Interpunzione come partitura testuale e articolazione sintattica: le prime grammatiche del volgare italiano

Before the founding of the Accademia della Crusca in 1582, several grammars of the Italian volgare emerged in early 16th-century Italy – such as those by Fortunio (1516), Alberti, Bembo, Acarisio, Gabriele, Corso, Dolce, and Giambullari (1552), highlighting the evolving status of written Italian and its transition from Latin. This paper focuses on a less-studied aspect of these grammars: punctuation, which remains largely absent from major syntactic references like Poggiogalli (1999). Emerging from classical rhetorical traditions, early punctuation in vernacular printed texts contributed to the codification of Italian, thanks in part to figures such as Aldo Manuzio and Francesco Griffo. Punctuation marks – particularly comma, full stop, colon, and semicolon – served not only structural but also prosodic and pragmatic functions. Despite the difficulty of defining a unified system, these early grammars reveal an epistemic framework negotiating between normative and practical use, and between syntactic logic and rhythm, thus contributing to the holistic organization of text.