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

INDAGINI LINGUISTICHE, SOCIOLINGUISTICHE, INIZIATIVE NELLA COMUNITÀ WALSER DI FORMAZZA
particular topic. The voices belong to native speakers. These recordings could prove useful
for further research. In my dissertation I made use of 24 recordings for a total of 12
hours. There are 37 informants, 33 of which are active and 4 passive language speakers,
their birth dates ranging from 1910 to 1970. Over 125,000 words, 4% was made up of
foreign, non-Titsch words. All considered, a much worse scenario was expected. Active
speakers showed grammatical and formal coherence. From all non-native words, the
majority came from Italian, the remaining from a local Gallic-romance language.
Younger women appeared to be the most prone to language innovation. Their ages
ranged from 30 to 40. Men are more conservative. All passive speakers were women.
Phenomena of integration were analysed on the model supplied by
Poplack/Sankoff/Miller for Canadian French. No beforehand choice was made on what
is, or is not, a loan. It is a transient linguistic situation, with many unsettled phenomena.
We go anywhere from straight loans from foreign languages to code switching. To
assess the aggregation level of a given linguistic component I relied on usage frequency,
trying to take into account variables with one and the same speaker. Connecting /
focussing / conjunction elements appear to be the most frequent among speakers, followed
by nouns, verbs and adjectives. A wider sampling of elements is to be sought to sort out
what is part and parcel of the recipient’s system from what is merely transient.
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