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The purpose of the present paper is to reconstruct De Mauro’s interest in sign languages by emphasizing how the perspective on language he offered is fundamental in describing sign languages, but also to recall his civic commitment. From the very beginning of the research in Italian Sign language (LIS) De Mauro supported early investigations and fought for a recognition of LIS and its acceptance on par with other languages. His direct and indirect influence both in the description of this language and in the affairs of the Italian deaf community appears evident even if still little known and recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The functional category of general extenders (e.g. and so on, or something, etcetera) has been mainly analysed in previous work with a focus on spoken language. The aim of this paper is to further explore its use in standard written language, through the analysis of a corpus of Italian texts. The paper shows that general extenders in written language display several specific features that need to be considered within a general account of the class: (i) from a quantitative point of view, their frequency of use is lower than that of their spoken counterparts; (ii) forms like the abbreviation ecc./etc. and the ellipsis <...> are exclusive of written language; (iii) they are often employed in lists that exemplify a co-occurring referring expression, thus reinforcing text cohesion without the proper online categorization that regularly takes place in spoken language; (iv) their frequency of use is higher in formal texts, whereas in spoken language it increases in interactive and informal discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linguistic landscape of the Italian Salento is heterogeneous in terms of the graphic choices made by Salentino writers. Indeed, the dialect spoken in Salento has no established written standard, so the trend appears to be to primarily rely on Italian orthographic norm. Consequently, for the Salentino writers it's not easy to represent sounds that are not found in the Italian phonology. This paper investigates the graphic solutions adopted in the linguistic landscape of 77 Salento towns to represent the retroflex consonant, the voiceless postalveolar fricative, syntactic gemination and consonant lengthening in writing. The use of diacritics and of graphemes that are not common in the Italian script is also documented. Data show how the absence of orthographic norms in Salento leads both to a high variability, and to a general adherence to the Italian system. The result is often a hiding of phonetic and phonological forms that are typical of Salentino. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The psychoanalyst and pioneer of psychosomatics Georg Groddeck (1866-1934) gave talks in three international psychoanalytic congresses, the last one in Bad Homburg in 1925. Here he gave not only a paper but also a speech at the end of the social dinner which brings together all the participants of the congress. And he did not miss the opportunity to return, with his typical wit and impetuosity, to the thorny question of wild analysis and psychoanalytic training, two sides of a coin that was very dear to him. The text of this speech, published here for the first time in Italian, gives us the opportunity to enter, through the eyes of one of the direct participants, into the life of events that helped to orient and shape the training system of psychoanalysis that later evolved to the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the Neapolitan-Friderician School of Linguistics, focusing on the establishment of the subject as it was first taught in Italian universities and, in particular, at the University of Naples. A brief profile of all lecturers who taught linguistic subjects (i.e. Comparative Languages and Literatures, Grammar or Comparative History of Classical and Neo-Latin Languages, Sanskrit) is provided, tackling their main research interests; where significant, pupils who brought forward research in the spirit of the School are also listed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]