Chapter 5
Syntactic features and dialect areas in European Spanish
Traditional Dialectology has focused on phonetic,
morphological and lexical variation and has paid less attention to
syntactic variation. Consequently, dialectal boundaries are usually
drawn employing mainly phonetic, morphological or lexical traits. In
the case of Spanish this bias can easily be confirmed by the main
contents of the regional linguistic atlases of Spain. The present
chapter is aimed to be a complete review of the syntactic
information present in these atlases. We will evaluate its actual
usefulness as to the purpose of defining dialect areas inside
European Spanish. Finally, after examining the main syntactic
features subject to variation in Peninsular Spanish, we will also
make a tentative proposal of dialect areas based on syntactic
differences.
Article outline
- 1.Foreword
- 2.A review of the classical linguistic atlases in Spain
- 2.1Syntax and the Spanish atlases: Some problems
- 2.1.1The language present in the atlases
- 2.1.2The questionnaires
- 2.2The syntactic information in the ALECMan.
Castilla-La Mancha as an area of mixed dialectal traits
- 2.3Selection of syntactic features after the Spanish linguistic
atlases
- 3.Syntactic areas in European Spanish after the linguistic
atlases
- 3.1Traditional boundaries inside European Spanish and their
corresponding relevant features
- 3.2A proposal to discuss
- 4.Final remarks
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Acknowledgements
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Notes
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References