Grammatical gender processing is a classic topic in the neurolinguistic literature. However, most of the studies consider major standard languages, such as English, Dutch, Spanish or Italian. This is a limitation, since these languages display relatively simple systems that are fairly stable and do not allow to address language variation and change. Here we investigated gender agreement in a dialect of Southern Italy spoken in Agnone, using Event-Related Potentials. Compared with Italian and most standard Romance languages, the Agnonese gender system is more complex (with three target genders: feminine, masculine, neuter) and, also under the pressure of standard Italian, undergoing change, with the neuter merging into the masculine. Results showed that all determiner-noun gender mismatches elicited robust P600 and moderate Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) effects. Yet not all violations involving neuter nouns were equally outright. For masculine-neuter, the amplitude of the P600 was less pronounced than for feminine-neuter violations. Moreover, when looking at individual differences, the P600 for masculine-neuter was progressively reduced as participants’ competence in the Agnonese conservative variety decreased. Since sociolinguistics shows that individual variation within the speech community may reflect linguistic change, the smaller P600 exhibited by less conservative speakers could be described as a brain signature of ongoing language change in the Agnonese gender system. In other words, the attenuation of ungrammaticality-driven brain responses may provide a measurable indicator of the fading of the neuter and its merging into the masculine. This work paves the way to the neurolinguistic description of non-standard varieties and also breaks ground for a “diachronic neurolinguistics”, extending investigation into the neurobiology of language beyond the synchronic dimension.

语法性别处理是神经语言文学中的经典话题。但是，大多数研究都考虑了主要的标准语言，例如英语，荷兰语，西班牙语或意大利语。这是一个限制，因为这些语言显示的是相对简单的系统，这些系统相当稳定，并且不允许处理语言的变化和变化。在这里，我们使用事件相关电位研究了在阿贡内说的意大利南部方言中的性别认同。与意大利文和大多数标准的罗曼语相比，阿格农斯的性别体系更为复杂（具有三种目标性别：女性，男性，中性），并且在标准意大利人的压力下，正发生变化，中性者合并为男性。结果表明，所有确定语-名词性别不匹配都会引起强烈的P600和中等程度的左前负电（LAN）效应。但是，并非所有涉及中性名词的侵权行为都是同样直接的。对于阳刚中子，P600的振幅不如阴阳中立者明显。而且，当观察个体差异时，随着参与者对Agnonese保守品种的能力下降，男性中性P600逐渐降低。由于社会语言学表明语音社区内的个体差异可能反映了语言的变化，因此保守程度较低的发言人所展示的较小的P600可以描述为阿格诺斯性别体系中正在进行的语言变化的大脑标志。换句话说，非语法驱动的大脑反应的减弱可能提供了中性神经衰落及其合并为男性的可测量指标。这项工作为非标准品种的神经语言描述铺平了道路，也为“历时性神经语言学”开辟了道路，将语言神经生物学的研究范围扩展到了共时性之外。