Chiara Meluzzi, Simone Ciccolone, Ilaria Fiorentini Contact-induced innovation in a multilingual setting Evidence from Italian, German, and Ladin in South Tyrol Italian of Bozen/Bolzano Bozen is an example of language contact in a border region affected by many migration processes, since the Italian speech community of Bozen-Bolzano derives from the internal migration from different areas of Italy in the last century, and in particular from Veneto and Trentino. is situation has affected the Italian spoken in Bozen, which is characterized by words and expressions typical of this area that are felt as distinctive by the speakers of the Italian community themselves. e present analysis is based on Cagnan’s (2010) Slang di Bolzano, a small vocabulary containing the expressions felt as typical of the Italian spoken in Bozen. e vocabulary also provides a translation in common Italian, and sometimes also an indication of the origin of each word or expression. e examples below are all from Cagnan (2011) and they have been divided in two main groups: (a) lexical innovations entered in the slang of Bozen by contact with the German-speaking group; (b) lexical innovations due to contact among different Romance dialect, and in particular Venetian. (a) From German or German dialect • brattaro ‘sausage seller’ (vs. IT venditore di salsicce) < [GER] Bratwurst “fried sausage” • braunen ‘cappuccino’ (vs. IT cappuccino) < [GER] braun ‘brown’ • kokkele ‘eggs’ (vs. IT uova) < [ST] ggoggele ‘eggs’ (GER Ei) • zuckerle ‘candy’ (vs. IT caramella) < [ST] zuggerle ‘candy’ (GER Bonbon) (b) From Romance dialect (Venetian) • ócio! ‘watch out!’ (literal meaning ‘eye’, IT occhio) • sfrugnare ‘search’ (IT rovistare) • sgnappa ‘brandy’ (IT grappa) • bocia ‘kid’ (IT ragazzo) us, the linguistic repertoire of the Italian speech community shows an internal variation between Standard Italian and the dialects of the in-migrants, with also some loanwords derived from German or Tyrolean dialects. Code mixing in Bassa Atesina Contact between Italian and German is deeper in Bassa Atesina, involving not only lexical transfers but more extensive phenomena in the discourse: conversational code switching as well as intrasentential code mixing. Furthermore, the repertoire of this area includes local varieties of both German and Italian (in particular, Trentino), along with Standard Italian (cf. Mioni 1990). In this setting, code mixing appears to be the «conversational norm» (de Bot et al. 2009), with frequent single- and multi-word insertions of Italian elements in German sentences. ese inserted elements are mostly condensed in two classes: content words (nouns or noun phrases formed by conventionalized word combinations) and discourse markers (interjections and adverbs). “Content word” insertions (1) dår acquisto des iaarhundårts wor des °wail i glab° the purchase of the century was it, because I think... (2) draizän # beh mit schpese di trasporto sächzän thirteen – well, with shipping fees sixteen (3) du muasch a storia tragica dårzeeln you have to [tell] a tragic story ← tell “Discourse marker” insertions (5) häl glabi magaari war net bäas that, I think, maybe was not bad (6) iå obår nimm tipo yes, but take for instance... (7) wänn fiil wint isch sarà ben ovvio dass si net umår sain when there is much wind it is obvious that they are not around Discourse markers in Ladin e repertoire of the Ladin community is much more complex, with different varieties of Ladin, German, Italian, and dialects. Speakers seem to rely on an Italian discourse markers system, mainly in order to “metalanguage the frame of discourse” (cf. Maschler 1994). is particular language contact situation can be investigated in order to enlighten discourse markers, pragmatic connectives and focus particles peculiar features. At the same time, studying this particular categories may allow to formulate guesses about the language contact situation itself. Ladin competitors: perché vs percheche (‘because’) (1) Lui:/ emparerà a scola perché ence el ades i fa la scola: popolara quindi/ emparerà l ladin He will learn at school because now he goes to primary school too so he will learn Ladin (2) La se chiamaa Riccioli d’Oro percheche l’aeva dei lonc ciavei:/ biondi She was called Riccioli d’Oro because of her long blond hair No Ladin competitors: cioè (‘that is, ‘namely’, ‘I mean’) (3) Ad ejemple i amic hh: cioè i mie amisc che i é suta a Cianacei for instance the friends hh I mean my friends who live in Canazei (4) Na, no sè. Cioè, ela la me spiegava ch’i la fà no demò per stravardar el lengaz No, I don’t know. I mean, she was explaining to me that they do