Chapter 4
A microsyntactic study of Pyrenean negative emphatic polarity
particles with the help of data from linguistic atlases
In this chapter we show the interest of the data
gathered in linguistic atlases and traditional dialectology
materials in the context of the significant development of formal
studies in dialect syntax. We present a case study based on almost
unexplored dialects in the Central Pyrenean region with the purpose
of showing how dialectal data can contribute to an in-depth
knowledge of the grammar of natural languages. We present an
already-tested roadmap to develop a micro-syntactic investigation
that aims at providing a fine-grained description of synchronic
variation in the use of negative minimizers and, at the same time,
seeks to determine the formal features of such items, as well as the
consequences of different feature specification for the negative
concord.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The study of dialect syntax
- 2.1Why are the studies in dialect syntax interesting?
- 2.1.1Advantages of the theoretical approach to dialectal
data
- 2.1.2Data gathered from traditional dialectology applied to
formal research
- 2.2Dialect syntax studies in the Romance varieties of the
Transpyrenean area
- 3.Microvariation studies in the Transpyrenean area. The case study
of m-negs
- 3.1General overview of the phenomenon studied
- 3.2Presence of the studied phenomenon in the sources of
traditional dialectology
- 3.3A new approach to linguistic atlases as sources for formal
studies of m-negs
- 4.The analysis
- 5.Conclusions
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
References
-
Selected sources