Locative and directional constituents in Afro-varieties of Portuguese and Spanish

• Grant number: 13/07112-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: August 01, 2013
• End date: July 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Juanito Ornelas de Avelar
• Grantee: Juanito Ornelas de Avelar
• Host Investigator: Laura Álvarez López
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Stockholm University, Sweden

Abstract

This project proposes to describe the behavior of locative and directional constituents in afro-varieties of Portuguese and Spanish, aiming to the analysis of properties concerning the selection of prepositions and syntactic placement of spatial expressions. The research will follow the minimalist version of the Principles and Parameters Theory (Chomsky 1995), as well as explore methodological tools of the Labovian variationist sociolinguistics. The corpus will consist of Portuguese and Spanish varieties spoken in African countries and in rural afro-communities in Latin America. The study will approach the question about the influence of African languages on the formation of Portuguese and Spanish varieties, in order to answer to what extent the emergence of innovations in the field of locative and directional expressions can be attributed to language contact. (AU)