37.1370, FYI: Variation and Change in Present-Day Istriot (Germany)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1370. Thu Apr 09 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 37.1370, FYI: Variation and Change in Present-Day Istriot (Germany)
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Date: 08-Apr-2026
From: Rita Rumboldt [rita.rumboldt at fu-berlin.de]
Subject: Variation and Change in Present-Day Istriot
We are delighted to invite you to attend the third workshop of the
EXREAN project* at Freie Universität Berlin, focusing on the
understudied Romance variety Istriot.
URL:
https://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/en/v/exrean/news/Workshop-3-Variation-and-Change-in-Present-Day-Istriot.html
Friday 26, June 2026
Location: Seminarraum 0.2052, Freie Universität Berlin, Fabeckstraße
23/25
In contrast to the abundance of studies on variation and change in the
Romance world languages Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian,
contemporary developments in smaller and endangered Romance varieties
such as Aranese, Istro-Romanian, Mirandese or Monégasque have received
far less attention (Holtus et al. 1989; Schöntag 2024). The goal of
this workshop is to reunite scholars analyzing variation and change in
Istriot, an endangered Romance variety spoken in several villages and
towns in Southwestern Istria, Croatia, which even within Romance
linguistics is often unfamiliar to scholars outside of the region. As
a result, the documentation of Istriot is still relatively scarce.
Due to its status as a part of a Romance archipelago surrounded by
Slavic-speaking areas, Istriot can be viewed from at least three
perspectives: its convergence with more prestigious Romance varieties
like Istro-Venetan and Italian; its interaction with neighboring
Slavic languages such as Croatian and Chakavian through mutual
borrowing; and its internal developments that are apparently
independent from both these contact varieties. As this sociolinguistic
situation is rather infrequent for Romance, Istriot can be seen as a
laboratory for language change in this family.
The workshop consists of two complementary sections. The first talk,
by Nada Poropat Jeletić (University of Pula) will provide an overview
of the sociolinguistic landscape of the region with its Romance "reef
ecology” (Blagoni et al. 2016, Blagoni et al. 2018) and describe some
of the effects of this linguistic diversity (Poropat Jeletić 2017,
Poropat Jeletić 2015). In the second section of the workshop, two
talks will present studies on a specific, ongoing process of language
change in Istriot. First, Alberto Giudici (University of Teacher
Education of the Grisons; University of Zürich) will present the
findings of a 2021 study (Giudici & Zanini 2021) which first detected
the ongoing grammaticalization of an Istriot plural indefinite
quantifier uni, a novelty in the Italo-Romance domain, as well as a
diachronic perspective on the development of Istriot inflectional
classes under the influence of other regional varieties (Giudici
2025). Second, Rita Rumboldt (Free University of Berlin) will present
a new study probing the conditions and extent of the
grammaticalization of Istriot uni based on experimental data and a
comparative perspective to standard Italian.
While the origins and history of Istriot have received scholarly
attention due to its specific geographic and sociolinguistic position,
there is still much work to be done. Research on synchronic and
ongoing phenomena in this still-understudied variety also provides a
unique opportunity to observe variation and change in a complex
sociolinguistic ecosystem in real time.
Speakers:
- Nada Poropat Jeletić (University of Pula)
- Alberto Giudici (University of Teacher Education of the Grisons;
University of Zürich)
- Rita Rumboldt (Free University of Berlin)
*The EXREAN project investigates how historically attested reanalysis
processes can be replicated experimentally in laboratory settings,
using methods from natural language comprehension and artificial
language learning across typologically diverse languages.
(https://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/en/v/exrean/index.html)
References
Blagoni, Robert, Poropat Jeletić, Nada, & Blecich, Kristina. 2016. The
Italophone Reefs in the Croatophone Sea. Bilingual landscape of the
contemporary world, 11-36.
Blagoni, Robert, Poropat Jeletić, Nada, & Blecich, Kristina. 2018.
Istroveneto e italofonia in Istria: prospettive e visioni di
un’insularità etnolinguistica. L. Šimičić, I. Škevin I. & N. Vuletić
(Ed.), Le isole linguistiche dell’Adriatico, 69-92.
Giudici, Alberto, & Zanini, Chiara. 2021. A plural indefinite
quantifier on the Romance-Slavic border. Word Structure, 14(2),
195–225.
Giudici, Alberto. 2025. "Inflectional classes in Istriot: a first
systematisation in diachrony and synchrony". Formal studies in
Italo-Romance morphology and syntax, edited by Stefano Cristelli,
Federica Breimaier, Michele Loporcaro, Stefano Negrinelli, Tania
Paciaroni and Mario Wild, De Gruyter, 127-142.
Holtus, Günter, Metzeltin, Michael & Schmitt, Christian (eds). 1989.
Band III Die einzelnen romanischen Sprachen und Sprachgebiete von der
Renaissance bis zur Gegenwart: Rumänisch, Dalmatisch / Istroromanisch,
Friaulisch, Ladinisch, Bündnerromanisch. Berlin, New York: Max
Niemeyer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110966114
Poropat Jeletić, Nada. 2015. The Istrian Cross-Cultural Syncretism and
its Diasystemic and Heteroglossic Diversity. International journal of
arts & sciences, 8(3), 647.
Poropat Jeletić, Nada. 2017. Italofona dijasistemska raslojenost u
hrvatskoj Istri: jezični i komunikacijski status, korpus i prestiž.
Annales. Series historia et sociologia, 27(1), 191-204.
Schöntag, Roger. 2024. Romanische Kleinstsprachen und ihre
Überlebensstrategien im digitalen Zeitalter: Mirandesisch, Aranesisch,
Monegassisch und Istro-Rumänisch, Version 1 (06.05.2024, 09:27). In:
Robert Hesselbach (Hrsg.) (2024): Romanische Regional- und/oder
Minderheitensprachen im Zeitalter der Digital Humanities (Korpus im
Text 10), Version 6, URL:
https://www.kit.gwi.uni-muenchen.de/?p=102823&v=1
Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
Language Documentation
Semantics
Sociolinguistics
Language Family(ies): Eastern Romance
Italo-Dalmatian
Romance
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