During the last decade, syntactic microvariation analysis, the study of grammatical differences across closely related dialects (cf. Kayne 1996), has received increasing attention. Syntactic microvariation is primarily concerned with the possibility of testing syntactic hypotheses and potential correlations between syntactic variables (Barbiers & Cornips 2001). So far little research has been carried out on microvariation across Spanish dialects, especially across Afro-Hispanic contact vernaculars. From a theoretical point of view, what is fascinating about these languages is their richness in constructions, that would be considered ungrammatical in standard Spanish, but which form the core grammar of these less-prestigious, but equally efficient, syntactic systems.
The present study aims to explore some of the microsyntactic differences encountered between standard Spanish and ABS; in particular, it focuses on their nominal domain (their Determiner Phrase). The methodology adopted combines generative and sociolinguistic insights. The collection of the data included sociolinguistic interviews (Labov 1972) and grammaticality judgments. These two different strategies were combined in order to obtain more fine-grained generalizations on the structure of this language.
The dissertation has two main objectives. The first one is to offer a syntactic description of the Afro-Bolivian Spanish (ABS) Determiner Phrase (DP) in order to provide a testing ground for verifying the feasibility of current linguistic hypotheses and, when appropriate, provide new solutions in light of the empirical data collected. The second goal is to shed light on the origin of ABS by analyzing the available socio-historical and linguistic evidence.
This work has theoretical and methodological significance. From the theoretical point of view, it is important because it analyzes Determiner Phrase structures from a microparametric perspective. On the other hand, it is also methodologically groundbreaking in that it combines quantitative sociolinguistics and generative syntax to explore the nature of syntactic phenomena in a little studied Afro-Hispanic variety.