Morphosyntactic variation and gender agreement in three Afro-Andean dialects

•Data on nominal gender concord variation in three Afro-Hispanic varieties is presented.•A minimalist account of agreement as feature valuation and unification is advocated.•Agreement is shown to follow locality restrictions along the DP hierarchy.•Repercussions for theories of variation, change and grammar evolution are discussed.

This paper presents an analysis of gender agreement in three little studied Afro-Andean dialects: Chinchano Spanish (Perú), Yungueño Spanish (Bolivia) and Chota Valley Spanish (Ecuador). Data is presented showing a variety of DP gender agreement configurations significantly divergent from standard Spanish. A unified account for these phenomena is proposed combining quantitatitative methodology and several forms of data collection with a Minimalist approach to data explanation and interpretation. The provided analysis charts evolution and variation of gender agreement, arguing that the parallel development of gender agreement in these three Afro-Hispanic contact varieties can be explained by an approach in which change takes place along paths set by universal properties of grammar (feature valuation, locality of agreement, gradience of fitness in grammatical development, etc.).