Formicola nei 'verbali' di Rohlfs. Lingua e cultura di una comunità contadina della Campania settentrionale

The paper proposes a reflection on some aspects of the life and the language of Formicola, a small rural community of the province of Caserta, in northern Campania. The reflection stems from the analysis of the ethnographic and linguistic notes taken by Gerhard Rohlfs in Formicola, during the fieldwork carried out for the Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz in 1925. The consultation of this archive material (including photographs and drawings) allows to get some useful information both on the theoretical approach to linguistic investigation applied by the German researcher and on his adventure as fieldworker in rural communities of southern Italy. In addition, these notes offer the occasion to reflect on some Italian and dialectal lexical items. In fact, the paper contains an examination of the locution a staglio ('paid by the unit'), emerged in Formicola during Rohlfs' investigation.