Edited by Davide Garassino and Daniel Jacob
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 273] 2022
► pp. 239–270
Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish (BJS) is characterized by its frequent use of structures that are considered highly marked or even ungrammatical in Mainstream Spanish (MS). The analysis of semi-spontaneous data, recorded from four BJS-Bulgarian bilinguals, and the comparison with a same-sized Madrid Spanish control corpus reveal that BJS offers a broader gamut of possessive constructions and allows for fronting of non-subject constituents in information-structurally neutral contexts. A rating task carried out with 8 MS natives confirms that such structures are perceived as marked in MS. The fact that BJS patterns with both Old Spanish and contemporary Bulgarian regarding its repertoire of possessives and the use of fronting structures suggests an interpretation which refers to both its ancestor and the present-day contact language.