Le varietà walser dell’Italia settentrionale: Gressoney e il titsch

Abstract

This contribution aims at illustrating the history of the Walser community of Gressoney (Aosta, Italy), where a language belonging to the dialectal space of the Highest Alemannic is still spoken today. The Titsch language, unfortunately, is not only undergoing the influence of the surrounding Romance languages, but its speakers are also disappearing, and a generational change is currently lacking. Secondly, a first scientific description of the phonetic and phonological system of this variety is provided, as well as some peculiar morphosyntactic and lexical characteristics. Finally, some of the most important projects that the scientific community is carrying out for the preservation and valorization of the Titsch language are described.