Italian philologist; of Jewish family, born at Görz, at an early age showed a marked linguistic talent. In 1854 he published his Studii orientali e linguistici, and in 1860 was appointed professor of philology at Milan. He made various learned contributions to the study of Indo-European and Semitic languages, and also of the gipsy language, but his special field was the Italian dialects. He founded the Archivio glottologico italiano in 1873, publishing in it his Saggi Ladini, and making it in succeeding years the great organ of original scholarship on this subject. He was universally recognized as the greatest authority on Italian linguistics, and his article in the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed., revised for the 11th ed.) became the classic exposition in English.
