Sul merid. scalfare: voce patrimoniale o di prestito? Un'indagine attraverso le geografie testuali e dialettali

The paper examines the most ancient linguistic history of the merid. scalfare with the aim of discussing the probable etymological tradition (is it a Gallo-Romance loanword or a patrimonial linguistic item?) not only in the light of formal aspects but also in the light of the distribution of the ancient evidences in the texts of the XIII-XV centuries. It evaluates the semantics of the word and the condition of competition and coexistence with other semantically similar items (with particular regard to scaldare, a patrimonial item rarely attested in the most ancient southern texts); the paper investigates also the possible relationships of the ancient Italian occurrences with Occitan textual models. It aims to probe the linguistic perception that accompanies the use of scalfare in the ancient documentation received. The investigation combines the diatestual perspective with the historical-linguistic and geo-linguistic perspective.