Le fonti medievali del Vocabolario dei dialetti salentini (VDS)

The lexical heritage of Salento, Apulian subregion, was studied by one of the most eminent lexicographers of the last century, Gerhard Rohlfs, who collected it in the Vocabolario dei Dialetti Salentini (VDS), published in three volumes between 1956 and 1961. Over the years, this work has been recognized as a masterpiece of dialect lexicography, and has attracted the attention of various scholars, who have carefully examined its various components, such as gestation, structure, etc. Yet, despite some investigation has focused on the sources, a specific study on the contribution of the medieval ones to the drafting of the VDS entries is lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to systematically assess such contribution from both quantitative and qualitative terms, setting the sources used by the Vocabulary in the detailed textual panorama of Salento's vulgar Middle Ages.