Cimbrian as a test case for synchronic and diachronic language variation – proposals for implementing the ASIt (Syntactic Atlas for Italy)
This project is co-financed by the Fondazione Cariverona (Bando 2008 - Link).
The goal of this project is to collect, digitize and tag linguistic data from the German variety of Cimbrian, spoken in the so called Tredici Comuni (provincia di Verona), Sette Comuni (provincia di Vicenza) and in Lusern/a (provincia di Trento).
Specifically, we are currently:
- collecting the already existing written data, both diachronic and synchronic, of the Cimbrian varieties and digitizing it;
- collecting data on specific syntactic phenomena from speakers with the help of questionnaires;
- building a database of tagged sentences (in collaboration with the ASIt - Syntactic Atlas for Italy);
- creating a user-friendly interface to access the data;
- providing a cartographic representation of selected features.
Cimbrian is still spoken from a relative large number of speakers (some hundreds) in Lusern, but spoken only by a limited number of speakers (some dozens) in the Tredici Comuni and in the Sette Comuni.
This makes field work on this variety all the more important.
Research Proposal Presentation, in PDF format
