Review of Paola Benincà, La variazione sintattica. Studi di dialettologia romanza

This chapter discusses microcomparative syntax in the form of a review of a 1994 collection of essays by Paola Benincà, whose work has shown how Italian dialect syntax can provide an invaluable window on aspects of universal grammar (UG) that might have gone unnoticed in work restricted to the best-known Romance languages. Although the discussion is limited to Romance, the point clearly extends to other families as well. The extent to which closely related dialects can vary in their syntax is widely underestimated. Benincà's work has, over the past twenty or so years, contributed substantially toward rectifying that misapprehension.