“L’Italia Dialettale” and Geolinguistics in the first twenty years of the journal(1924/25-1954)

Abstract

This paper examines the position of L’Italia Dialettale and its founder Clemente Merlo within the debates on geolinguistics, linguistic atlases, and Neo-Linguistics in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century. Through an analysis of articles, reviews, and methodological discussions published in the journal between the 1920s and the early 1950s, the study reconstructs the complex relationship between Merlo’s neo-grammarian orientation and the growing influence of areal linguistics. Particular attention is devoted to the criticisms directed at the Atlante Linguistico Italiano (ALI) and the Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz (AIS), especially with regard to fieldwork practices, phonetic transcription, and the interpretation of linguistic data. The article also examines the debates surrounding substrate theory and the historical interpretation of Greek-speaking areas in southern Italy, focusing on the positions of Gerhard Rohlfs and the responses published in L’Italia Dialettale by Merlo, Carlo Battisti, Giovanni Alessio, and Vincenzo Longo. The essay argues that, despite its strong neo-grammarian orientation, L’Italia Dialettale cannot be reduced to a closed intellectual project. Rather, it emerges as an important space of discussion in which methodological tensions and competing conceptions of dialectology and linguistic geography were negotiated within Italian linguistics between the two world wars.