Syntactic Microvariation

Abstract

‘Syntactic microvariation’ and ‘microcomparative syntax’ are the terms for a fairly new research approach that applies the theoretical concepts and techniques of modern generative theory to dialectal and other small-scale variational data. Traditional studies in dialectology aim at a detailed and fine-grained description of language variants; the ultimate goal being a proper classification of the dialects, their exact areal distribution as well as their historical/diachronic development. For formal generative theory on the other hand, the foremost goal is to model the human language faculty with Universal Grammar as a theory about possible human languages (and how they can be acquired). Microcomparative syntax tries to reconcile these two research traditions by applying the formal theoretical concepts of generative grammar to those ‘minor’, ‘peripheral’, and sometimes kind of ‘squishy’ differences between closely related language variants as they are typically found in dialectal data. Research in microvariation tries to offer new concepts that can account for the range and (limits) of inter- and intra-speaker variation in a principled way while at the same time testing existing formal theories against these microvariational data and thus contributing to the theory of language variation. A profound understanding of microvariation will also open a way to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of language change, given that language change necessarily preconditions variability in the data.