Cartography and Microparametric variation: Criterial V2 in Swiss Romansh varieties

Abstract

In this article, I shall provide evidence for a theory of microparametric variation among Swiss Romansh varieties adopting a cartographic notion of parameter in terms of syntactic operations triggered by morphosyntactic features in functional projections. I shall discuss evidence showing how such a notion of parameter is extremely powerful in describing linguistic variability at a microlevel of the syntactic architectures. Adopting the guidelines of a Criterial V2, in which the inflected verb creates a Spec-Head configuration with the highest activated criterial head in the syntactic architecture, I shall observe microparametric variation within Swiss Romansh and with respect to other V2 languages, such as German. The language variability only relies on the interactions of basic factors, such as the presence of a functional projection and the syntactic operations triggered by the functional element. In the specific, it is possible to observe German and SR varieties vary in the activation of syntactic instructions in discourse related functional projections such as SubjP, ModP and ForceP. The role of morphosyntactic features thus describes in microparametric terms the richness of configurations predicted by cartographic guidelines and provide fine-grained typologies of set of languages. --- Original in English.

Keywords

• cartography, microparameters, verb second, romansh, criteria.