instruments of a modern trobar.
NOTES
1 In the case of this volume, with a geographic extension
of the area to include regions such as Latium and Abruzzo,
for schematizing reasons related not just to editorial needs ─
as it addresses an international audience ─, but referring
directly to the Romantic partition of Sismondi, who was the
first to propose a distinction between North and South, in
which there is no room for the typically Italian geographic
category of center.
2 But for Sardinia it is really difficult to speak of
“dialects,” inasmuch as Sardinian has always been a true
language, independently of the four subregional varieties in
which it is represented (Campidanese, Logudorese,
Gallurese, Sassarese).
3 I refer mainly to Albino Pierro, whose first collections in
the dialect of Tursi date back from the Sixties.
4 It would be useful to remember, besides the local
varieties of dialects, the various Greek and Albanian areas.
5 “...standard Italian is a dialect like any other form of
Italian and... it makes no sense to suppose that any one
dialect is in some way linguistically superior to any other”
(J.K. Chambers-P. Trudgill, La dialettologia, Bologna 1987).
6 Cf. C. Segre, Lingua, stile, società, Milan 1974.