concordanza

Concordanza is an Italian term with several related meanings in linguistics, philology, and textual studies. At its core, it denotes a sense of agreement or harmony between elements of language, and it is also the name of a type of reference work that lists occurrences of words in a text or corpus. The term is used across disciplines to describe both grammatical relationships and organized word-index tools.

In grammar, concordanza refers to grammatical agreement between words, such as gender and number agreement between nouns and adjectives, determiners, and verbs that agree with their subjects. This concept is central to many languages, including Italian, where correct concordanza affects adjective and article form as well as verb morphology. Different types include concordanza di genere e numero and subject–verb concordance.

In textual studies and corpus linguistics, a concordanza (concordance) is an index or list of all occurrences of a word or lemma within a text or corpus. Each entry typically provides a context snippet, location information (chapter, line, or page), and often part of speech or lemma. Biblical studies have long used biblical concordances to locate word occurrences across the text. Digital corpora enable modern concordances with searchable queries, frequency data, and analyses of collocations and usage patterns.

Etymology: concordanza derives from Latin concordantia “agreement,” from con- “together” and cor “heart,” and entered Italian through historical use related to concord or harmony.