Bocconotto, fruttone e pasticciotto in Terra d’Otranto tra storia, onomasiologia e semasiologia

Abstract

The paper analyses the geographical, lexical and semantic variation of three words belonging to the language of gastronomy: bocconotto , pasticciotto and fruttone . These three gastronymes are widespread (at least, the first two) mainly in the central-southern area where, in many of the variants, they can be considered geosynonyms (and, sometimes, geohomonyms). However, they develop a singular lexical and semantic evolution in Puglia, in the Salento micro-area, which is the privileged object of investigation of this study. The geolinguistic variation leads to a situation of pseudo-geosynonymy that in this work we will try to examine by following the diachronic evolution of the three words characterized by lexical, onomasiological and semasiological variants. The lexical investigation, while not excluding other aspects considered important for the purposes of the survey (that is popular legends, newspaper articles, blogs, specialized websites), concerns above all the attestations that can be taken from ancient culinary literature and from lexicographic repertoires. Furthermore, a clarification is required: when we speak about the language of gastronomy, the reconstruction of the origin and diffusion of the entries is always a difficult task.