Lausberg area

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.

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 merged with, while  merged with. The same asymmetric vowel development characterizes Eastern Romance languages such as Romanian.

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. In much of the Mittelzone, both in the west and east, Latin final and  survive in certain verb endings.

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 and. In the variety spoken in Senise, for instance, the outcomes of Latin and  were subject to diphthongization when stressed and followed by a syllable containing a close vowel (namely  or ), while the outcomes of  and  were not. Cf. Latin >  >.

Selected lexical comparisons
Below are the (non-metaphonic) stressed vowel outcomes in the three regions, each represented here by one dialect. Here is a comparison of conjugated forms of the verb meaning 'die' (in the present indicative) in various parts of the Mittelzone. Asterisks indicate forms that cause syntactic doubling in a following word.