WALSERSPRACHE - The four main objectives of the Alpine Space ...

Studies on Walser dialects in Italy: a summary and an outlook. Zinsli’s 1968 unparalleled
book drew lots of attention on Walser culture, above all on the unique situation of the so-called
southern “colonies”, in which they continued to speak Germanic dialects all along the Alpine
ridge, on the Italian watershed. Besides works by Swiss authors and the Linguistic Atlas of
German Switzerland, there was a true unearthing of Walser dialects by Italian scholars, linguists
and philologists. Piergiuseppe Scardigli directed the first dissertation on the subject of the
linguistic islands in Northern Italy. It included an indexing of dialectal materials from three
essays by Arrigo Subiotto. It was followed by other dissertations, research work and enquiries.
Prof. Scardigli founded the GRILAVI, a permanent research group in Florence. Their publications
matched the work of ever more numerous language scholars in Switzerland, like P.
Zürrer, G. Frey, M. Bauen, M. Waibel and many more, to which must be added the work of
historians, ethnologists and sociolinguists, like E. Rizzi, P. Sibilla, P.P. Viazzo, A. Giacalone
Ramat, S. Dal Negro, M. Musso, N. Francovich Onesti, M.A. Cipolla, C. Cigni, M.C. Di Paolo.
The Walser dialects offer many insights in the study of Germanic languages, especially from
the diachronic point of view. Interesting phenomena of language and cultural interference
can also be studied. Multilingualism and cross-cultural settings have always attracted philologists
and language historians, from the days of Germanic migrations to the birth of vernacular
tongues. Bilingualism and multilingualism, as experienced today in many a European
country, date back to the convergence of ancient cultures, as is the case in Belgium,
Luxembourg and Ireland. In Italy the presence of many languages is quite evident and it gave
rise to an unending cross-breeding process of integration and divergence, both in official and
in minority languages. Although the linguistic background we are interested in may not have
many speakers left, it is nonetheless of extreme importance from a linguistic point of view.
Surveys must be more homogeneous, focussed and comprehensive. Materials under examination
were not always thorough or adequate to warrant reliable conclusions on the evolution
trends of these dialects. Even when comparing data from the Language Atlas or the GRILAVI
(which adopted the same questionnaire), uncertainties and discrepancies emerge. Not surprising,
if one considers the conditions under which these enquires were carried out. Language
informants were different and likewise different were the languages used to question them,
some in German, others in Italian, thus eliciting divers responses when it came to recouping
unusual or obsolete terms almost faded away from man’s memory. Some words, either
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GLI STUDI SUI DIALETTI WALSER IN ITALIA: BILANCIO E PROSPETTIVE