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In:Italo-Romance Heritage Languages: Multiple approaches
Edited by Eugenio Goria and Margherita Di Salvo
[Studies in Bilingualism 68] 2025
► pp. 172–198

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Baselines in contact

The case of Piedmontese in Argentina

 | University of Turin
 | University of Turin
 | University of Turin
Published online: 11 September 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.68.08cer
Abstract
The case of Heritage Piedmontese in Argentina has received little attention thus far from the scientific community. Moreover, while most contributions have concentrated either on sociological aspects of language maintenance and language shift or on the outcomes of contact with Spanish, contact between different varieties of Piedmontese in the heritage language scenario has never been investigated. After selecting a number of variables with multiple variants in different dialectological areas of Piedmont, we compared our fieldwork materials with the supposed baseline varieties of each speaker, retrieved through the analysis of autobiographical narratives. The results allow for a preliminary dialectological characterization of Heritage Piedmontese as a variety of High Piedmontese, which also reflects the most numerous social group in demographic data. Typical features of this variety are also displayed by speakers who claim origins from other areas, revealing an incipient stage of dialect Leveling which, due to sociolinguistic causes, has probably not reached the stages of Leveling and focusing that characterize koineization in Peter Trudgill’s theory.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The sociolinguistics of Piedmontese
    • 2.1Homeland Piedmontese
    • 2.2Piedmontese in Argentina
  • 3.The PILAR project
  • 4.Data and methods
  • 5.Analysis
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Notes
  • List of abbreviations
  • References
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