Dante’s project for devising a more decorous and illustrious language (what he calls the volgare illustre) for the whole of Italy is to proceed to a critique of the various regional vernaculars, given that poets have always tended to keep a certain distance from the local dialect. His aim is to identify a vernacular that is illustrious (a bearer of light), cardinal (that functions as a cornerstone [cardine] for all the others), aulic or regal (worthy of its place in the palace of a national kingdom), and curial (the language of government, of the law courts, of instruction). This vernacular represents a kind of ideal rule that the best poets have come more or less close to, and by whose standards the existing vernaculars are to be judged.
The second, incomplete, portion of the DVE outlines the rules of composition for the one and only truly illustrious vernacular, the poetic language of which Dante considers himself to be the founder. But it is the first part of the treatise that interests us here.
The DVE defines the vernacular as the language children learn to use when they begin to articulate sounds, which they acquire by imitating their wet nurse, and he opposes it to a locutio secundaria, called grammar (grammatica) by the Romans. Grammar meant a language governed by rules that require extended study and of which one must acquire the habitus. This locutio secundaria is the scholastic Latin whose rules were taught in the schools of the day, an artificial idiom, “perpetual and incorruptible,” the international language of the Church and the university, frozen in time into a system of rules and regulations by the grammarians who had laid down the law when Latin had ceased to be the living language of Rome.
Faced with this distinction, Dante states unequivocally that the vernacular is the nobler language because it was the first one used by the human race; because the whole world uses it “though with different pronunciations and using different words” (DVE I, i, 4); and lastly because it is natural whereas the other is artificial.
On the one hand, then, he affirms that the nobler language must fulfill the requirements of naturalness, while the recognized diversity of the vernaculars confirms their conventionality (and Dante admits that the relationship between signifier and signified, a consequence of the faculty of speech, is the product of convention, in other words, ad placitum). On the other hand, he speaks of the vernacular as a language everyone shares, even though vocabulary and pronunciation may vary. Since the whole of the DVE insists on the variety of languages, how are we to reconcile the idea that languages are many with the fact that the vernacular (natural language) is common to the whole human race? The answer is that it is “natural” and common to all to learn first of all a natural language without being aware of its rules, but that this occurs because all mankind has in common a natural predisposition for language, a natural linguistic faculty, which is embodied, in Scholastic terms, in different linguistic substances and forms (see also Marigo 1938: ch. 9, n. 23; Dragonetti 1961: 32).
Dante affirms in fact (DVE I, i, 2) that the ability to acquire one’s mother tongue is natural, and this ability is common to all peoples despite the differences in vocabulary and pronunciation. He is not speaking then of a specific language, but of a general ability shared by all members of the species.
It is clear to him, then, that, while the language faculty is permanent and unchanging for all members of the species, natural languages on the other hand are capable of developing and becoming enriched over time, either independently of the wills of individual speakers or, on the contrary, as a result of their creativity—and the illustrious vernacular he is proposing to forge is meant to be a product of individual creativity. But it seems that between linguistic faculty and natural language he wishes to distinguish an intermediate moment.
In the opening chapter of the first part of the DVE, Dante, referring to his notion of the vernacular, uses terms such as vulgaris eloquentia, locutio vulgarium gentium, and vulgaris locutio, while he uses locutio secundaria for grammar. We could translate eloquentia in the generic sense either as “eloquence” or as “speech” or “manner of speaking.” But the text contains a distinction among various lexical choices that is probably not casual. In certain cases Dante speaks of locutio, in others of ydioma, of lingua, or of loquela. He uses ydioma, for example, whenever he is referring to the Hebrew language (DVE I, iv, 1; vi, 1; and vi, 7), as well as in reference to the branching off of the world’s languages, and the Romance languages in particular.
In I, vi, 6–7, in speaking of the confusio linguarum of Babel, Dante uses the term loquela. In the same context, however, he also uses ydioma, both for the languages of the confusion and the Hebrew language that remained intact. Similarly, he speaks of the loquela of the Genoese and of the Tuscans, but he also uses lingua for Hebrew and the dialects of the Italian vernacular. Writing again about the confusion of Babel. when he wants to say that, after its destruction, the builders of the Tower began to speak imperfect languages, he says that “tanto rudius nunc barbariusque locuntur,” (“the more rudimentary and barbaric the language they now spoke”) (DVE I, vii, 7, p. 14), while, a few lines down, referring to the original Hebrew language, the term used is “antiquissima locutione” (“the most ancient language”) (DVE I, vii, 8, p. 14).
It might be thought that he uses all these terms as synonyms, if it were not for the fact that ydioma, lingua, and loquela are used only when what he is talking about is a Saussurean langue, while it seems that locutio is used in a more generic sense and shows up whenever the context appears to be suggesting the activity of parole. Apropos of certain animal cries, for instance, he says that such an act cannot be called a locutio because it is not a true linguistic activity (DVE I, ii, 6–7). What’s more, Dante uses locutio every time Adam addresses God.
It would appear, then, that ydioma, lingua, and loquela are to be understood in the modern sense of “language,” while locutio seems instead to stand for discursive acts.
In DVE I, iv, 1, Dante wonders who was the first human being to be given the faculty of speech (locutio) and what was the first thing said (“quod primitus locutus fuerit”) and where, when, and to whom, and in what language (“sub quo ydiomate”) was the first linguistic act (“primiloquium”) emitted. I believe, incidentally, that we are entitled to translate “primiloquium” in this way, by analogy with “tristiloquium” and “turpiloquium” (DVE I, xi, 2; xiii, 4), used to describe the ugly manner of speaking of the Romans and the Florentines of his day.
Perhaps Dante wanted to stress the fact that Adam speaks to God before giving things their names, and that God had therefore given him the faculty of speech before he constructed a language.
But what language did Adam speak? Dante criticizes those who, like the Florentines, believe their own native language superior, whereas there exist many languages, and many of them are superior to the Italian vernacular. Next (DVE I, vi, 4), he concludes that, along with the first soul, God created at the same time a “certam formam locutionis” (“a certain form of language”). If we translate this expression as “a well-defined form of language” (as Mengaldo [1979: 55] does, how do we explain the fact that in DVE I, vi, 7 Dante states: “Fuit ergo hebraicum ydioma illud quod primi loquentis labia fabricarunt” [“So the Hebrew language was that which the lips of the first speaker moulded”]?
Dante explains that he speaks of forma “with reference both to the words used for things, and to the construction of words, and to the arrangement of the construction (“et quantum ad rerum vocabula et quantum ad vocabularum constructionem et quantum ad constructionis prolationem” [DVE, I, vi, 4]), allowing the inference that, by “forma locutionis” he is referring to a lexicon and a morphology, and hence to a language. But if we translate forma as “language,” the following passage would be hard to fathom:
And this form (forma) of language would have continued to be used by all speakers, had it not been shattered through the fault of human presumption, as will be shown below.
In this form of language (forma locutionis) Adam spoke; in this form of language spoke all his descendants until the building of the Tower of Babel (which is interpreted as “tower of confusion”); this is the form of language inherited by the sons of Heber, who are called Hebrews because of it. To these alone it remained after the confusion, so that our redeemer, who was to descend from them (in so far as He was human), should not speak the language of confusion but that of grace.
So the Hebrew language was that which the lips of the first speaker moulded. (DVE I, vi, 4–7)4
If we were to interpret “forma locutionis” as meaning a fully formed language, why then, in saying that Jesus Christ spoke Hebrew, does Dante use at one time lingua and at another ydioma (while, right afterward, in DVE
