Topic of this volume is Pomattertitsch a German dialect which is doomed to extinction. This
Allemanic (Walser) dialect is spoken at Formazza a tiny Alpine community in Italy and after
centuries of semi-secluded existence is now undergoing major transformations due to the rapidly
declining number of its speakers and the limited range of its functions. Within the framework
of language decay and death this analysis focuses on phenomena of linguistic variation at a
morphosyntactic level. This comprehensive study includes a large body of spoken data collected
from informants of different age groups and with different levels of language fluency and thus
displays a unique picture of an endangered language.
