Das Romanesco Des Ausgehenden 20. Jahrhunderts

The study takes 17 phonetic and 9 morphological variables as the basis for determining the degree of dialectality displayed by 84 informants from the Italian capital. It transpires that the distance between maximum dialectality and maximum proximity to standard Italian is slight, a conclusion painstakingly substantiated not only with reference to sociolinguistic models but also to the specifically linguistic findings yielded by the survey. Possible causes for the apparent gradual decline of this urban dialect are discussed, as are the innovative tendencies also observable.