# Old Sicilian: Promittinu a lu dittu Manfrè



## Riverplatense

Hello everybody,

I'm having problems translating this sentence in old _sicilianu_ which is remarkable because of it's special use of reference.

_Promittinu a lu dittu Manfrè ... non permectiri nì consentiri fari nì fari fari._

Can someone translate it in Italian or Englisch?

Thank you!


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## francisgranada

An attempt:

_Promettono al detto (?) Manfrè ... non permettere né consentire di farlo, e neanche di farlo fare
(...non permettere di farlo o farlo fare e non essere d'accordo con quello che qualcuno lo faccia o lo faccia fare)

far fare - mandare qualcuno a fare
_ 
(if _Manfrè_ is a vocative, then "lu dittu" is not not very clear to me ...)


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## Favara

I'd say _I promise to said* Manfrè_ (Manfred)_... not to allow nor consent, neither doing_ _nor ordering to do_.
(*: as in, "this Manfred we've already talked about". Could also mean "this man named Manfred".)

I've based it on similarity with Catalan (_Promet al dit Manfrè... no permetre ni consentir fer ni fer fer_).


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## francisgranada

Favara said:


> ... _I promise to said* Manfrè_ (Manfred)_... not to allow nor consent, neither doing_ _nor ordering to do_...



Indeed, a nice English translation. But why _I promise_ and not _They promise_ ?


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## Favara

Well, I'm not sure about that, the only thing I can say is that somebody promised something to Manfrè. Take into account I don't speak Italian, and obviously no Old Sicilian either.
Now that you said that, _they promise_ looks better, like some kind of court settlement. And it'd be a bit closer to my language, too: _prome*ten*__ al dit Manfrè..._


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## Riverplatense

Thank you very much, francisgranada and Favara, it looks very clear now. 
However, I don't see any significant morphosyntactical difference (besides the preposition introducing the secondary clause) between



_Promittinu a lu dittu Manfrè ... non permectiri nì consentiri fari nì fari fari._
and 
_Promettono al suddetto Manfredo ... di non permettere né consentire di farlo e neanche di farlo fare._ 

I guess that in both the old Sicilian and the Tuscan Italian the subject is the same in the main and in the secondary clause (implicit _they_). I also think that _promittiri _and _promettere_ have the same function in their sentences. So I don't understand how this example can be given related to logophoric pronouns, before all because I don't see why we have to go back to the 15th century, as Mocciaro explains in his abstract: http://www.webdominius.com/convegno/download/abstract_mocciaro.pdf.


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## francisgranada

I don't know, but maybe it's due to the fact that in the old Sicilian no prepositions were needed (exactly like in the Catalan translation of Favara), so the Sicilian example may seem to be be more "representative" or more general, from the point of view of the discussed phenomenon, than the modern Italian (or Tuscan) usage ...  

By the way, the Italian translation "Promettono al suddetto Manfredo ... di non permettere né consentire di farlo e neanche di farlo fare" would not function, if the verbs _permettere _and _consentire _required different prepositions (not _di_ in both cases) ...


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