Deissi ambientale nei toponimi dialettali di Piuro (SO) tra «livellamento cartografico» e realtà etnolinguistica

In the first section of this paper, focused on the toponyms in the dialects of Piuro (Valchiavenna, SO), the concepts of “cartographic thought” and “cartographic leveling” are introduced. These notions are used to understand how cartography contributes, through the dissemination of objective representations of space, to the loss or deep restructuring of certain features of oral toponymic systems. Among these features is ground-oriented deixis, a kind of spatial deixis widely attested throughout the Alps, where space reference is anchored in one or more intersubjectively shared points (origo) and is expressed by means of positional adverbs in association with toponyms. The second section illustrates the ground-oriented deixis system in the dialects spoken in Piuro by the last inhabitants of the hamlets of Savogno and Dasile, analyzing how cartographic thought currently influences the use of ground-oriented deictic references. Therefore, the study shows how a linear and dynamic vision of the origo helps clarify some ostensible contradictions in the description of ground-oriented deixis, highlighting the ethnolinguistic significance of factors such as the position and path of pasturing routes or the continuity of the visual field. Lastly, examples of associations between positional adverbs and toponyms drawn from early modern period documents are provided.