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VAN ITALIAN GRAMMAR

WITH EXERCISES

BY

MARY VANCE YOUNG"i

Professor of Romance Languages, Mount Holyoke College

UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1904

1

1

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Copyright, 1904,

BY

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

ROBERT DRUMMOND, PRINTER, NEW YORK

PREFACE.

This book is intended for class use and reference.

Practical utility has been considered more than harmony

of. design. This will explain what might be taken for a

lack of plan. For instance, the general rules for the

inflection of adjectives being given in the first chapter,

the chapter on adjectives is placed after those on verbs

and pronouns. In order that regular verbal inflection

may be thoroughly learned before irregular forms are

taken up the chapter on irregular verbs is rather widely

separated from that on the regular, and for the same

reason the regular conjugations are given before the

auxiliaries (the present tenses of the principal auxiliaries

being familiar to the pupil from the first lesson) ; the

chapter on the modification of nouns by means of pre-fixes

and suffixes does not follow that on nouns, and

numerals are treated of quite at the end of the book.

Numerals belong rather to the dictionary than to the

grammar and may conveniently be learned in connection

with reading or oral exercises. This chapter, as well

as that on prepositions, is intended largely for reference.

Although every part of the book has been independently

worked out, it in no way claims to be a work of investiga-tion.

Among grammars consulted in its preparation

should be mentioned Moise's Regole ed Osservazioni della

Lingua Italiana, from which material for the lists of

iii

iv PREFACE.

prepositions,etc., has been drawn, and Mariotti's Gram-mar;

and for certain parts Meyer-Liibke's,Grandgent's,

Sauer's, and Benelli-Marucelli's have also given hints.

The dictionaries of Rigutini-Fanfani and of Edgren,

Josselyn'sEtude sur la phouetiqueitalienne , and the section

on the Italian language in Grober's Grundriss der Romani-

schen Philologiehave been helpful.

The author returns thanks to Mr. T. Comba, who furnished

the material for several exercises and read most of the

book in manuscript; to Mr. Freeman Josselyn,Jr.,who

read the chapter on phonetics and made valuable sug-gestions;

to Mr. Grandgent and Messrs. D. C. Heath " Co.,

by whose permission a device for representingto the eyethe irregularitiesof certain verbs, similar to that em-ployed

in Mr. Grandgent's Grammar was adopted; to

Mr. Ramsey, by whose permission the paragraphs on

the correspondences between Italian and English words

have been borrowed from his Spanish Grammar; and to

Messrs. Fraser and Squair, whose French Grammar fur-nished

the model for No. 190 seq. in the chapter on prepo-sitions.

The material for the exercises has been gathered from

various sources. In that taken from an Italian school

history no responsibility for facts is assumed. Only

a few oral exercises are furnished, since the teacher will

usually prefer to make his own from the vocabulary in

the exercises.

The author hopes that this Grammar may be useful to

her Romanic fellow workers, and that they in return will

kindly point out its defects.

Mary Vance Young.

Mount Holyoke College, September, 1903.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

Pronunciation, Orthography, and Graphic Signs i

CHAPTERS

I. First Principles. Articles and Nouns 27

II. Articles with Prepositions. Syntax of the Ar-ticle

29

III. Nouns, their Gender and Number 37

IV. Regular Verbs 48

V. Auxiliary Verbs 56

VI. Personal Pronouns. Disjunctive Personal Pro-nouns

65

VII. Conjunctive Personal Pronouns. Reflexive Verbs 72

VIII. Adjectives and Participles 82

IX. Possessives 98

X. Demonstratives. Relatives. Interrogatives. In-definites

102

XT. Prefixes and Suffixes 111

XII. Irregular Verbs. Impersonal Verbs. Defective

Verbs 116

XIII. Prepositions. Dependent Infinites123

XIV. Conjunctions. Moods and Tenses 142

XV. Adverbs. Numerals and Numerical Values. In-terjections

156

Irregular Verbs by Conjugations 171

Alphabetical Table of Irregular Verbs 198

Exercises 207

Italian-English Vocabulary244

English-Italian Vocabulary 258

Index 269

v

UNIVE. ,

ITALIAN GRAMMAR.

PRONUNCIATION ORTHOGRAPHY, AND GRAPHIC

SIGNS.

i. The followingtables contain all the sounds ordi-narily

used in spoken Italian, classified according to

the localityand to the manner of their production.

(a) Vowels are distinguishedwith reference to their

localityonly, as frontand back vowels. (/?)Consonants

are classified (a) according to locality,as: (i) bi-

labials,formed by the upper and lower lips;(2)labio-dentals,

formed by the lower lipand the upper teeth;

(3) linguo-dentals, by the tongue and upper teeth;

(4) front-palatals,by the tip of the tongue against

the front part of the hard palate; (5) back-palatals,

by the ridge of the tongue against the back part of

the hard palate; (6) gutturals, by the ridge of the

tongue against the soft palate; (b) according to

manner of production, as: (1) stops, to form which

the breath is stoppedby the actual touching or closing

of the organs, as in p\ (2) continuants, in which the

breath is only squeezed,not stopped, as in /; (3)

liquids,which differ from other continuants in that

they partake more of the character of vowels, as /.

These classes of consonants must also be subdivided

into voiceless,in the production of which the vocal

cords do not vibrate, and voiced, in which they do

vibrate. For instance, p is the voiceless bi-labial

stop, i.e.,in forming it the breath is stopped by the