Today, the Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (TLIO), the first truly historical dictionary of Old Italian (up to 1400 AD ca.) is accessible through a new improved web interface, yielding immediate access to the almost 23,000 entries and providing information in an even easier way than before. Selecting a headword, the different meanings are displayed, followed by the respective examples. Clicking on the tabs located between the headword and the first meaning, more information is given: a list of the different forms present in the database; the etymology; the oldest example of the word in the corpus; the distribution of the earliest examples from each geolinguistical area; linguistic and other notes. The yellow 'kitten' icon (symbolizing the software GATTO, see below) leads to the complete documentation of the word in the textual database. The advanced search options permits searches not only by headwords but also by word forms: thus, for instance, a form like "vera" -not yet present as an entry -may reveal itself as an Old Venetian form of "guerra" 'war'. The search within the definitions makes it possible to find entries containing indications like "Astr." (words pertaining to the fields of astronomy and astrology), "Dir." (juridical terms), "Mus." (musical terms), "Zool." (names of animals), and many more.
The TLIO, however, constitutes a novelty for more than one reason. We are talking about a a dynamic dictionary published on the Internet (http://tlio.ovi.cnr.it /TLIO or http://dizionario.ovi.cnr.it), the entries of which may be modified at any time. The dictionary is not compiled in a rigid alphabetical order: the published entries (at a pace of approximately 2000 a year) cover almost entirely the letters A- and B-, an ample part of the segment C-E and several hundreds entries pertaining to the letters F-Z.
The TLIO is based on first-hand research. To this purpose, OVI researchers have created a huge textual database (Corpus TLIO, http://tlioweb.ovi.cnr.it) which at present contains 2000 Old Italian texts with 21,857,478 words and is constantly growing. A great number of these texts have been revised and corrected in accordance with the manuscript readings. The database is implemented by GATTO, a software for research in lexicography and linguistics created and developed by OVI, and it is accessibile online through GattoWEB, also developed by OVI.
The TLIO is the first dictionary dealing equally with all Old Italian linguistic varieties, including those that were to survive only as local dialects (this choice is due to the fact that before the XVIth century AD no standard Italian language existed). Accordingly, the database contains not only Florentine and other Tuscan writings, but also texts from Lombardy, the Veneto, Umbria and Latium, Sicily, etc. Under each meaning, examples are given in strict chronological order across the different linguistic varieties, without establishing anachronistic hierarchies.
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