Catalan in Alghero as a Mix of Archaism and Innovation: Dynamics of Linguistic Contact with Italian, Sardinian and Other Idiomatic Varieties

Abstract

The town of Alghero represents a privileged area of research to explore the mechanisms of language evolution and the changes due to the contact with other linguistic varieties. In this regard, the objective of this contribution is to examine the main interferences that Sardinian or Sardinian-Corsican dialects may have exerted on the Catalan variety spoken in Alghero, itself the product of the hybridisation of distinct diatopic speech forms introduced by Aragonese colonists in the 14^th century. The analysis is based on field research conducted through questionnaires and interviews administered to native speakers and aims to collect up-to-date and contextualised linguistic data in order to highlight the coexistence of conservative and innovative features at the phonetic, syntactic, morphological and lexical levels, thus outlining a detailed portrayal of modern Algherese by means of a comparative approach that accounts for standard Catalan, different Catalan dialects and other Romance varieties as references.