# e(d) - Italian language history



## Jean-Pierre Le Pan

Machiavelli never uses the 'd' attached to 'e' (and) before a following word commencing with a vowel. I'd like to know when the use became de rigueur. Was it a Government Language commission, for instance that decided on the new form? If so when did that occur?


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## symposium

The "d" after the "e" is not mandatory, even today. These "details", like the use of apostrophies or preposizioni articolate, are style choices and they have varied a lot over the centuries, even in recent times. I don't think any Italian governement has ever meddled with grammar or language rules!


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## bearded

As symposium correctly wrote, there is nothing mandatory, but usages are 'recommended' by linguists. For example, this is what our authoritative _Accademia della Crusca _writes as concerns e(d):
Sulla d eufonica | Accademia della Crusca


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## Jean-Pierre Le Pan

symposium said:


> The "d" after the "e" is not mandatory, even today. These "details", like the use of apostrophies or preposizioni articolate, are style choices and they have varied a lot over the centuries, even in recent times. I don't think any Italian governement has ever meddled with grammar or language rules!


Thanks


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## Jean-Pierre Le Pan

bearded said:


> As symposium correctly wrote, there is nothing mandatory, but usages are 'recommended' by linguists. For example, this is what our authoritative _Accademia della Crusca _writes as concerns e(d):
> Sulla d eufonica | Accademia della Crusca


Thank you very much for your reply and the site. My primary aim is to establish whether the edition of Il Principe (editor Albarani) is faithful to the original. On another point, ... *<Moderator note: Please open a new thread for a new question>*


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## Olaszinhok

Hello.
I have a copy  of the book_ Il principe_ by Niccolò  Machiavelli (editor Fabbri) and there are plenty of euphonic d's in it. For instance:
_è meno respettivo *ad* assicurarsi con punire…
Hanno *ad* aver riguardo agli scandali…
Uomo crudele *ed* espedito..._
The euphonic d has been used since the birth of the Italian language. You can also find lots of them in Dante's Commedia, for example.


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## Jean-Pierre Le Pan

Hi Olaszinhok,
I cannot identify the chapter or section. Could you provide the Chapter?


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## symposium

Actually I leafed through a digital copy of the first edition of "Il Principe" and I saw that Machiavelli always uses "et" in front of both consonants and vowels.


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## Jean-Pierre Le Pan

symposium said:


> Actually I leafed through a digital copy of the first edition of "Il Principe" and I saw that Machiavelli always uses "et" in front of both consonants and vowels.



'et' ?


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## symposium

"Et", Latin for "and".


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## Jean-Pierre Le Pan

symposium said:


> "Et", Latin for "and".


In what language is the edition of your Il Principe? My Albarani edition published by Oscar Mondadori in Milan 1986, simply uses 'e' or 'E' throughout in the body, except in his headings which are in Latin throughout, e.g. Ch XIII 'De militibus auxiliariis, mixtus et propriis'. There are dozens of editions. What I am trying to determine is if the Albarani edition is faithful to Machiavelli and is not the Italian of the editor. 
Thanks.


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## symposium

Il Principe / Machiavelli - Blado (1532) | hyperprince.ens-lyon.fr
This one is the one I checked earlier. I guess there are many more on the Internet. They say it's a transcription of the 1532 Roman edition, when the book was first published.


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## Olaszinhok

In Blado's version there seems to be only the form_ et_ but I have come across a few euphonic d's with the preposition _a_ before a word commencing with a vowel.
As for the edition I mentioned in my previous post, probably it is not Machiavelli's original version.


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## Jean-Pierre Le Pan

Olaszinhok said:


> In Blado's version there seems to be only the form_ et_ but I have come across a few euphonic d's with the preposition _a_ before a word commencing with a vowel.
> As for the edition I mentioned in my previous post, probably it is not Machiavelli's original version.


Thanks Olaszinhok.  M translated his original into Latin. I am interested in the e(d) of the original Italian 'edition' - of course in those days of quill and paper, 'edition' was really 'copies' even though Gutenberg's press was around for about 150 years.. Question of costs, and publisher, I suppose.


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## Jean-Pierre Le Pan

symposium said:


> Il Principe / Machiavelli - Blado (1532) | hyperprince.ens-lyon.fr
> This one is the one I checked earlier. I guess there are many more on the Internet. They say it's a transcription of the 1532 Roman edition, when the book was first published.


See my reply to Olaszinhok.  Thnks symposium.


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## berndf

Olaszinhok said:


> In Blado's version there seems to be only the form_ et_





Jean-Pierre Le Pan said:


> Thanks Olaszinhok. M translated his original into Latin. I am interested in the e(d) of the original Italian 'edition'


Blado's edition *is* the original one.


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## Jean-Pierre Le Pan

berndf said:


> Blado's edition *is* the original one.


In Italian?  Or Latin?  I am only interested in the Italian berndf.  Thanks. Not in 'et' but 'e(d).


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## berndf

Jean-Pierre Le Pan said:


> In Italian? Or Latin?


