Schlatter—The Development of the Vowel. 
1073 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE VOWEL OF THE UNAC¬ 
CENTED INITIAL SYLLABLE IN ITALIAN 
BY EDWARD B. SCHLATTER 
The University of Wisconsin 
INTRODUCTION. 
1. This study does not pretend to contain anything new. It 
rather collects and arranges facts, most of which were already 
known and discussed by various scholars. It is hoped that the 
title will not prove misleading. The term “Italian” has almost 
as clear a connotation as the term “French.” As an Old 
French dialect, by the vicissitudes of political history, became 
“French,” so an Old Italian dialect, by the vicissitudes of lit¬ 
erary—as well as political, mercantile, and artistic—history, 
became “Italian.” As one may study the historical develop¬ 
ment of French and neglect, except incidentally, the other Old 
French dialects, one may do the same for Italian. In the thir¬ 
teenth century, without ceasing to be the handmaiden of every¬ 
day service, the Florentine dialect took on the dignity of a lit¬ 
erary language and its vocabulary thereby acquired the charac¬ 
teristics of any other such language and comprises words of 
varying respectability, from the most illiterate to the most lit¬ 
erary, pedantic, or exotic. The term “Italian,” therefore, as 
used here, means the language which developed from spoken-— 
or Vulgar—Latin in Florence. So the expressions “Floren¬ 
tine” and “Italian” are used here more or less interchangeably, 
—Florentine having a rather more local connotation when ap¬ 
plied to the old language. In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and 
fifteenth centuries, the term “Italian” was, of course, not so ex¬ 
act as it is today. Because of neighboring dialects and for var- 
