Grammatische Konvergenz. Entwicklungspfade deutscher Sprachinseln im Nordosten Italiens

Our work aims at identifying the diachronic path which characterizes the syn-tactic evolution of German language islands in the North-East of Italy. Com-paring Cimbrian and Mòcheno with Plodarisch allows us to determine which portions of the syntactic structure change first and which ones later. Our ob-servations confirm MUYSKEN’s (2000) and SORACE’s (2004) hypothesis that language change starts at the Syntax-Pragmatics interface, which in our model can be translated as the left periphery of the clause. The second domain of change is the vP area where the typological change from OV to VO shows a fine-grained variation. In contrast, the TP domain displays a surprising stabil-ity. This confirms that language contact does not imply simple borrowing of syntactic chunks but works in a much more complex way.