Italian. Olaszinhok posted a link to the edition. Didn't you look at it?


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## Jean-Pierre Le Pan

berndf said:


> Italian. Olaszinhok posted a link to the edition. Didn't you look at it?



The link shows what every edition does: All headings per chapter are in Latin, and 'et' occurs frequently.  I have gone though every word on every page of the Italian edition of Tomasso Albarani at least four times over the last six months in preparation for a book on _Il Principe_. I have yet to notice 'et' as substitute for the Italian 'e' or 'ed' in the body of the work, although he does lapse into Latin, e.g.: 'et praesertim' for 'sopratutto' in chapter 20, p.94 of the edition in question. Since you have entered the discussion please be so kind and refer at least to the chapter in which 'et' occurs as a substitute for 'e' and 'ed', so that I may be better advised.


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## berndf

Follow the link in #12, click on "Version numérisée accessible sur Internet Archive" or the image above. This will take you to an archive.org scan of Blado's edition. Move the slider to page 75. You will see pages 35 and 36 as per the pagination on the printed pages themselves. The first line on page 39 reads:
_[gene=]ratione de l'armi, *&* la uariatione de li ordini. *Et* queſto ſono di_​At the beginning of a sentence the typographer uses *Et* and in the middle of a sentence he uses the ligature *et > &*. As far as I can see, he does that consistently throughout the text.


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## Jean-Pierre Le Pan

berndf said:


> Follow the link in #12, click on "Version numérisée accessible sur Internet Archive" or the image above. This will take you to an archive.org scan of Blado's edition. Move the slider to page 75. You will see pages 35 and 36 as per the pagination on the printed pages themselves. The first line on page 39 reads:
> _[gene=]ratione de l'armi, *&* la uariatione de li ordini. *Et* queſto ſono di_​At the beginning of a sentence the typographer uses *Et* and in the middle of a sentence he uses the ligature *et > &*. As far as I can see, he does that consistently throughout the text.



I am most indebted to ‘symposium’ and yourself, for firstly putting me on to the superb Lyon site (hereinafter Lyon) and then leading me on how to use it. I have learnt a lot. Originally my quest was to find out if Machiavelli had used ‘ed’ for ‘e’ before a following vowel. The site providing the Blado edition (+-20 years after he wrote it) has unearthed a few more questions:

Was it the copyist/typographer who caused this in Ch III: ‘*E*_ cosa veramente_…’ (last line p.15 of Lyon) but ‘_E*t* per esperientia_…’ (second last line p.16 of Lyon)? Was his typographical equipment incapable of managing the accent on the Capital ‘*E*’ for ‘(It) is’?

And what about: ‘_il re Luigi cede ad Alesandro la Romana *e* a Spagna il Regno per fuggire_’? That ‘e’ = ‘and’, _not_ ‘is’ - and it is _not_ ‘et’; and so on, I am sure we can pedantically dissect the work.

But this hides my real problem. If I want to discover what he meant by ‘stato’ – was he, e.g. influenced by the pp ‘_stato_’ of the verbs of ‘_essere_’ and ‘_stare_’ to arrive at Cesar Borgias ‘_suo stato_’? If Machiavelli was so lackadaisical as the copyist/typographer seems to suggest, how can I have any certainty that he was psychologically swayed by the ‘isness’ in the past participle ‘_stato_’ of ‘_essere_’ and past participle ‘_stato_’ of ‘_stare_’ as I hypothesize?

But that is not your problem. You guys have already helped enormously. Thank you very much.


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## symposium

Jean-Pierre, I'm not sure I understand your question about "stato"... Can you give us a little more information?


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## Jean-Pierre Le Pan

symposium said:


> Jean-Pierre, I'm not sure I understand your question about "stato"... Can you give us a little more information?


It will be a pleasure. Possibly the safest is to present it in the way I have it in the manuscript. The idea is new and I have difficulty getting it to where it is…

            “‘_Stato_’, is _today_ a noun and/or the past participle of two verbs ‘to be’, as in Hamlet’s pseudo-problem (_essere_); and/or ‘to be’ as, _inter alia_, ‘be’, ‘be located (in)’, ‘lie’, ‘live’, ‘reside’, ‘appears’ (_stare_)…

            “‘Context is everything’. Meaning of a word is in paragraphs, says Wittgenstein. No! Say the anti-‘relativists’. No?...

            “He employs ‘stato’ externally, firstly as two verbs cast in the past, to Define, Describe, Express and Explain:

            (i) what [Note: ‘He’] was (the p.p. ‘stato’ of ‘_essere_’, ‘to be’) and

            (ii) what [Note: ‘He’] was (the p.p. ‘stato’ of ‘_stare_’, ‘to be/located/lie/reside/stay’) in the territorial ‘he’ to include military protection (by ‘arms’) and

            (iii) then, having established their combined Viconian ‘_verum est factum’_ use, he turns both into a single ‘material’ verb ‘stato’ to display _his_ Borgia’s idiosyncratic ‘_lo Stato_’, almost a neologism, a combined play on words - the new principality of the Prince, more particularly, Cesare Borgia’s. The verbs [Note: Not gerunds] give the new ‘_Stato_’ the tinge of a work-in-progress on a broad canvas, so fluidly described by Rubinstein at one point as almost a pleonasm because it has to stay, be, reside beside _his_ internal use of the same noun.

