Non-Standard Grammatical Features in Castile-La Mancha

Abstract

The Spanish spoken in contemporary Castile-La Mancha has been traditionally considered as a mere transitional variety between Northern Castilian and Southern Spanish of the Andalusian type. In the few works devoted to its description, local phonetics attracted a good part of the attention, and the characterisation of its grammar was limited to a heterogeneous list of morphological and syntactic features. Amonag them, there was the presence of leísmo and laísmo in some areas of the region, the considerable extension of sub-standard trends, commonly found in other peninsular varieties (dequeísmo, deísmo, non-standard clitic sequences me se or te se …) and other less-extended features such as the transitive use of the verbs entrar, caer or quedar. In this work, we will address the description of the local manifestations of three grammatical features (third-person clitic pronoun systems, deísmo and reduction in second-person plural desinences) that are widely distributed in Castile-La Mancha and may be considered as general specific traits. By doing so we aim to offer a better definition of the Spanish spoken in this region, beyond the transitional cliché. A temptative approach to determine internal boundaries will also be made in order to illuminate some of the historical components that lie beyond the constitution of this Southern Spanish variety.