An example from the
repertory of Teresa Viarengo: "La pastora e il
lupo", rec. Roberto Leydi. Note from the editor: The following item is the second of
two articles on the Piedmontese Ballad, received from Riccardo
Grazioli.
The first article has been published in ITEM 2.
Diacritic signs have been realized in the following way:
In the following pages we shall deal with the presence in the ballads of Northern Italy --and more specifically in those of Piedmont-- of two particles that are extraneous to the ordinary language of local speech: _s'_ in contexts such as
_S'_a l'[a\]n pia-ro, l'an li[a\]-ro, l'an mn[a\]-lo 'nt la tur d' Paris. [They captured him, they bound him, they took him to the tower of Paris.]
and _d'_ in contexts such as
j'[e\] _d'_ina barb[e/]ra [there is a woman barber]
After having analysed the possible origins and the textual loci in which these particles occur in the reference material [1], we shall suggest a single analytical context within which we may explain their presence. At the end of this paper we shall pause briefly to deal with the means that a given linguistic system may offer the singer in order that the desired pragmatic effects may be obtained.
The occurrence of the particle _s'_ in Piedmontese ballads is focalized by Terracini (1957) in an article whose conclusions were instantly refuted by Spitzer (1958) and then effectively forgotten (despite the wide-ranging scope of Italian ballad studies) until very recently when Serenella Baggio --taking her lead from Terracini's work-- proposed an interesting syntactic solution to the thorny problem of interpreting what is currently thought to be the first document in vernacular Italian, the "Indovinello veronese", which paleographers date between the end of the VIIIth and the beginning of the IXth centuries (Baggio 1993).
An example from the
repertory of Teresa Viarengo: "La pastora e il
lupo", rec. Roberto Leydi.
The starting point of Terracini's analysis is a _complainte_ collected at Usseglio inspired by an event that might be described as a "nasty business". Despite the text's substantially limited range of linguistic expressiveness, Terracini notes how this _complainte_ uses compositional modules belonging to the Piedmontese ballad tradition, which he had variously analysed both from a linguistic standpoint --with reference to the French influence on the texts (Terracini 1914)-- and from a wider cultural-historical viewpoint (Terracini 1923; 1959).
By summing up the passages that Terracini considered relevant in the _complainte_ under analysis, we can pick out the way the articulated discourse unfolds in a series of successive links, devoid of the autonomy of a verse but nevertheless capable of delineating, in the traditional style of the Piedmontese ballad, an action that proceeds by juxtaposed degrees (p. 68), the articulation of the tale via a series of discrete stages without development, a typical procedure in which we can discern one of the essential features of the traditional style (pp. 68; 71; 76), the use of formulaic material to emphasize the presence of techniques constituted according to traditional canons (pp. 66; 76; as well as the fact that the composers of the _complainte_ only see the climactic points of the action, overlooking the circumstances leading up to the climactic moments and all the coming and going and the play of the parties (p.71).
Having concluded this summary analysis of the linguistic- expressive macrocharacteristics of the text of the _complainte_, Terracini focalizes the presence in this text of the particle _s'_ (with the variants _si_, _se_, _s'a_, _s'al_, _s'u_), which has no reason to be in standard Piedmontese (i.e., the linguistic basis of the text) nor even in the Franco-Proven_al patina that a few rare local passages of the text might suggest. This particle, which Terracini's paper basically tries to link to the French _ce_[2], having no reason to exist in everyday Piedmontese speech, obliged Terracini to find it an expressive function attested by the singularity of its distribution in the ballad as a whole: "in via approssimata almeno --he noted-- _s'a_ spesseggia nei momenti di maggior tensione lirica o drammatica del racconto, quelli dove pi• intensa [e\] l'adesione a forme tradizionali" (Terracini 1957: 78). In a narrative scheme where each moment is conceived as a vision of a fragment of reality, the particle s', in other words, probably functions as an element that "introduces" [_presenta_] those moments: it was therefore used simply to mark the points where the succession of images combines to outline the narrative.
