Im Passiv sprechen in den Alpen

Language contact, which has gained a central role in the research on grammaticalization over the last years, lies in the background of this paper on the passive voice in some heavily endangered language varieties found in the Walser communities of Piedmont and Aosta Valley. The peculiar character of these dialects can be seen in the highly complex voice system, only partially understandable in terms of contact with Italian or other Romance varieties. In these dialects, the passive construction containing the venitive auxiliary typical of the rest of the Highest Alemannic dialects stands in competition with the construction containing the andative auxiliary. This highly complex picture comes from a peculiar elaboration of the different passive constructions available to the speakers in such a multilingual speech context which gave rise to different cases of contact-induced grammaticalization.