In the mid-1980s, Giuseppe Savoca identified the essential characteristics of a concordance:
1. exhaustive computerised analysis;
2. lemmatisation of all word occurrences;
3. grammatical classification of lemmas;
4. provision of statistical data and frequency lists.
Exhaustiveness means that all the base lemmas of all the words in the text have been recorded in the concordance, while contexts relating to the grammatical categories of prepositions, articles and conjunctions have been omitted. Despite the importance and statistical weight that these categories have in the lexical economy of a work (about 30% of the total lexicon), in order to avoid overburdening the text, context references have been provided only for “semantic” categories (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, to which exclamations are added).
The contexts are ordered under each lemma in the sequence of the text. While in the case of poems the context coincides with the metrical unit of the verse, for prose texts (short stories, novels, essays) and theatrical texts, a string has been “cut out” in which the lemmatised word is placed in the centre (KWIC system, Key word in context). The reference is given by a number indicating the string of the service text we used to compile the concordance.
Our goal was to produce a specific concordance for each of Pirandello's works and, at the same time, to make each of them part of an overall series, which, upon completion of the complete works, will lead to the compilation of a Pirandellian Vocabulary, an indispensable tool not only for providing innovative and original keys to understanding the work, but also useful for reconstructing a very important moment in the formation of the language of our modern novel.
General characteristics of the headwords
The grammatical classification model we have followed is inspired by that of the concordances published by Giuseppe Savoca in the prestigious series «Strumenti di Lessicografia Letteraria Italiana» (Tools of Italian Literary Lexicography).
Almost all the headwords consist of a single word, with the exception of noun phrases, some Latin expressions, adverbial, conjunctive and prepositional phrases (prima di; ora che, etc.), proper names of people, places, monuments and titles of works.
When a word has graphic variants (movendo, muovendo), these have been included in the respective entries (i.e. movere, muovere). Exceptions are adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions that occur in both joined and separate forms (nonostante / non ostante, finché / fin che, nonché / non che), for which we have created a double entry.
Entries are capitalised or lowercased depending on the author's usage: therefore, when all occurrences of a noun are capitalised, the entry is also capitalised (e.g. Parlamento), while when there is a variation between upper and lower case, the entry appears in lower case. Furthermore, when a lexeme occurs with a word accent (e.g. brontolìo), this is also retained in the lemma, while when accented and unaccented forms coexist, the lemma is unaccented.
The headwords are listed alphabetically. Homography is only indicated when the forms are identical and belong to the same grammatical category, while it is not indicated when: 1) the headwords, although identical in form, belong to different grammatical categories (e.g. “più” adverb and “più” adjective); 2) the headwords differ in accent (e.g. the conjunction “che”, written as “ché” when it has a causal value). The distinction between homographic headwords has been made on the basis of a strong divergence, suggested by the arrangement of dictionaries, in the meanings of headwords that are graphically identical.
In some cases, abbreviated forms (e.g. “c.s.”, referred to “come” and “sopra”; S.E., referred to “Sua” and “Eccellenza”) or proper names in contracted form (e.g. “Co”', referred to “Cosmo”) have been dissolved or integrated into one or more headwords.
Grammatical categories
Qualifying adjectives (ag)
This category includes qualifying adjectives and their regular superlatives ending in -issimo, which are listed in the positive form in the entry. Separate entries have been created for diminutives and altered forms.
When the adjective is in a form that coincides with the present or past participle of the verb (e.g. “morto”), the determination of the qualifying or verbal value is often arbitrary and left to the discretion of the concordator. In cases of uncertainty between the two attributions, we have referred to the Crusca rule of in dubio pro verbo.
There are cases in which the adjectival lemma is composed of two elements, e.g. ‘così detto’ (so-called), which is also reported separately in the lemma. Forms such as ‘mal augurosa’ (ill-omened), ‘mal capitata’ (ill-fated), ‘mal fatto’ (ill-made), ‘mal guardate’ (ill-regarded), ‘mal proprie’ (ill-owned), etc. have been reported in the lemma in their combined form.
Articles (ar)
Articles are given as single headwords for all forms.