Having isolated the particle _s'_ in the _complainte_, Terracini goes on to estimate its presence in the corpus of ballads of the traditional Piedmontese collections (N, F1, F2, S1, S2), noting how in the field of these works the particle exists along with a whole spectrum of emphatic values within which the vague range of its uses adopted by the authors of the _complainte_ can easily be fitted. He then launches into a detailed examination of the occurrences of _s'_ in the ballads, rediscovering in them traditional and crystallized contexts of use: from those that were most likely to be present in the mnemonic baggage of the singers (those which were more clearly established and most frequent, semantically speaking) to echoes that were semantically vaguer but imbued nonetheless with clear expressive value. These are the principal contexts isolated by Terracini:
- the arrest: [N:5, 1-2]
Lo re Luis no va la cassa, no va la cassa anturn d'Paris. _S'_a l'[a\]n pia-ro, l'an li[a\]-ro, l'an mn[a\]-lo 'nt la tur d' Paris. [King Luis goes a-hunting, goes a-hunting near Paris. They captured him, they bound him, they took him to the tower of Paris.]
[N:9, 13]
_S'_a l'[a\]n pi[a\] cust pcit anfan, l'[a\]n port[a/]i-lo a la gi[u:]st[i/]sia [They have taken this little boy, they have taken him before the judge]
- the abduction: [N:102, 3-4]
_S'_a l'[a\]n rub[a\], _s'_a l'[a\]n mein[a\]-la via, _S'_a l'[a\]n mein[a\]-la via luntan d'pais. [They have stolen her, they have taken her away, they have taken her away far from the country.]
[N:46A, 5]
_S'_i l'an pi[a\]-la p[e:]r sue bianche man [They have taken her by her white hands] - the climactic moments of the love story:
[N:43A, 8]
An fazent-je la limozna _s'_a m'[a\] tuc[a\] la man [While I gave him charity he touched my hand]
[N:4A,3]
t[u:]ti tre _s'_a l'[a\]n baz[e\] [all three kissed her]
- various episodic points, semantically less marked than the previous ones, but nevertheless decisive regarding the situation presented by the ballad:
["Le tre colombe", S2: 60]
o _s'_a l'[a\] fer[i\] la bela [he has injured the beautiful maiden]
[N:96.a II, 3]
_s'_a s'[e\] pi[a\]-se [u:]n galantin [she married a gallant]
- the "arrival" of a character:
[N:55A, 8]
[E:]l prim giurn ch' la bela a canta, so mar_ _s'_a l'[e\] arriv[e\] [On the first day the beautiful maiden sang, her husband arrived]
- the succession of the various phases of the action; here particular emphasis is laid on the moments that indicate the passage of time:
[N:37A, 17]
_S'_a n'a ven la matinaja [Morning comes]
[N:133, 1]
_S'_a n'en ven [e:]l prim d[i\] de m[a\] [The first day of May come]
- situations of conflict:
[N:35, 10]
O se l'aqua vi nij[e/]isa, _s'_a m' faria [u:]n gran piaz[i\] [If the water did drown you, it would make me most glad]
[N:35, 13]
O _s'_a l'[e\] d[e:]l re m[e\] pare, o _s'_a l'[a\] lass[a\]-m- lo a mi. [This belongs to the king my father, he left it to me.]
- the insistence of a situation:
[N:53A, 25-28]
so padre _s'_a l'[a\] ben dit: [...] so padre _s'_a l'[a\] ben dit: [well did his father say]
- the introduction of specific characters in lines just starting the text:
[N:47,1]
_S'_a i sun tri fradei an Fransa [There are three brothers in France]
[N:65A, 1]
_S'_a j'era tre bei giuvo [There were three handsome young men]
- the introduction of generic textual objects:
[N:43D, 19]
_S'_a j'[e\] pa tante f[o\]ie [There are not as many leaves]
- the introduction of concrete circumstances:
[N:28.b.III, 6]
_S'_a l'[e\] '1 prim giurn dle nosse [It is the first day of the marriage]
[N:144A, 3]
O _s'_a m'[e\] bin pi car [u:]n p[o/]ver paizan [a poor peasant is far dearer to me]
- the introduction announcing a description of a state of affairs:
[N:135, 1-2]
Castello di Verr[u:]a _s'_a l'[e\] tan bin piant[a\], Piant[a\] s[u:] cule roche, ch'a i passa 'l Po de l[a\]. [The castle of Verrua is so well built, built upon those rocks, where the Po runs alongside]
- the introduction of a new character in the course of the text:
[N:73A, 1-3]
Sun tre tambur ch'a venho da la guera. 'L pi bel dei tre l'avia 'n buchet de roze. La fia d[e:]l re _s'_a l'era a la finestra [There are three drummer boys come from the war. The best looking of the three had a bunch of roses. The king's daughter was at the window]
A short time after the publication of Terracini's article
Spitzer also wrote a piece on _s'_. Spitzer adopted a position
contrary to that of Terracini, in that he opted decidedly in
favour of an endogenous origin for the particle _s'_. Rather than
a loan from the French, Spitzer opined that _s'_ derived from the
Italian asseverative _s__ (= _cos__ [so]), a notion that, as we
have had occasion to note, Terracini did not exclude from the
particle's range of possible origins.
