The TLIO textual corpus is the largest database available today of the Italian language prior to 1375. Divided into two databases, at April 8, 2026 it contains 30,443,280 words (occurrences) from 3,512 texts in the OVI Corpus of early Italian (or simply OVI Corpus), e all'8 aprile 2026 contiene 3.921 testi per 31.386.970 parole (occorrenze); la seconda è il Corpus TLIO per il vocabolario, cioè la parte lemmatizzata che serve di base al vocabolario, e contiene attualmente 3.531 testi per 24.388.719 occorrenze. Entrambi sono implementati in GATTO, in una versione di rete locale sulla quale viene sviluppata la lemmatizzazione; entrambi sono quindi resi interrogabili in rete mediante GattoWeb. Una versione non lemmatizzata del corpus è stata interrogabile in rete tramite ItalNet (questa versione è quella da più lungo tempo nota agli studiosi, essendo stata in rete dal 1998; la prima pubblicazione della versione GattoWeb è dell'ottobre 2005).
To report any errors or simply make recommendations, please send an email message to the responsibles for lemmatization, Elena Artale and Diego Dotto.
The ItalNet version of the OVI Database of early Italian has no longer been updated since 2005, and therefore it is no longer accurate or reliable.
Valentina Pollidori created the database of early Italian underpinning TLIO on the basis of materials previously prepared by the Accademia della Crusca. She managed it in collaboration with Franca Bertini until 2004. Since her untimely and tragic death, she has been replaced by Pär Larson as database manager.
The database has been implemented in GATTO by Andrea Boccellari, since the retirement in 2014 of Domenico Iorio-Fili, the author of the software.
The searchable ItalNet version, based on texts prepared by the OVI, is a product of the Italnet consortium (with Theodore J. Cachey Jr. as executive director; Mark Olsen as chief database programmer; and Christian Dupont as assistant programmer and web programming designer).
Until 2006, Roberta Cella was in charge of the lemmatization (with the collaboration of Patricia Frosini until 2002). Following Cella’s appointment to an academic postion, Elena Artale and Diego Dotto took over. For methods of lemmatization see: Piero Esperti, “Grammatichetta della lingua italiana ad uso del calcolatore”, in Al servizio del vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze, Accademia della Crusca, ed. by d’Arco Silvio Avalle (Firenze: Accademia della Crusca,1979), pp. 123-87. A first version of the database was implemented in DBT by Eugenio Picchi in collaboration with Elisabetta Marinai and made searchable online with a client-server system created by Lisa Biagini.
The retrieval of encoded information was performed by Rosalba Cigliana and Valentina Pollidori with the collaboration of Rita Marinelli and, for the IT part, by Joseph Camuglia, Manuela Sassi, Elisabetta Marinai, and Antonio Sapuppo. For the first working phase that led up to the database see, Avalle, Al servizio del vocabolario della lingua, cit.; Aldo Duro, “L'impianto del nuovo vocabolario: profilo storico” in La Crusca nella tradizione letteraria e linguistica italiana (Firenze: Accademia della Crusca, 1985), pp. 431-42; and Domenico De Robertis, “L'ufficio filologico dell'Opera del vocabolario, il suo impianto, il suo lavoro” in La Crusca nella tradizione letteraria e linguistica italiana, cit., pp. 443-51. We wish to thank all the scholars who contacted OVI to submit published texts or who have provided materials in electronic format, thus facilitating the development of the corpus. The bibliography of the cited literature includes “provisional” or “internal” editions prepared specifically for the corpus, as indicated on the individual bibliographic records.
