Sprachkontakt in der Phonologie bilingualer Sprecher des Tirolischen

This paper aims at describing /r/ allophony in Tyrolean as spoken in South Tyrol and at determining whether it can be influenced by the long-term contact with Italian. The analysis is based on a corpus of phonological data collected in an experimental setting and shows how two variables may significantly but independently have effects on the allophonic relations: the intensity of language contact with Italian and the type of bilingualism of the speaker (simultaneous or sequential). The former influences the frequency of occurrence of certain sounds (notably the presence/absence of the uvular tap) in the production of the speakers. The latter determines an increase or decrease in the stability of the allophonic relations between variants and phonological contexts as it emerges from entropy measurements.