Dottorato in SCIENZE DOCUMENTARIE, LINGUISTICHE E LETTERARIE

Titolo della tesi: «Storicità, socialità, razionalità»: Giacomo Devoto linguista storico e teorico

The thesis aims to reconstruct Giacomo Devoto’s (1897 - 1974) contributions as a historical and theoretical linguist, positing that his work constitutes a comprehensive theoretical, stylistic, and historical-linguistic system. In this system, individual aspects support one another, intertwining and converging towards a unified goal: investigating and understanding the concept of the history of a language both in general and in particular, leading to the development of a historicity scheme that considers the linguistic phenomenon in its full complexity. By aligning with the few scholars who have continued to discuss Devoto’s linguistic-cultural legacy, this work seeks to highlight and emphasize his theoretical and methodological contributions to historical-linguistic research, since Devoto was one of the few scholars to explicitly define his conception of language history, systematically addressing the issue of the historicity of linguistic phenomena. The six chapters of the thesis trace the evolution of Devoto’s thought, highlighting elements of continuity and innovation through an analysis of key milestones represented by his major works: Gli Antichi Italici (1931), Storia della lingua di Roma (1940), Pensieri sul mio tempo (1945), Studi di stilistica (1950), I fondamenti della storia linguistica (1951), and Profilo di storia linguistica italiana (1953).