OV/VO Syntax in Mòcheno main declarative clauses

This work is concerned with OV/VO alternations in main declarative clauses of Mòcheno, a Tyrolean dialect spoken in the Fersina valley in Eastern Trentino (North of Italy). This language has lived in a long situation of isolation from German varieties and in contact with Romance dialects, developing a series of innovations especially at the syntactic level not to be found in the other Tyrolean dialects. I will try to make sense of OV/VO word orders in Mòcheno claiming on the one hand that the pattern of variation can be accounted for language-internally, refuting therefore the idea of the presence of two grammars (Romance and German) or of the influence of the Romance varieties on the German one (which is not able to make predictions). Starting from the descriptive generalisation that OV/VO syntax depends on what shows up in the high periphery, I will adduce other evidence in favour of the claim that the variation pattern can be accounted for by hypothesising that i) OV/VO word orders are the result of the interaction of low and high periphery and ii) the two peripheries are linked through movement