Spitzer argued his case with stringent logic: the asseverative
_s[i\]_, i.e. the consecutive _s__, could in fact explain cases
like the Piedmontese _si l'an pi[a\]-la_ [_s[i\]_ = _cos__] as it
is found moreover in various traditional French ballads (e.g.,
"ci [mistaken spelling of _si_] l'on me prend; ci l'on me
mene") that reflects the old French usage "si me prend
on" (Spitzer 1958: 100). Besides, according to Spitzer, the
asseverative _s[i\]_ could easily explain all the cases of _s'_
listed by Terracini, insofar as:
In support of this asseverative/consecutive interpretation of _s'_, Spitzer quotes numerous examples of _s[i\]_ found in the language "degli antichi cantastorie alto-italiani": in the language of the Franco-Venetian _Orlandino_, in that of _Rainardo_, and of the _Vita Beati Alexii_, nor does he disdain to quote texts of non-Northern origin such as the _Ritmo_ of Cassino and the _Ritmo su Sant'Alessio_. With regard to the passage that gave Terracini the idea of the French _ce_ ("_s'_an sun dui garsun"), in Spitzer's view this was a minor case, which would appear to correspond to a grammaticalization of _s[i\]_.
Moreover, according to Spitzer, the frequency with which the
_s'_ is inserted in the material analysed by Terracini is
probably attributable to the canons of the "stile
legato". The opposite of the "staccato" technique,
which presupposes an introduction by juxtaposition of the events,
the proliferation of _s'_ in the traditional Piedmontese texts
would seem to play a role parallel to that of the repetitions
(e.g., "l'an fala... l'an fait...tra lur... tra lur",
etc.) noted by Terracini in connection with the distichs forming
the _complainte_ of Usseglio (cf. Terracini 1957:9).
In other words Spitzer more or less demolishes Terracini's
original idea, although at the end of his article he concedes
that Terracini might have been right in saying that the _s'_ in
the Piedmontese ballads-- like the interrogative _-ti_ in the
traditional French compositions or the pleonastic _wohl_ in the
traditional German compositions-- could have become a mere sign
of "the traditional poetic style".
Baggio's contribution is in some ways similar to Spitzer's analysis. Baggio rejects Terracini's hypothesis, which is linked to a substantial acknowledgment of a central bond regarding the _s'_ and the impersonal pronoun of the French type _ce_, in favour of the idea that _s'_ may be traced back to the Latin _sic_. Following Terracini's line, Baggio notes that in general --apart from archaic exceptions-- _s'_ is found before the subject pronoun, even if impersonal, while it also puts the subject in a thematic position, a fact that is furthermore confirmed by Terracini's observation that _s'_ can emphasize the pronominal recovery of a distant subject already expressed before the interposition of a proposition. Still according to Baggio, it is precisely this function that clinches the relationship between the _s'_ of the Piedmontese ballads and the _s[i\]_ (lat. _sic_) "di ripresa" proper to the Italian syntax of the origins (Baggio 1993: 10).
As far as the semantics of _s'_ is concerned, Baggio notes the apparent decisiveness of the habit of using it to introduce unexpected arrivals in which the Verb-Subject sequence, perhaps preceded by an impersonal subject, becomes unmarked (i.e., normal in an introductory utterance where the verb does not have much semantic significance), whereas on the other hand the Subject-Verb sequence (where not only the verb, but also the entire phrase finds its enunciation in the rhema ) becomes marked. Baggio also emphasizes the fact that it is precisely _s[i\]_ (lat. _sic_; the _s'_ in Terracini's material) that could indicate the pragmatic markedness of the utterance, pausing to note the interesting fact that, in the Piedmontese ballads, the "introduction" can occur alternatively with either the initial _s[i\]_ serving as the absolute sentence opener or with the subject placed in a thematic position before the pronominal recovery introduced by _s__ (cf. Terracini 1957:78: "_s'_al [e\] rivaie i carabini[e\] [the _carabinieri_ have arrived]; N:55A,8: "[E:]l prim giurn ch' la bela a canta, so mar[i\] _s'_a l'[e\] arriv[e\]" [On the first day the beautiful maiden sang, her husband arrived.]). This would constitute an evident sign of the particle's role, a role that is constant within different syntactic configurations (Baggio 1993:12).
