Abstract

This paper focuses on that particular grammatical category known as the ideophone, typical of oral languages. It gathers together the ideophones recorded in the Roman lexicography and/or documented in literary texts in the Roman dialect or in mistilingual writings, which present dialect inserts on an Italian linguistic basis, from the 16th to the 20th century. An initial repertory of Roman ideophones is thus prepared, allowing a concrete evaluation of the weight of the imitative component in the dialect variety examined here, also in relation to Italian