Los ‘modos de hablar’ en las Osservationi della lingua castigliana (1566) de Giovanni Miranda

Abstract

The Osservationi della lingua castigliana  of Miranda is incorporated into the tradition of grammatical treatises devoted to the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language. The work, in spite of its contrastive nature, constitutes a complete grammar treatise. Nevertheless the Libro Tercero shows atypical contents. Examples of comparisons and exclamations, the lexical study of verbs and other elements that have a figurative sense and a detailed description of an courteous act of speech, il moteggiare, appear in this chapter. The article defends the essentially rhetorical origin of such contents, which contribute to expand what is known by knowledge of a foreign language.