Hauptinhalt

Silvia Dal Negro: Altertümlichkeit, Sprachwandel und Sprachtod. Das Gleichnis vom "Verlorenen Sohn" in zwei piemontesischen Walserdialekten

In this article, five translations of the Parable of the Prodigal Son into Upper Alamannic dialects are compared in the context of a set of morphosyntactic features. With the exception of one text (recorded in a dialect of Wallis in German-speaking Switzerland), the other four translations come from two Walser communities in northern Italy (Formazza and Rimella) and they span a period of 160 years. Taking into account diachronic as well as synchronic variation, this article examines the nature of linguistic change in these minority dialects. In particular, the phenomena observed here are analysed in connection with the questions of linguistic isolation, contact and language death.