Patterns and interfaces in language contact: the case of Judeo-Spanish in Bulgaria

The aim of this paper is to show that not all grammatical areas are equally influenced in lan-guage contact. Based on semi-spontaneous speech data collected from five Judeo-Spanish speakers from Bulgaria, we argue that narrow syntax is rather stable in contact settings. The changes that take place in this domain are subject to natural processes of language change. In order for a structure to be influenced by the contact language, or to converge on the contact language, it needs to be located at the interfaces. However, in contrast to current assumptions concerning the Interface Hypothesis, we argue that whether a structure converges or not depends on whether a similar structure can be identified in the contact language. To underpin our analysis, we investigate clitic placement, clitic climbing, possessives, and adjective placement.