The valuation of gender agreement in DP

This paper analyzes gender agreement in the Determiner Phrase in Afro-Bolivian Spanish. Our data shows a case of cross-generational change, transitioning from a basilectal Afro-Bolivian variety to the more prestigious standard Bolivian Spanish. Recent minimalist models account for variability as the differential specification and computation of uninterpretable features in a derivation. We argue that dialectal variation and change in ABS, even if externally driven by social factors, follow from feature valuation and checking and from the interplay between computational and evolutionary demands.