Il contatto slavo-romanzo nel croato del Molise e nei dialetti sloveni del Friuli

Slavic-Romance linguistic contact in Italy: Slovene in Friuli and Croatian in Molise. In the present paper the dialect of a Croatian linguistic island situated in Molise (in the villages of Montemitro, Acquaviva Collecroce, San Felice) is analysed. After a sociolinguistically orientated introduction various linguistic characteristics are singled out that are connected to the age-long contact that this peripherical Slavic area had with the Romance area (that is, with standard Italian and dialects spoken in Molise): the gradual loss of the neuter and the dual, the preservation of the imperfect and pluperfect, the loss of the law of Wackernagel, the phenomenon of clitic doubling, etc. A comparison is made with another Slavic linguistic island in Italy: Slovene of Friuli.