Lingua madre e commutazione di codice in immigrati italiani di seconda generazione nella Svizzera tedesca

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to draw an outline of the researchdone on the linguistic Situation of the second generation of Italian immigrants in German-speaking Switzerland. Section l deals with the configuration of the repertoire and the linguistic biography, while section 2 provides a description of the Italian variety; in section 3 different types and functions of code-switching between Italian and Swiss German are discussed. There is evidence for a highly intact maintenance of the mother tongue as a result of the particular Status of the Italian language in the area. The deviations from Standard Italian found in the language spoken by second generation immigrants are not to be interpreted as Symptoms of language attrition, since they truly reflect the linguistic features of the oral non Standard input. Also the frequency of intra-sentential code-swilching reveals a high degree of linguistic competence in both languages.