[1] Here Salvioni's linguistic studies, based on the school of neo-grammarians, took place with regularity and depth of commitment for five years, from 1878 to 1883.
His doctoral (i.e laurea) thesis, entitled Fonetica del dialetto moderno della città di Milano (Phonetics of the modern dialect of the city of Milan), was published in one volume in 1884.
He obtained his doctorate in 1883, two years later he was appointed a free docent in Turin and was then a professor ordinarius at the University of Pavia, until 1902.
In that year, after directing the prestigious journal Archivio glottologico italiano, he became Ascoli's successor at the Accademia scientifico-letteraria di Milano.
In 1907 he founded the comprehensive, multi-volume Vocabolario dei dialetti della Svizzera italiana (Vocabulary of the dialects of Italian Switzerland), to which he contributed until the last days of life, with the collaboration of his student Clemente Merlo (1879–1960).