ИСТИНА

Written and Spoken Italian in the XVI Century: Plurality of Functional Languages and its Impact on Standardization Processes The history of the Italian language is often regarded as a nonlinear process, as its structures underwent relatively slight changes since the appearance of the earliest samples of prose in the dialect of Florence (early XIII c.). The fact that Italy is a very young national state makes it even more difficult to apply the traditional criteria of periodization (the division into such periods as Old, Middle and Modern) to its language’s formation. However, if we consider the history of literary Italian from a different perspective ‒ the functional one ‒ it becomes easier do discern some patterns of development that resemble those of the more “conventional” languages (French, Spanish, English, Portuguese etc.). The concepts of language norm and variation are crucial for understanding the important difference between the Old Italian period (‘italiano antico’), that is, the XIII-XIV cc., and the following period ‒ the time span starting soon after F. Petrarch and G. Boccaccio’s death (1374 and 1375 respectively) and ending with the publication of the first edition of Crusca vocabulary (1612). Like in many other languages’ history, in the history of Italian this middle stage was marked by progressive acceptance of Florentine as a prestigious language variety. As for the structural changes, the well-known conservativeness of Italian in terms of phonetics and morphology masks profound changes that affected the functional distribution of its structures. The XVI century Italian language is versatile and multipurpose; its diamesical and diaphasical variation allows it to fulfill a great number of functions, including those traditionally pertaining to Latin and regional dialects. It is in this period that theoretical controversies and literary trends influence the choice of formal, high-flown writing genres as basis for Standard Italian (‘italiano standard’). This point can be illustrated by comparing the way causative and final conjunctions function in Old, “Middle” and Modern Italian.