Cambiamento dialettale. L'atlante linguistico di Wenker come strumento per la ricerca: il caso dell'estensione del morfema verbale -SCH nei dialetti svevi.

The present study deals with the dynamics of German dialects from both a synchronic and a diachronic point of view. It focusses on the Swabian dialects, i.e., a group of dialects spoken in southwestern Germany. The point of departure is Georg Wenker's Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs (Linguistic Atlas of the German Empire), a cartographic representation of a comprehensive, late nineteenth-century dialect survey. In order to understand the development of the local dialects in the 20th century, Wenker's maps are compared with those from the Südwestdeutscher Sprachatlas, a recent linguistic atlas of southwest Germany (diachronic perspective). The study illustrates the change of the 2nd pers. sg. marker from -SCHT to -SCH in the Swabian dialects. The change is explained with respect to three linguistic principles: minimization of perceptual confusion, minimization of articulatory effort, and the principle of the prestigious model. With regard to the possible target varieties for linguistic change, the increasing importance of the intermediate varieties in between the local dialects and the Standard language becomes evident (synchronic perspective). The analysis reveals that the target variety for the linguistic change under investigation here is not the Standard language but a "Swabian regional dialect" which has to date been only loosely defined.