Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy (Italian Poetry in Translation Book 2)

his research on folklore in the same area. He

was a lover and philologist of the Ibla

vernacular and prepared for his students,

among other things, some phonetics ─

vocalism and consonantism ─ and

morphology texts, treating the former in a

diacronic dimension and providing a

syncronic description of the latter; he also

outlined a “Proposal for the Arrangement of

Sicilian Orthography,” scientifically

acceptable, but which he did not adopt in his

own poetry.

This attitude may seem contradictory,

but it is not: the relationship between koinè

and vernacular language in him parallels

that between language and dialect, both

practiced by the Author, in a non-conflictual

duplicity of expressive register. In a “note,”

reported by Salvatore Pugliatti, G.A. Di

Giacomo tried to clarify this relationship ─