In addition, with reference to pointers passed on by Segre, who had told Terracini about the frequency of _c'est_ with an "introductory" function in the captions to the illustrations for "Li bestiares d'amours" by Richard de Fornival (cf. Terracini 1957:92), Baggio notes how in some cases the reference to the image (e.g., "ce sont li dois amant") contextually allows for an explanation of the _ecco qui_ type of deictic content, pointing out moreover how --in parallel with a probable deletion of the syntactic bond introducing an explicative relative in the Piedmontese ballads (cf. Terracini 1957: 88)-- one must postulate the deletion of a _che_ for the "Indovinello veronese" too. The incipit of the "Indovinello" ("Se pareba boves, alba pratalia araba"), by virtue of this deletion --in any case not infrequent in ancient vernaculars (cf. Rohlfs 1966-69: Ý483)-- and by virtue of _se_, which does not act as a reflexive pronoun, but as an "introducer" of the object of the metaphorical image of the "Indovinello" (with the significance of a deictic emphasis whose meaning is comparable to an _ecco_), should therefore be interpreted as "Ecco apparivano dei buoi che aravano..." (Baggio 1993: 14).
The strange and widely attested positioning of the particle _d'_ before the indefinite singular article in Northern Italian traditional ballads is focalized in Salvioni (1902). Appreciated by Spitzer, who included it among the "Meisterwerke der romanischen Sprachenwissenschaft", Salvioni's work delimits the syntactic contexts of _d'_-- which does not admit of a partitive interpretation-- with great precision. Here are the contexts in which _d'_ is found placed before the masculine and feminine indefinite articles:
[N:42A,11]
l'[e\] _d'_[u:]n margh[e\] [he is an Alpine herdsman] [N:53A, 20]
S'a j'[e\] _d'_[u:]n bel arborin [there is a nice bush] [N:77E, 5]
De l[a\]ghe passa _d'_[u:]n cavaliero [There a knight comes]
[N:76D, 3]
_d'_[u:]n pias[i\] mi voria [I should like a favour] [N:11D, 12]
_d'_[u:]n cavalo ti far[o\] d[e\] [I shall let you have a horse] [N:77E, 5]
_d'_[u:]n sass int l'aqua s'u gh'[a\] tir[a\] [he has thrown a stone in the water] b)
[N:12A, 6]
A l'[a\]n ved[u:\] _d'_[u:]na fieta [they saw a maiden] [N:19B, 11]
a pianteran _d'_[u:]n fiur [they shall plant a flower] [F1:29, 13]
farumma _d'_ina tumba [we shall dig a grave]
[N:76D, 4]
_D'_[u:]na noteja dorm[i\] con vui [to sleep a night with you] [N:65F, 2]
L'an si[a\] _d'_[u:]na giurneia [They mowed for a day] Then follow the annotations of particular contexts, such as the case in which the noun phrase is isolated. These are responses to questions; the syntactic function emerges from the questions:
[N:26C]
Cosa ti fen da cena [...]? _D'_una anguilletta arrosto [What did they make thee for dinner? A roasted eel] [N:132, 4-5]
Coz' j'[e\]-lo s[u:], Martina? _D'_[u:]n bel piumass [What are you wearing, Martina? A fine feather]
Salvioni considers the problem to be limited to traditional poetry: in a footnote he makes only passing mention of examples that attest to usage in ordinary speech. And it is precisely in traditional poetry that he concentrates his search for a solution to the mysterious appearance of the particle.
Traditional poetry --according to Salvioni-- was the source from which there sprang a generalization of a construction that was originally grammatically motivated before it spread to extraneous cases. The initial nucleus was probably a very common formula in the ballads, a formula including the verb "cantare" (to sing), which governs an object like "canzone" (song). The insertion of _d'_ in this prototypical formula probably arose by analogy with verbs of "saying", in which the object is reinterpreted as a _complemento di argomento_, which is normally governed by _di_. In order to justify the age of this nucleus Salvioni offers medieval examples with "raccontare", "dire", "cantare" and objects such as "novella", "leggenda", "canzone" in which the indefinite article is preceded by _di_ (e.g.,"Cantar me plas _d'_una can_on novella"). This leads to an observation. In poetic language, whether traditional or not, there is a tendency to seek gratification in the form of "peregrine preziosit[a\]" [singular preciosities] (p. 91). According to Salvioni, the genesis of _d'_ had been misunderstood insofar as it had been taken by the singers as an embellishment, to be used as default by traditional poetry and thence extended to wider contexts.
