The Atlante Linguistico Italiano and geographical-historical studies. Proposals for research on the mountains starting from the surveys of the “Special Part”

Abstract

While it is true that traditionally toponymy constitutes an area of convergence between historical-
geographical and linguistic studies, the Special Part of the Atlante Linguistico Italiano (ALI)  not yet

available in its printed version and accompanied by a set of illustrative types, photographs and notes
related to the surveys conducted by the collectors in the territories of the Peninsula , presents a
conspicuous repertoire of headwords of geographical interest that should be processed and explored
from multiple disciplinary angles. Turning our attention in particular to the file ‘Sui Monti’ (Special Part
IB of the Questionnaire), the study has made a reflection on the answers or non-answers of the
informants referring to certain natural and anthropic elements linked to the mountain territory: glaciers,
snowfields, pastoral huts, summit forms. The analysis of the handwritten files kept in the historical
archives of the ALI, whose headquarters are located in the Department of Humanistic Studies at the
University of Turin, has made it possible to identify for a good number of locations in Central Italy
useful spies on the one hand to raise further theoretical-methodological questions in decoding the
conduct of enquiries in a circumstantial manner and on the other hand to investigate the long-term
relations between community and environment, assisting the interrogation of the atlas with geo-
historical (documentary and cartographic) sources.