Is it the Chinese language monosyllabic by nature? The Debate between G. I Ascoli (1829-1907) and G. Senes (1850-1920)

The focus of this presentation is how the Chinese language and its main characteristics and features were discussed and used by Italian linguistics to support or to criticize some arguments and theories that the newborn comparative linguistics were affirming in the second half of the 19th century, by two Italian linguistics. At the end of Nineteenth century and the beginning of last century the interest in Oriental languages and in particular in the Chinese language was quite strong, because Chinese was considered to be the prototype of an isolating language, and so it was important to demonstrate the validity of the new genealogy of all languages, with the theory of language families, which divided all language into three big groups or categories (agglutinative, inflected or isolating languages). To understand how the Chinese language was instrumentally used in this debate, I will analyse the writings of two Italian authors, Graziadio Isaia Ascoli and Giuseppe Senes, published between 1860 and 1904, in particular the polemical essays that Giuseppe Senes wrote in response to articles and statements that had been published by Graziadio Ascoli in attempt to describe the monosyllabic nature of the Chinese language. This debate between Italian linguistics, and not between sinologists, had the merit of drawing the attention of a broader audience to the Chinese language which freed it from its academic boundaries and restricted contexts. At the beginning of the 20th century the Italian Sinology, indeed, was less mature, and still more active in spreading Chinese culture and language outside the academic institutions.

L'intervento esamina come fu descritta la lingua cinese e le sue caratteristiche alla luce della nuove teorie della linguistica comparativa, in particolare prende in esame la polemica che scaturì tra due linguisti italiani all'inizio del XX secolo, G. Senes e G. I. Ascoli, in merito alla natura della lingua cinese, come prototipo di lingua isolante. Il dibattito tra i due linguisti, che non coinvolse la nascente sinologia italiana, ebbe il merito di consegnare ad una platea più ampia il tema della lingua cinese e della sua cultura.