joined the war on the side of the Allies in 1915, Tolomei joined the Italian armed forces under the pseudonym "Eugenio Treponti", to avoid being executed as a traitor if caught by the Austrians. He was immediately assigned to the Chiefs of Staff committee. The Archivio continued to appear as Serie di Guerra – War series, printed in Rome. The spectrum of

1760-555: The sources of a sound. If a previous sound change causes X,Y > Y (features X and Y merge as Y), a new one cannot affect only an original X. Sound change ignores grammar : A sound change can have only phonological constraints, like X > Z in unstressed syllables . For example, it cannot affect only adjectives . The only exception is that a sound change may recognise word boundaries, even when they are unindicated by prosodic clues. Also, sound changes may be regularized in inflectional paradigms (such as verbal inflection), when it

1804-424: The speech sounds that exist ( phonological change ), such as the merger of two sounds or the creation of a new sound. A sound change can eliminate the affected sound, or a new sound can be added. Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned if the change occurs in only some sound environments , and not others. The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On

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1848-439: The topics changed, and most articles were now written by Tolomei himself. As a result, the magazine's propagandistic intentions became more obvious. From 1915 onwards, Tolomei increased his lobbying activities, sending several letters to government officials and nationalistic associations detailing his views on the steps to be taken before and after the annexation of South Tyrol. He anticipated that German speakers would assimilate to

1892-446: The working assumption that it is regular , which means that it is expected to apply mechanically whenever its structural conditions are met, irrespective of any non-phonological factors like the meaning of the words that are affected. Apparent exceptions to regular change can occur because of dialect borrowing, grammatical analogy, or other causes known and unknown, and some changes are described as "sporadic" and so they affect only one or

1936-513: Was appointed to a cultural office in the main city of the area, Bozen ( Bolzano ). On 2 October 1922, Tolomei led a group of Blackshirts when they occupied the town hall of Bolzano and managed to persuade the Civil commissioner Luigi Credaro to depose the mayor; the following day they moved to Trento and, using similar tactics, obtained the suppression of the administrative Provincial assembly and, after Credaro's and minister Salandra's dismissals that of

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