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

Elisabetta Fazzini
unknown or obsolete in the first of two enquiries (and replaced by Italian or Piedmontese
loans), were recorded as still in use in the second. It turned out to be next to impossible to draw
isoglosses in the Southern Walser area. The most one could achieve was to detect some degree
of kinship between two or more dialects in confined research areas. Analyses were carried out
on single dialects and on similar dialects on a comparative basis. Follows a list of works on
this topic (see first bibliographical list). The following works are devoted instead to studying the
Walser lexicon: follows a list of works on this topic (see second bibliographical list). For a
broader outlook on scientific studies on Walser minorities in Italy we recommend the following
Bibliographies of Bibliographies. Follows a list (see third bibliographical list). Born of interviews
and direct analysis of gathered materials was the Comparative Vocabulary of Walser
Dialects in Italy, by Elisabetta Fazzini and Costanza Cigni. It required a special method of
entry indexing and phonetic coding. In the meantime there appeared dictionaries in
Gressoney, Issime, Rimella and Formazza. Sergio Gilardino is currently working on the dictionary
of Alagna. The problem is the presumable users of these dictionaries: whom do they
cater to, and what are they supposed to be useful for, what philosophy should inspire them and
what sources should they draw from. For our Comparative Dictionary we adopted the twofold
perspective: comparative-synchronic one for all the dialects involved and diachronic one to
evince their evolution, which rests on recordings over different decades and keeps track of the
original form in ancient and middle German. We made use of texts in dialect, different lexical
registers, vocabularies, morphological and lexical analyses, and linguistic atlases. Such a
study can in no way be looked upon as thorough and exhaustive, since it rests on non-homogeneous
sources, including the various methods used to gather data from language informants.
We tried nonetheless to supply a synoptical view of the lexicon of these dialects, while
analysing the evolutionary processes that brought about a branch of Germanic speech all of
its own. The dictionary includes terms from the working and living environments, but we also
find in it agricultural and shepherding words. There are words to be found only in the Wallis
region, others spread over a wider area and others again which are to be found in Southern
dialects only. We tried to determine which language was responsible for new moulds, French,
Italian, Piedmontese, Valdôtain, German, French-Provençal. In short, we tried to compile a
work which would prove useful to sort out the peculiarities of these dialects, their conservativeness
and their evolutionary traits. Follows a list of dissertations on various Walser dialects. All
the gathered materials previously at the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of
Florence are now at the Library of the University Centre for the Study of Germanic Dialects at
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