Adverbs (av)
Adverbs normally consist of single-word headwords. Adverbial phrases have been broken down into their constituent headwords (e.g. “in alto” can be found under the preposition “in” and the noun “alto”; ‘in breve’ under the preposition “in” and the adjective ‘breve’). Superlative forms are found under the positive lemma.
There are adverbial phrases in which the nouns have lost their independent meaning and are therefore not considered separate lemmas. For this reason, we have grouped phrases such as “in disparte” under a single entry, recorded under “disparte, in”, “a cavalcioni”, recorded as “cavalcioni, a”, “a malincuore”, which is found under “malincuore, a”. Duplicate adverbs such as “a poco a poco” count for each of their elements (two adverbs and two prepositions in the second case).
Conjunctions (co)
Variants of the same conjunction (e.g. “allora che” and “allorché”) have been collected under a single two-member lemma. If the conjunction appears only in its separate form, this is also assumed in the lemma.
Demonstratives (di), interrogative-exclamatory (ie), indefinite (in), personal (pe), possessive (po), relative (re). Enclitics
Following the guidelines of the Crusca, the distinction between adjective and pronoun has been abolished; therefore, under ‘questo’ (di) you will find both the pronominal and adjectival forms of the demonstrative ‘questo’.
Connections such as “non so che” (I don't know what) have been recorded as indefinite and have not been divided into their constituent headwords.
In the case of different forms for masculine and feminine, the masculine singular has generally been taken as the headword.
Simple enclitic pronoun particles (“gli”, “lo”, “vi”, etc.) or double (‘me ne’) have been traced back to their non-enclitic lemmas (therefore ‘dimmi’, recorded as ‘dire’ and ‘mi’, will count as two occurrences). Double enclitics such as ‘glielo’, “gliela”, ‘gliene’ have been kept in a single lemma. The unstressed forms of the personal pronoun ‘se’ are recorded under ‘sé’.
Interjections and exclamations (es)
This category includes the usual exclamatory and vocative particles and words. It should be noted that some headwords (‘addio’, ‘basta’, etc.) appear as exclamations and as nouns or verbs, depending on their use.
Forms such as ‘ecco’ and ‘sissignore’, which can also have an exclamatory nuance, have always been recorded as adverbs.
English (en), Greek (gr), Latin (lt), onomatopoeic (on), Sicilian (si), Maltese (ml) and Phoenician (fe)
For the lemmatisation of non-Italian entries, the rule followed was to take as the lemma the form in which they occur in the text, and therefore to indicate not their grammatical category but the language to which they belong. In this case, morphological analysis was not carried out, and the forms were entered in normal alphabetical order. The (deliberately incorrect) transliterations of Anglicisms such as “bai bai” and Sicilian forms such as “cùscusu” have also been retained in the lemma.
Proper names (np)
This category includes all names of people, places, monuments, etc., as well as the titles of newspapers, works or compositions cited. First names and surnames have been recorded as separate headwords.
The names of monuments or places composed with “Santo” have been recorded with headwords of two or more elements, while saints are normally assigned two headwords: one for the proper name and one for the adjective “santo”.
Numerals (nu) and numbers (nm)
Cardinal and ordinal adjectives written in letters have been lemmatised as numerals, and all digits, whether Arabic or Roman, have been lemmatised as numbers.
The numbers, ordered on the basis of the first digit, form an integral part of the concordance and are collected at the end.
No additions were made during lemmatisation, so, for example, '60 and '70 were lemmatised without adding the initial digits, even though they stand for 1860 and 1870.
Prepositions (pr)
Articulated prepositions do not have independent lemmas in the concordance, and therefore their forms have been referred to the relevant simple prepositions. The few archaic forms of “per” (“pei” and “pel”) can be found under the lemma “per”.
Prepositional phrases such as “in mezzo a” have been split into three headwords (preposition “in”, noun “mezzo”, preposition “a”), while “fuorché, fuori che” has been given a two-part headword. For the phrase “prima di”, a separate headword has been created for the conjunctive meaning and another for the prepositional meaning.
