Volume 74, Issue 1 - Special Issue: The Alps as a linguistic area; Issue Editors: Livio Gaeta and Guido Seiler

As is well-known, the Alps are a zone of long-standing, intensive contact and multilingualism among Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages and varieties. In this introductory paper, some reflections are presented on the viability of the Sprachbund hypothesis to encompass the occurring phenomena of convergence observed throughout the whole area.

Middle and Upper German dialects exhibit a phonological process of s -retraction neutralizing alveolar [s] to palatoalveolar [ʃ] in preconsonantal contexts. Based on a corpus of dialect data from own fieldwork, dialect atlases and dictionaries, we examine this process in Germanic, Romance and Slavic varieties of the Eastern Alps. It is attested in most Germanic varieties and in Ladin and Rumantsch, but not in other Romance varieties or in the Slovenian dialects of the region. We propose that the emergence of s -retraction may be supported by language contact, but crucially relies on specific diachronic changes affecting the sibilant inventories of the varieties displaying it.

The diffusion of particle-verbs in Rhaeto-Romance and Italo-Romance dialects is surveyed on the basis of a selection of 13 AIS maps presenting the responses to 12 input sentences referring to different events. Particle-verbs are more frequent in the coding of motion than non-motion events. The geographic diffusion appears to be biased towards the Central and the Eastern Alps and the Central Po Plain. The distribution of particle-verbs is shown to correlate with the presence of systems of topographical deixis and to result from processes of language shift from Romance to Germanic in the mountains. Diffusion in the plain has resulted from inter-dialectal contact along cross-Alpine trade routes.

In the context of the Alps – a broad region characterized by common geographical and cultural features – the isolation caused by the geographical setting makes it possible for conservative strategies to survive from the Middle Ages through present times. This isolation, however, does not exclude that conservative patterns evolve into innovative strategies. To illustrate this, we surveyed causative and progressive constructions in the historical German minority varieties on the southern side of the Alps. Greschòneytitsch, a particularly dynamic variety, shows the remarkable development of a causative particle, tònz , and the grammaticalization of an adverb, eister , into a marker of progressive aspect.

In this paper, I will deal with the diffusion pattern of the progressive periphrases (P ROG P ER ) attested in the minority languages that are present in the areas of Swiss Grisons, Trentino-Alto Adige and Friulian Carnia. I will individualize on the one hand the vectors of diffusion between the standard languages and the minority varieties; on the other hand, I will explain the mechanism of adaptation or re-elaboration of the borrowed structure in the replica language. Finally, I will pinpoint which of this structure replication seems to be the result of an internal development witnessed in the Alpine area.

Violations of the Doubly-filled COMP filter (DFCs), most notably in the context of embedded questions, can be observed in Germanic, Romance, and even Slavic varieties in the Alpine regions. Using the direct survey technique, we examine DFC-phenomena in several dialects of Southern Bavarian (including language islands) and the adjacent Italian regions (Venetian, Friulian, etc.) in order to check for relevant similarities as well as differences. Whereas there is some indication for a structural parallelism between Germanic and Romance in terms of the wh-items involved, both language groups are set apart when it comes to DFCs in root sentences.

This chapter deals with some characteristics of two more-or-less isolated Slavic varieties in the south-eastern Alps: Resian and Carinthian Slovene, whose nearest relative among the Slavic standard languages is Slovene. Both have been for centuries in situations of total language contact with Romance and Germanic varieties. I will concentrate on the come passive. At least in Resian, it developed due to direct Romance influence, which could be claimed to be the overall reason for this grammatical feature in the Alps. The situation in Molise Slavic in southern Italy will serve as a point of comparison.

The term Sprachbund refers to the convergence of typologically different languages in the same region and represents an interesting challenge to the notion of parameter conceived as a fixed value of a core syntactic option, i.e. ±null subjects. This contrast could be resolved by the methodological differentiation between surface forms and structural differences. Analyzing the status of clitic subjects and the effects of the so called “that-trace filter” in both Northern Italian and Bavarian dialects we will observe that continua primarily refer to surface forms – i.e. linear word orders – whereas the core option of a given (macro)parameter captures basic typological differences. In this perspective, we revisit the traditional Wellentheorie as a prototypical approach to analyze contact phenomena.