Linguistic Notes On The Sicilian Standard
The standard of the Sicilian school combines many traits typical of the Sicilian, Latin, Provençal and to a lesser, but not negligible extent, Apulian and certain southern dialects. Such a melting pot greatly helped the new Italian language: the Provençal suffixes -ière and -ce, for example, generated hundreds of new Italian words in -iera and -za as it. riv-iera ("river") or costan-za ("constancy"). Such affixes would be then adopted by Dante and his contemporaries, and handed on to future generations of Italian writers. Dante's styles illustre, cardinale, aulico, curiale were partly developed from his close study of the Sicilian School which he quotes widely in his studies, especially in his De Vulgari Eloquentia. The Sicilian school was later re-founded by Guittone d'Arezzo in Tuscany following the death of Manfredi, Frederick's son, so many of these poems were later copied in manuscripts that widely circulated in Florence. This first standard in which they were written, was, however, modified in Tuscany. In fact, Tuscan scriveners perceived the five-vowel system used by southern Italian dialects (i, e, a, o, u) as a seven-vowel one (i, é, è, a, ó, ò, u). As a consequence, the Italian texts may contain lines that no longer rhyme with each other (sic. -i > tusc. -é, sic. -u > tusc. -ó). Tuscans also changed words as gloria to ghiora, aju ("I have) to aggio etc. Though some original texts have been restored to their original Sicilian, we must see such remakes only as tentative reconstructions of originals that, unfortunately, may have been lost forever. Dante and his contemporaries would take this newborn language a step further, expanding and enriching it with even more words of Latin and Florentine origin, carefully working on the style to create volgare illustre, a higher standard quite close to today's polite Italian.
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