In an article published in 1991 Paola Beninc[a\] is benignly critical of Salvioni. Setting out her argument from a strictly syntactical standpoint, Beninc[a\] notes how Salvioni's solution does not manage to, nor indeed even attempt to, tackle the problem of why the phenomenon is found precisely in the contexts identified in such detail. Salvioni's idea that a syntactic construction is generalized outwith its cases in accordance with the modalities identified is, for Beninc[a\], an idea that is to say the least perplexing. The fundamental objection that can be raised against Salvioni is this: it would be possible to adopt his solution only if it effectively took account of the entire phenomenology in question. But Salvioni's hypothesis does not explain why the construction, even if we admit that its origins were as he maintains, was extended precisely to the contexts quoted. This is what leads Beninc[a\] to take up the matter of the noun phrases attested by the examples quoted by Salvioni. All the cases of subjects quoted --she notes-- are cases of subjects belonging to the class of intransitives requiring the auxiliary "to be". And this is a class of verb that has been --along with a group of syntactic structures such as the passive, the reflexive, and the impersonal-- the subject of numerous very important linguistic papers concerned with the so-called "unaccusative hypothesis" (Perlmutter 1978; Burzio 1987).
Taking her lead from this hypothesis, Beninc[a\] wonders if it is justifiable to content oneself with the extension of a typical formulaic prototype, or if it is not necessary to look for an explanation in the fact that this extension concerns a precise set of verbal contexts, that is to say the set of indefinite noun phrases governed directly by a verb.
With this in mind, Beninc[a\] --also on the basis of medieval examples different from those quoted by Salvioni, which in her view do not amount to examples of the construction under study-- suggests that the addition of a _d'_ to a singular indefinite noun phrase (in cases that do not admit of a partitive interpretation or of some complement) is exclusively syntactically motivated. "Quand'anche fosse originato da un'imitazione di un complemento di argomento frequente nei moduli narrativi popolari --she notes-- l'uso di _d'un(a)_ si [e\] localizzato nella lingua in contesti sintattici che non trovano un motivo in questa supposta origine; dato che questi contesti mostrano di essere un insieme 'naturale', nel senso che si tratta di contesti interessati da altri fenomeni sintattici, dobbiamo supporre che la sua ragione abbia relazione diretta o indiretta con qualche tratto sintattico presente in questi contesti" (Beninc[a\] 1991:50).
At this point Beninc[a\] finds relevance in Belletti's study regarding phenomena deriving from various languages that may be found in the same contexts (Belletti 1988), where Belletti proposes that in unaccusative structures, in which a verb governs its object without taking the accusative case, the verb has the capacity to assign an inherent case, i.e., the partitive case (cf. Beninc[a\]: 50). Perlmutter's and Burzio's theory would therefore seem to support the idea that the cases in which _d'_ appears constitute a set of motivated syntactic contexts, while Belletti's theory provides an accurate motivation for the fact that it is precisely in these cases that the noun phrase takes the partitive form.
Terracini's notes on _d'_ (1957:91 ff.) are of a completely different tenor. For Terracini the particle appertains explicitly to the craft of the singer, and in Piedmont at least it performs the "ufficio presentatore" [introductory task] characteristic of _s'_: its poetic tonality as well as its eminently expressive nature are taken as certain. And, faced with Salvioni's views, who takes _d'_ to refer to an embellishment "da venire senz'altro adottato tradizionalmente dalla poesia popolaresca e da essa esteso ad esprimere, al di l[a\] della formula originaria, l'oggetto diretto che si introduce mediante l'indeterminato", he stresses the unitary nature of _s'_ and _d'_, which he equates in the sphere of folklore with the technical characteristics of the _mise en sc[e\]ne_. In traditional Piedmontese poetry --he notes-- "tutto in un certo senso [e\] straniero [...] e ad un tempo ogni elemento straniero che particolarmente accada di rilevare [e\] immediatamente interpretabile come elemento di stile" (p. 94). This is another way of saying that _s'_ and _d'_, which he derives from formulas of non-Italian origin, would not have enjoyed such success in Northern Italy were it not for their "exotic" nature.