Feminine (sf) and masculine (sm) nouns
All nouns have been listed under their singular form, even if their plural form has a different gender from the singular (e.g. “pugno” / “pugna”). In the case of nouns with a variable gender (such as “compagno” and “compagna”), two entries have been included.
The plural form has been recorded in the case of pluralia tantum (“mutande”, “nozze”), or in the absence of the now obsolete singular form.
When clearly used as nouns, adjectives, verbs and words normally belonging to other grammatical categories (e.g. in “dall'a alla z”, in “dargli del tu”, “poco”, “più”) have been classified as masculine nouns.
Nouns referring to religious names (“Dio”, “Vergine”), holidays, months, peoples, professions, religious orders, etc. have been considered common nouns.
Those nouns, of which there are not many, that have now definitively entered Italian usage have been considered Italian.
Verbs (ve)
The general rule adopted was to lemmatise verbs in the present active infinitive, even in the case of reflexive or intransitive pronominal verbs (e.g., “s'avventano” is recorded under “avventare”, etc.), provided that the verb also has a transitive form in use. In accordance with dictionaries, the lemma has been recorded in the intransitive pronominal form (“accorgersi”, “lagnarsi”, “vergognarsi”, etc.) only when the transitive form is missing.
For the verbs “essere” and “avere”, a distinction has been made between predicative and auxiliary use with the abbreviations “pred.” and “aus.” placed in brackets. These verbs can be auxiliaries of themselves, and each of their compound forms has been lemmatised by breaking it down into its individual components: thus, for example, “ho avuto” is recorded (and counted) under “avere (aus.)” for the form “ho”, and under “avere (pred.)” for “avuto”.
How to read the concordance
The concordances are presented in a printed column, in which a bold line distinguishes the lemma from the area below with the contexts, which are not found when the grammatical categories are articles, prepositions and conjunctions. E.g.:
919 – avanzare, ve, 3, 0,00199
VG I4 0094 4 strettura del tempo che avanza. E sentiva mancarsi il respiro;
VG I5 0102 8 sorvegliante… Che può avanzare per chi sta sotto terra e
VG I5 0113 5 fa’ valere il tuo merito, avanzerai! Nossignori, nossignori…
As can be seen, the lemma line contains the following in succession: 1) the sequential number of the lemma, which indicates its position in the alphabetical sequence; 2) the lemma, indicated either in the form recorded in dictionaries or in the form in which it occurs in the text, in the case of foreign words. Sometimes, immediately after the lemma, there is a specification indicating the auxiliary or predicative use of the verbs “to be” and “to have” (“aus.” / “pred.”) or the presence of a homographic form (“om.”); 3) the grammatical category, indicated by two lowercase letters, relating to the grammatical category or language of the lemma); 4) an integer, indicating the absolute frequency of the lemma in the text (i.e. how many times it occurs); 5) a decimal number, almost always less than 1, indicating the relative frequency of the lemma with respect to the total number of words in the text. This figure is the result of the percentage ratio between the absolute frequency of the lemma and the total number of occurrences of the word.
The context is indicated by a string of text, containing the classified lemma in the “centre”, and is preceded by the initials of the work followed by the line of the reference text, which for works of prose is given by the page number followed by the paragraph number, while for plays it is given by the page number followed by the paragraph number of the line of dialogue.
Below are the abbreviations of the grammatical categories used in the concordance:
ag qualifying adjective
ar article
av adverb
co conjunction
di demonstrative adjective or pronoun
en English word
es exclamation or interjection
fe Phoenician word
fr French word
gr transliterated Greek word
ie interrogative or exclamatory adjective or pronoun
in indefinite adjective or pronoun
lt Latin word
ml Maltese word
nm number (in figures)
np proper noun
nu numeral adjective or pronoun
on onomatopoeia
pe personal pronoun
po possessive adjective or pronoun
pr preposition
re relative adjective or pronoun
sf feminine noun
si Sicilian word
sm masculine noun
vc word not otherwise definable
ve verb
The digital edition includes a search engine that can query individual entries relating to all four works.
The concordance is accompanied by lists of entries and forms by frequency and lists of specific forms, i.e. forms typical of editions of the work not included in the concordance as reference text.
