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The variety of Italian spoken in Bolzano (South Tyrol) represents a singular case in Italy, because it is not the result of a long-term contact between standard and Italo-Romance dialects but rather the outcome of a process of levelling and koineization. In such sociolinguistic scenario, it is interesting to study phonological variability in Bolzano Italian with the aim of understanding which language varieties have possibly played a role as models from a sociolinguistic point of view. The purpose of our exploratory study is to characterize this variety within the spectrum of variation between the standard and the regional norm. In our analysis, we will focus on the set of mid vowels as a window to understand which variety of Italian BI most closely resembles. Through a corpus-based analysis, we will investigate the phonological distribution of mid vowels (for both Italian and Tyrolean speakers), in order to explore whether it can be explained on the basis of a contextual or a lexical distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a pilot study on the distribution of indefinite determiners in contexts with narrow scope interpretation in current informal Italian. It individuates the available forms and presents their diatopic distribution. The research is based on data collected through an online questionnaire designed to detect optionality. The results show that in narrow scope indefinite contexts, i. e., negative statements, both the zero determiner and the definite article are widespread throughout the country. The partitive determiner is only found in episodic sentences and is limited to restricted geographic areas. In all contexts and areas, a large degree of optionality is found. In some context and area, however, it is possible to identify one form more prominent than the others. This can be related to the context, which may favour some specialized meaning of one specific form, e. g., saliency and small quantity, or to diatopic variation due to language contact with the dialect, as shown by comparing present-day informal Italian with the dialectal data reported in AIS and analysed in (Cardinaletti and Giusti. 2018. Indefinite determiners: Variation and optionality in Italo-Romance. In Diego Pescarini & Roberta D'Alessandro (eds.), Advances in Italian dialectology: Sketches of Italo-Romance grammars, 135–161. Amsterdam: Brill). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on regional Italian as a special observatory for both synchronic and diachronic variation in Italian. After a brief overview of some key concepts (Section 1) and the state of the art (Section 2), I consider regional Italian in a language-contact perspective (Section 3). In addition, I analyze it from the viewpoint of the reciprocal relationship between dimensions of linguistic variation (Section 4). The topics addressed here range from the process of language shift from Italo-Romance dialects toward Italian to the decreasing regional markedness of contemporary Italian. They therefore include issues related to native-like competence, ongoing restandardization, and developmental tendencies in Italian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]