From a specifically textual point of view the insertion of _d'_ and _s'_ in the ballads and more in general in North Italian traditional texts can with certainty be traced back to Labov's concept of "evaluation" (Labov 1972, Mirrer-Singer 1980, Mirrer 1987, Fleischman1986, Fleischman 1990). Proof of the validity of this can be found in the various conclusions reached by those who did not deal with _s'_ and _d'_ from a strictly syntactical standpoint. I am alluding especially to Terracini, who, in his attempt to focus on the use of the two particles in question, refers to a set of contexts that define a domain already occupied by evaluative features such as switching from the past tense to the "historic" or "narrative" present tense, the use of intensifiers, comparatives, or negative predications. By way of example we have:
1: 
---------------------------- 2: 
[N28.c IV, 11]
La guera a l'[e\] st[a/]ita lunga, _s'_a l'[a\] bin d[u:]r[a\] set agn. [The war was long, it lasted seven years.] [N:39,4]
[E:]l pi cit l'[e\] sensa b[a/]ila, _s'_a n'in fa che tan piur[e\]. [The baby boy has no wet nurse, all he does is cry and cry.] where the subject is first seen in a rather generic way, before it is taken up again with more determination and represented with _s'_. This recovery, found in a great many contexts in the Piedmontese ballads, may also be traced back to evaluative mechanisms, for which moreover a repetition is already a symptom of evaluation (cf. Fleischman 1990).
Nonetheless it should be remembered that _s'_ and _d'_ fit naturally into the sphere of the evaluative component of a narrative, their presence in the North Italian texts lends itself to considerations of great importance for the definition of the union between the linguistic materials adopted and the way they are used, as well as the accessibility of these materials for the perfecting of the text. A polishing of the text, moreover, that goes beyond the use of macrocomponents (for example themes and motifs, formulaic settings or fixed phrases of the type noted by Borregaard 1933) to arrive at minor characteristics.
In doing this it is necessary not only to refer to the language, but also to its history, and to the interaction between the latter and the various linguistic areas. For example, a typical case is that of _d'_, regarding whose insertion frequent reference has been made to North Italy, incuding Tuscany. Now, a part of Tuscany is associated with Northern Italy because of a well- known syntactic module such as that regarding the presence in the language of a system of clitic subject pronouns, whose grammar is in some respects comparable to that of Northern dialect systems (cf. Bracco et al. 1985). This correlation, as far as the analysis of the possible contexts of _d'_ is concerned, would seem highly significant, and yet it would be weakened by Salvioni's observation that _d'_ also originated in Pisa, which today does not belong to that part of Tuscany with clitic subject pronouns. However an examination of AIS documents reveals that right up to the Twenties there were still clear traces of subject clitics in Pisan speech (Cf. Beninc[a\] 1991: 44). This fact may well contribute to bolster up the hypothesis regarding the importance of the correlation.
#. This paper was read at the conference "Ballads in a National Context", June 26-30, 1994, University of the Faroe Islands, Torshavn, and its revised version will be published in the proceedings of the conference.
1. Here follow the sources used in the paper: CEC: a collection including approximately 300 ballads recorded on tape by various researchers during the years 1960/1988. The collection, edited by the "Centro Etnologico Canavesano," is for the most part made up of hitherto unpublished material. CMP: E. Cappelletti, R. Mamino, M. Pregliasco, _Sopravvivenza e vitalit[a\] del canto popolare nell'alta langa. Ricerca coordinata da G. L. Beccaria_, Storia e cultura locale in Piemonte - Studi e ricerche, n. 4, 1981.
In the course of this paper, in order to indicate the texts contained in the published collections, we shall refer, whenever possible, to the progressive numeration supplied by the publication (e.g., text no. 1, in version A, contained in collection N will be designated as N:1A, and followed by an indication of any verses quoted), or, if a reference to a numbered order is not possible, we shall refer directly to the title assigned by the editor of the collection and to the page number (the text "Le tre colombe", published on page 60 of S2 will therefore be referred to as "Le tre colombe", S2: 60).
2. It should nevertheless be remembered that Terracini does not exclude the notion that _s'_ might have other interpretations, including the asseverative hypothesis (Cf. Terracini 1957: 78; 82; 84).
Riccardo Grazioli
Archivi della Comunicazione Orale
V. Melchiorre Gioia, 121
20125 Milan
ITALY
Archivio Storico:- ex Dipartimento di Musica e Spettacolo - Universita' di Bologna