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Anthony Rowley: Grammatografie des Zimbrischen. Eberhard Kranzmayer und Bruno Schweizer im Vergleich
Eberhard Kranzmayer’s and Bruno Schweizer’sgrammars of the Cimbrian dialects of German linguistic enclaves in Italy offer two rather different descriptions from the first half of the twentieth century of the same linguistic varieties. Kranzmayer, in a highly structured portrayal, emphasises the results of regular sound changes, while Schweizerquotes many more individual linguistic forms and portrays much greater variation. This article compares the two descriptions specifically with reference to several archaic phonetic and morphological peculiarities of Cimbrian. While Kranzmayer’sgrammar is the more reliable from a diachronic perspective, the variation registered by Schweizer is typical of varieties such as Cimbrian, which are becoming moribund in previously bilingual communities, and in some cases even permits diachronic interpretations which transcend Kranzmayer’s more neogrammarian perspective. The differing linguistic findings of the two scholars derive from their different approaches to dialectology and Germanic philology.