that not only in order to protect the language According to our data, there are two different situations that lead to two different behaviours: • If Ladin has the equivalent of the Italian discourse marker or connective (as in the case of perché vs percheche), language alternation is used in order to mark the contrast between conjunctions (which function at sentence level) and connectives (which function at discourse level); • If Ladin does not have an equivalent, Italian discourse marker or connective enters with all its function, both syntactical and pragmatical. is should mean that, at least in Fassa Valley, Italian is the pragmatically dominant language (cf. Matras 1998). Final remarks e analyzed contact-induced phenomena show a certain degree of variation in relation to the different multilingual settings: • Italian spoken in Bozen shows evidences of contact in the system, with many lexical transfers from romance dialects as well as German and Tyrolean dialects; • In Bassa Atesina there is a more intense contact situation, and the interaction between languages is deeper: in this context, insertions from one language to the other show a gradience in variation from typical content words to discourse markers and connectives; • Finally, in the Ladin valleys contact affected the linguistic strategies adopted by speakers in conversation, in particular concerning the selection of discourse markers. In conclusion, this work has shown that even in a small area, such as South Tyrol, it is possible to have very different situations of contact which affect the system and the bilingual discourse at different levels. e gradience shown in contact-induced innovation is intertwined with the different linguistic situations and the presence of the languages in everyday communication. Cagnan, P. (2010). Lo Slang di Bolzano. Bolzano: Curcu&Genovese. Ciccolone, S. (2010). Lo standard tedesco in Alto Adige, LED Edizioni Universitarie. de Bot, K.; Broersma, M.; Isurin, L. (2009). ‘Sources of triggering in code switching’. In L. Isurin, D. Winford, K. de Bot (eds.). Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. pp. 85-102. Fiorentini, I. (in press). ‘Alla fine l’é nosc esser”. atteggiamenti nei confronti della trasmissione del ladino in Val di Fassa (TN)’. Atti del XIII Congresso AItLA, Palermo, 21-23 febbraio 2013. Maschler, Y. (1994). ‘Metalanguaging and discourse markers in bilingual conversation’. Language in Society 23: 325-366. Matras, Y. (1998). ‘Utterance modifiers and universals of grammatical borrowing’. Linguistics 36: 281-331. Meluzzi, C. (in press). ‘Italiano e tedesco a Bolzano: la percezione degli informanti italofoni’. Atti del XIII Congresso AItLA, Palermo, 21-23 febbraio 2013. Meluzzi, C. (2012). ‘La lingua italiana a Bolzano: una varietà ancora poco indagata’. Il Cristallo LIV (1), online: http://www.altoadigecultura.org/rivista.html. Mioni, A.M. (1990). ‘Bilinguismo intra- e intercomunitario in Alto Adige/Südtirol: considerazioni sociolinguistiche’. In F. Lanthaler et al. (eds). Mehr als eine Sprache. Più di una lingua. Meran/Merano. pp. 9-29. Introduction South Tyrol is a particularly interesting area for the observation of contact- induced innovation, due to the asymmetrical distribution of the three official languages within the territory. Italian is mostly spoken in the main cities (e.g. Bozen-Bolzano) and in the Bassa Atesina area. e German speech community is distributed throughout the province, representing over 90% of the population in rural areas, and mostly uses local dialects in everyday communication. Furthermore, three different varieties of Ladin are spoken in the valleys of Badia, Gardena and Fassa (the latter in the province of Trento) along with Italian, German and local Romance and German dialects. is distribution of the three languages in South Tyrol directly affects the degree of multilingualism, creating a sort of continuum from an almost monolingual pole (as for Italian community in Bozen-Bolzano) to a more balanced plurilingual pole (as in Ladin valleys), along with many “in-between” situations (e.g. Bassa Atesina). In this peculiar context, our aim is to observe contact-induced innovation phenomena on a lexical and discourse level in three different multilingual settings: Bozen-Bolzano, Bassa Atesina and Ladin valleys. 0-10% 10-40% 40-70% 70-100% % of German speakers Chiara Meluzzi University of Pavia / Free University of Bozen-Bolzano chiara.meluzzi@yahoo.it Simone Ciccolone Free University of Bozen-Bolzano s.ciccolone@noam.it Ilaria Fiorentini University of Pavia / Free University of Bozen-Bolzano ilaria.fiorentini@unibz.it References