Microcomparative Morphosyntactic Research (MIMORE): Mapping partial grammars of Flemish, Brabantish and Dutch

Abstract

In this paper we discuss and analyze a set of correlations that we discovered using two of the large-scale Dutch dialect syntax databases available in the online tool MIMORE (the abbreviation of the MIcrocomparative MOrphosyntactic REsearch tool) (www.meertens.knaw.nl/mimore), i.e. DiDDD and DynaSAND. These correlations lead to the identification of several larger dialect groupings, basically to a typology of dialects. In particular, we investigate the following four empirical phenomena: subject doubling, demonstrative doubling, complementizer agreement and D-pronoun fronting in imperatives. We furthermore provide an analysis of these phenomena and for the typology, showing that the syntactic base structures are identical in the dialect groups and the derivations are highly similar. Parametrization arises at two points: lexical properties with respect to the spell out of ϕ and the trigger of subject doubling.