Sull’italiano (L2) di Italo Svevo: una prospettiva interlinguistica
ON ITALO SVEVO’S ITALIAN (L2): AN INTERLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

Summary/Abstract: Starting from an analysis of contemporary critical reception, systematically hostile toward a writer perceived as linguistically inadequate, whose prose was stigmatized for the recurrence of errors and inaccuracies, this essay addresses the question from the perspective of acquisitional linguistics, considering the Triestine author as a learner of Italian L2. This perspective, while potentially appearing reductive at first consideration, proves instead fundamental for understanding the real nature of the linguistic phenomena that characterize his writing. Contemporary critics, while astutely recognizing the connections between Svevo’s writing and the Triestine dialectal substrate as well as Germanic interference, limited themselves to signaling these influences in negative terms, interpreting them as evidence of a deficient linguistic formation rather than as phenomena worthy of scientific analysis. The present essay fills this critical gap through an accurate analysis of recurrent errors and metalinguistic declarations that emerge both from Svevo’s correspondence and from his narrative works. This material clearly documents the typical processes of second language acquisition: interlinguistic interferences, compensatory strategies, morphosyntactic fossilizations, uncertainties in lexical selection. Recognizing Svevo as an L2 learner does not mean diminishing his artistic value, but rather restoring his expressive peculiarities to their natural context of reference. Morphosyntactic errors, structural calques, uncertainties in verbal government cease to be stylistic enigmas to decipher and configure themselves as predictable and documentable manifestations of the linguistic learning process in adulthood. This perspective allows for better appreciation of both the objective limits that Svevo had to confront and the creative strategies he developed to transform these limits into original expressive resources.

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