Why grammar?
The project targets grammar (morphosyntax), specifically, because grammar provides a language’s structural ‘DNA’: the linguistic code acquired in infancy that differentiates that language from others and enables its speakers to produce that language. Existing work focuses predominantly on Judeo-Spanish’s sociolinguistic status, pronunciation and/or vocabulary, with research on its grammatical characteristics, especially sentence structure, limited to small-scale individual studies.
Identifying the Judeo-Spanish varieties’ ‘DNA’ through their documentation and subsequent systematisation is required to understand and measure the grammatical variation in this language branch; specifically, differences between Judeo-Spanish’s constituent dialects, and the linguistic distance between Judeo-Spanish and its closest living relative, modern Castilian Spanish. To close this knowledge gap, the project will undertake detailed, sustained work in order to establish a comprehensive characterisation of the Judeo-Spanish grammatical landscape.
Whilst the syntactic patterns of Judeo-Spanish and Castilian Spanish have a prima facie very similar, often identical, appearance, initial results from my current research show that, for some key elements of sentence-level grammar, Judeo-Spanish speakers interpret the “same” sentence differently from modern Spanish speakers. This tells us that the perceived grammatical similarity between Judeo-Spanish and modern Spanish is to a certain degree illusory, and that, even in cases where the surface structure is identical, the underlying (‘hidden’) grammar is in fact distinct. Thus, further work is required to determine what exactly the grammar of Judeo-Spanish is, and the dimensions and extent of its variation. This includes the re-examination of Judeo-Spanish's ‘visible’ variation, both in relation to modern Spanish (such as negation strategies e.g., Dinguno no se keshó (Jud.) vs. Ninguno se quejó. (Sp.) ‘Nobody complained’) and internally (compound past formation with the auxiliary verb tener vs. aver, both meaning 'to have', e.g. Yo tengo ečo mučas cozas em mi vida 'I have (< tener) done', vs. La avez visto a Kadén oi? ‘Have (< aver) you seen Kadén today?’). Using the latest theoretical insight from the language sciences helps us both to classify the patterns of Judeo-Spanish grammar in terms of established cross-linguistic typologies, but also explain the patterns in terms of general mechanisms of language change.
With this information, we can examine the internal and external factors determining how Judeo-Spanish linguistic systems vary, and to what extent there is any linguistic substance to existing/proposed divisions between Spanish and Judeo-Spanish, and the dialects which constitute them.
Why is this important?
Whilst there are many reasons why such work is valuable, this project is particularly concerned with the following benefits:
Fostering language survivance: Because most Judeo-Spanish research focuses on other aspects of the linguistic system we simply do not know what the overall grammatical landscape of Judeo-Spanish looks like. Without a detailed or accurate knowledge of what Judeo-Spanish's sentence-level grammar is, the language cannot be taught or passed on to new learners or future generations. Providing a description of grammatical description can support community efforts to create and disseminate learning resources and other language survivance activities important to those for whom Judeo-Spanish is a component of their cultural and ancestral heritage and/or way of life.
Language policy for historic and minoritized languages: Providing linguistically accurate data for Judeo-Spanish will promote evidence-based policymaking, by providing the necessary data with which to determine its linguistic classification and (re-)evaluate its official/recognised status in line with national and international language policies.