The Lausberg area is a part of southern Italy that covers much of Basilicata and the northern edge of Calabria, where Southern Italian dialects characterized by atypical Italo-Romance vowel developments are spoken. It is named after the German philologist Heinrich Lausberg, who brought the area to the attention of mainstream scholarship in 1939.^[1]

Stressed vowel outcomes

There are three main subdivisions, as can be seen on the map to the upper right.

Romanian-like

Dubbed the Vorposten ('outpost') by Lausberg, this area encompasses the towns of Castelmezzano, Potenza, and Picerno; here the Latin vowel /i/ merged with /eː/, while /u/ merged with /uː/. The same asymmetric vowel development characterizes Eastern Romance languages such as Romanian.^[1]

Transitional

The western part of Lausberg's Mittelzone ('middle area') encompasses the towns of Lauria, Maratea, Scalea, Diamante, and Verbicaro; here the majority of words show a stressed vowel development similar to that of Sicilian, although many words have Sardinian-like outcomes as well.^[2] In much of the Mittelzone, both in the west and east, Latin final /s/ and /t/ survive in certain verb endings.^[a]

Sardinian-like

The eastern part of the Mittelzone encompasses the towns of Senise, Tursi, and Oriolo; here the tonic vowels developed approximately as in Sardinian. There is evidence, however, of an earlier distinction between Latin /eː oː/ and /e o/. In the variety spoken in Senise, for instance, the outcomes of Latin /e/ and /o/ were subject to diphthongization when stressed and followed by a syllable containing a close vowel (namely /i/ or /u/), while the outcomes of /eː/ and /oː/ were not. Cf. Latin /fokum, nepoːteːs/ > */ˈfɔku, neˈpoti/ > [ˈfwokə, nəˈpʊtə].^[3]

Selected lexical comparisons

Below are the (non-metaphonic) stressed vowel outcomes in the three regions, each represented here by one dialect.^[2]

Here is a comparison of conjugated forms of the verb meaning 'die' (in the present indicative) in various parts of the Mittelzone.^[4] Asterisks indicate forms that cause syntactic doubling in a following word.