Usseglio cent’anni dopo Terracini: la fonetica di un patois «con caratteristiche speciali»

This paper proposes a partial updating of the phonetic data illustrated by Benvenuto Terracini between 1910 and 1922 in his three contributions within the Archivio Glottologico Italiano, dedicated to “il parlare di Usseglio”. Terracini had conducted his investigations, described in what is generally considered his f irst work, after having been in contact with linguists who were working to establish a rigorous descriptive method. Nonetheless, his exposure to themes that were, at the time, at the core of the reflection in the volumes of the Revue des patois gallo-romans, instead of pushing him to a research on experimental phonetics, definitively directed him towards a model of analysis that retains a certain skepticism towards instrumental verification. Things are different for us nowadays: the affirmation of methods to test the phonological status, emerged after the complex dynamics that led to the separation of phoneticians and phonologists (1929-1931), and the experimentation carried out in the second half of the twentieth century, provide us with robust analytical strategies, and allow us to easily identify regularities and exceptions, using technologies for data fixing and experiment repeatability. This paper aims to deepen some aspects of Usseglio variety’s vocalism, through an experimental verification led on a sample of recordings collected with the help of two informants and the historical-phonetic questionnaire of the Atlas Linguistique Roman.