Wie kurz sind die Kurzverben? Morphologische Merkmale in Gressoney und Issime

This paper discusses the so-called short verbs in the two Walser German varie- ties spoken in Gressoney and Issime (Aosta Valley, Italy) which are the result of a number of purely accidental changes of a phonological and morphological nature. At first glance they seem to display a nest of strong morphological irregularities. However, detailed analysis, thanks to long-lasting documenta- tion of the varieties, shows that this verb class has developed a particular set of inflectional properties profiling its own system adequacy and even attracting new members from other inflectional classes.