Syntactic variation

This volume offers a collection of papers devoted to the German-language islands in northeastern Italy, with main focus on their syntax and syntactic variation. Syntactic variation is seen in contemporary linguistics as one of the key domains to understand the language faculty and a special role in the study of variation has been played in recent years by diachronic syntax. Contact situations have drawn much attention in view of the study of language variation in a diachronic as well as in a synchronic perspective, and language islands, a distinctive environment for interference and language change, have been considered as a much valuable subject of investigation, as they display syntactic phenomena that can contribute to shed light on syntactic structures and how they evolve. The contributions in the present volume offer extensive discussion on several aspects related to the varieties spoken in the German-language islands in northeastern Italy. The book may therefore be of interest for specialists working in the field of syntax, German linguistics and historical linguistics.