Note sul parlato di Bernardino da Siena

A privileged terrain for investigating traits of spoken Italian in ancient texts are the sermons of Saint Bernardino da Siena. Sermons are in fact texts conceived to be delivered orally; moreover the extant versions of Bernardino's sermons are all from oral sources. This study therefore examines the syntactical features in these sermons which are likely to be of spoken origin -- in particular the causative and explicative uses of che. Comparisons are made with other texts from the same period to substantiate the claims made.