Reconstructing Historical Italian

Context

An individual assignment for Studi linguistici in lingua italiana 2 in the 2024-2025 academic year. The selected passage is "Del naso", from Sansovino's 1550 text.

Approach

• Locate the passage in its Renaissance publishing and intellectual context.
• Examine Latin-influenced spelling, archaic morphology, consonant variation, word separation and punctuation.
• Define editorial criteria: expand abbreviations, standardise u/v, update selected conventions and preserve fidelity to the original.

What the work produced

A contextual introduction, linguistic analysis and a transcription with explicit editorial criteria. The paired words on the cover illustrate the historical spelling discussed; they do not replace the source.

Connection to interpreting

Precision requires deciding which features carry meaning and which conventions can change. The project demonstrates close reading and a reasoned approach to linguistic choices.