Designations of the Cheek in the Italian Dialects

Abstract

1. Map 113 of the Linguistic and Ethnographic Atlas of Italy and Southern Switzerland (AIS), edited by Karl Jaberg and Jakob Jud, presents the dialectal equivalents of standard Italian guancia 'cheek'.' There are 447 recorded forms, representing 20 different types. Compare the accompanying sketch map. Maxilla, which appears at 112 points, prevails in the north in a great unified area which includes Piedmont, Liguria, western Emilia and adjacent northern Tuscany, western and northern Lombardy, and the part of southern Switzerland contiguous to Lombardy; in a large area in central and southern Venetia which is separated from the main territory; in a small territory in the south approximately where Latium, Campania, and the Abruzzi meet; and finally, in Sicily and Sardinia. Facies, which appears at 71 points, has two main territories: one in the south, in the Abruzzi, in Campania, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily; the other in the north, especially in Lombardy, apparently with offshoots in Emilia and the Marches as well as in Liguria; sporadically it appears in Venetia and Umbria, at the Umbrian borders of the Abruzzi, and in Sardinia* Wangja appears at 68 points in two main territories: primarily in central Italy, Umbria, and the Marches, and in those parts of Tuscany, Latium, and the Abruzzi which are contiguous to Umbria, with distinct offshoots towards the south as far as the Apulian territory, Campania, and Basilicata; then in the north, at the Venetian-Lombardian borders and at the Lombardian borders of Emilia, with three forms isolated in the northernmost part of Piedmont and two others in Venetia. Another form of the word, the type ganga, appears four times in south Calabria. Gnathus, recorded at 57 points, occupies an elongated area from Venetia across Emilia, the Marches, Umbria as far as the Abruzzi and towards Latium, with a small territory in northern Lombardy and south Switzerland; it appears sporadically in Liguria and Tuscany. *Gauta is recorded at 44 points in a homogeneous area in Tuscany, with offshoots in Emilia and southern Lombardy; it is to be found sporadically and peripherically in northern Venetia and southern Switzerland, at the French linguistic border, and finally in Sicily. These are the main types.