            “He recognised the acknowledgement of _fortuna_ in ‘Caesar’ who had a father with adulterated, almost complete power, only limited by the inconvenient arrival of his death, but while it lasted the triumphal combination of isses - essere and stare both of which = territory, Cesare Borgia’s _lo Stato_.

            “The first aspect of the hypothesis - the influence of the past participles of ‘essere’ and ‘stare’ - is offered to those more qualified, linguistically, to establish whether it has solid legs.

            “All one has to propose in its favour at this stage are (psychological) ‘facts’: Machiavelli (and _inter alia _Dante) having ‘created’ Italian out of Tuscan. By 1512-3 ‘Stato’ was not the firmed Latin corruption for a future anachronistic ‘state’, which (the Latin) ‘status’ suggests. The past participles of ‘esse’ and ‘stare’ were already established as ‘stato/i’, which he uses throughout as such. With their humble provenance and continued verbal function they were perfect accompanists to the ‘lo’ of the ‘Stato’ of the tyrant clothed in virtú. And it would have well expressed the uncertainty of the petty tyrant’s or the new prince’s aggressive ambition.

            “Alternatively, even in the absence of a conscious importation of the verb into the noun and vice versa, by virtue of sharing the same letters, their meanings may influence each other: i.e.: the isses (sans Mooreish anti-naturalist pulpit morality) demanding respect: was, stayed, resided, territory; affording us a fresh look at the lion and the fox. Chapters xv and xviii, may then appear in a fresh light not suggested by (the demonic Cesare Borgias’s) ‘lo Stato’.

            “Further, in an internal sense and as the second aspect to the hypothesis: He is a ‘republican’. The signoria were at the head of affairs in Florence after Savonarola. He was together with _The Prince_ busy with the _Discourses_ and well aware of ‘reipublica/e’ the Romans favoured. It was favoured by Suárez almost a century later. Why did he not use it more often? Why use ‘lo Stato’? The suggestion is that Machiavelli had the term ‘lo Stato’, as ‘suo Stato’, (_his – Borgia’s - Stato_), as well as his own as a member of the oligarchy, to Describe an activity - governing - in the recent past to which he attached a ‘_lo_’. He covered the ‘_stato_’ activity, in English Expressed by the Present Perfect, in Italian by the Passato Prossimo and under a film of ‘stability’ - as a fixed area - using these two verbs of his past activity - as part of the government- wrapped in a material  condition. First, a verbal activity, to indicate vitality, ‘virtù’, then the condition of being in a more or less permanent geographical field where that most recent activity has occurred.

            “In short, firstly, and on a reading only of Il Principe, the external sense of ‘state’ (‘lo Stato’, ‘il suo Stato’) is a, or the prince’s patch of territory acquired by hook or by crook, favour or brilliance and maintained by cruel or diligent cunning supported by its own ‘arms’. ‘Principato’ was the prince’s place, Cesar Borgia’s, his ‘Stato’. The meaning we are trying to vindicate for ‘Stato’ is that of Cesare Borgia’s new principality. Act Two will attempt the avenue presented by the work Il Principe itself in regard to the external sense, by also re-arranging the chapters into a scheme possibly better suited when the their content is considered.

            “Secondly, the internal sense of ‘state’, i.e. ‘the proviso: Machiavelli’s ‘personal lo Stato’ is a work-in-progress, as Rubinstein suggests. His ‘Stato’, in reference to his Florence ‘since entering the service of the republican government in 1498’ aims at a far less swashbuckling entity, a more cerebral one - of governing - from whose dismissal he was driven to meet for the first time (?) in his study during his enforced early retirement. So, the reader has to be also more cerebral, at least more than a Straussian knee-jerk reaction implies. This meaning cannot be found solely in the work, but in the history of his Florentine times.

            “Is this two-legged hypothesis supported by his use of the term ‘_Stato_’ in ‘_The Prince_’?’ Does his use have peculiar/particular meanings which differ from that attributed to and by the German _ιδεα_-lists - and since? What do our two translators implicitly understand by his ‘Stato’?

            “The view taken here is that ‘stato’ today, is not as it was in 1512-3 ‘in the country’, on the outskirts of Florence when and where Machiavelli used it in his ‘little book’. We are interested in a limited (but complex) canvas (and consistent with a complex character), only, solely that of ‘stato/Stato’ and that solely in _Il Principe_.  We hope that the hypothesis will explain why he has such a bad ‘moral’ reputation by elucidating his use of ‘Stato’ in two manners: One for Cesare Borgia, and one for himself as a reputable member of the oligarchy, improperly maligned.”


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