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Microparameters in the Grammar of Basque
Edited by Beatriz Fernández and Jon Ortiz de Urbina
[Language Faculty and Beyond 13] 2016
► pp. 265–288

Microsyntactic variation in the Basque hearsay evidential

| CNRS – IKER, UMR5478
| IXA, UPV | EHU

This paper studies the syntactic distribution of the Basque hearsay evidential omen across Basque dialects. We test the hypothesis that the complex dialectal variation regarding the syntactic distribution exhibited by omen follows from a basic syntactic microparameter: in central varieties the features that constitute the hearsay evidential are projected as part of the clausal spine; in Eastern varieties, those features are compiled as a separate syntactic term, merged as the Specifier of an independent Evidential Head. This microparameter accounts in a unified way for most of the differences in the syntactic distribution of the evidential. Together with this basic microparameter, the comparative study of Basque dialects seems to support the idea that certain functional projections (like NegP, FocP or EvP) may appear in more than one position in the cartography of the clause, and more specifically, at the edge of cyclic domains.

Keywords: hearsay evidential, left periphery, modality, syntactic cartography
Published online: 9 September 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.13.10etx
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