Chapter 1. Interpretation of focus in Haitian Creole se-clefts

2012

This article bears on VFD (Verb Fronting with Doubling) constructions in Haitian, whose left periphery contains a bare homonym of the lexical verb and which trigger a Verb-Focus effect. We seek to update the description of VFD and to reach a satisfactory analysis providing empirical support for addressing the theoretical issues central to the present volume. Our study leads us to conclude that: (i) The syntactic operations involved in the derivation of VFD are available independently of reiteration; (ii) The semantic effect of VFD is not 'intensive' but contrastive, and arises from restrictive modification, a form-meaning relation hardly analysable as 'iconic'; (iii) Haitian VFD may have arisen from a regular recombination of features partaking in focus effects in French, Gbe, and Universal Grammar.

Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 1997

This paper seeks to provide a unified analysis of the particle se in Haitian Creole, traditionally identified as an equality marker, a resumptive pronoun, or a focus marker. This study also serves to illustrate the role and the structural organization of functional projections in this non-inflected language. Under the proposed analysis, se (as well as ye, which has long been recognized as bearing a relation to se) is not a verbal copula; rather, it is a predicate forming aspectual head. A unified analysis based on general principles of UG is offered for se, appearing in predicative sentences, in nominal clefts, and in predicate cleft constructions. It is argued that in all these contexts, se always occurs with DP predicates or predicates headed by a functional head, such as CP predicates, not with any other type of predicates. 1 This research was originally presented at the GLOW Workshop on Creole Languages (April 1992, Lisbon). We are much indebted to Jean-Robert Cadely and Marie-Denise Sterlin for useful discussions on HC data, and to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. The usual disclaimers apply. This research was partly supported by SSHRCC (Vinet 410-93-0838).

1987

Lingua, 2008

Haitian's well studied predicate cleft and its unstudied predicate reduplication are closely related: the former derives from the latter by A-bar movement of one reduplicant. This claim solves two long standing problems of the construction (why, apparently, this A-bar movement targets a head and leaves no gap). Moreover, it predicts novel restrictions on when predicate clefts are possible and makes possible a straightforward formalization of their semantics.

Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 1992

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Proceedings of Chicago Linguistics Society, 2013

Frontiers in Psychology, 2021

A challenging issue of cross-linguistic variation is that the same syntactic construction may appear in different arrays of contexts depending on language. For instance, cleft constructions appear with contrastive focus in English, but in a larger array of contexts in French. A part of the cross-linguistic variation may be due to prosodic differences, since prosodic possibilities determine the array of focus structures that can be mapped onto one and the same syntactic configuration. In the present study, we compare languages with flexible nuclear-accent placement (English, German), with languages that do not use this prosodic strategy (French, Mandarin Chinese). In a speech production experiment, we examine the prosodic realization of contrastive focus and identify prosodic reflexes of focus in all languages. The presence of different phonetic reflexes of focus suggests that – anything else being equal – the same syntactic constructions should be possible in the same array of contexts. In an acceptability study with written questionnaires, we examined the felicity of cleft constructions in contexts licensing a focus within the cleft clause. This focus structure is orthogonal to the preferred focus structure of cleft constructions and can appear in cases of second-occurrence foci (in contexts of correction). The obtained judgments reveal a distinction between languages with flexible nuclear-accent placement (English, German) and languages with other types of reflexes of focus (French, Chinese): languages of the former type have an advantage in using cleft constructions with a focus within the cleft clause, which shows that the array of contexts of using clefts in English and German is not a proper subset of the array of contexts applying to the same constructions in French and Chinese. The obtained differences can be explained by the role of prosodic devices and corroborate the view that prosodic reflexes of focus have different semantic-pragmatic import: it is easier to establish a focus structure that is orthogonal to the syntax in a language with flexible nuclear-accent placement (English, German); this does not hold for prosodic correlates of focus that reinforce the articulation of prosodic constituents (French) or the articulation of lexical tones (Chinese).

Journal of Pragmatics

One outstanding issue in the analysis of the meaning of clefts concerns the source of the exhaustive inference they convey. Conventionally-coded semantic accounts predict that this inference is robust and will arise regardless of contextual variation while allowing for cross-linguistic variation. On the contrary, non-conventionally-coded pragmatic accounts predict exhaustivity to be more variable within a language, including cases where it can be cancelled, although (potentially) the inference will be more stable across languages. This article presents an original empirical perspective on the debate by looking both at the interpretative and the processing properties of English compared to French clefts. The combination of offline and online measures reported here show crucial and surprising differences within and across the two languages, findings which are unexpected under all current theories of clefts' meaning. We discuss a preliminary sketch for an analysis, which proposes that the differences between French and English are due to the way the existential presupposition derived from the cleft structure interacts with context (cf.

2000

The most striking differences between the folk speech of Jamaica and the educated speech are not in the sounds, still less in the vocabulary-they are in the grammar, the functional patterns into which the words fall. It is also in this respect that the most fundamental influence from African backgrounds is to be seen, and that is why Jamaican folk speech is not a dialect in the same sense that the rural speech of Devonshire or Lancashire, say, are dialects of English. Those who would hold that Jamaican folk speech is not to be considered a type of English at all, but a new and different language, will find their strongest arguments here (…)' Frederic G. Cassidy Jamaica Talk (1961) 1. INTRODUCTION: GRAMMATICAL PROPERTIES OF JC A structural property which is common amongst creole languages is their lack of overt morphological inflection. Bailey (1966) observes that : "One of the most striking features to be noted in any study of the Creole languages is that (…) their inflectional content is exceedingly meagre, so that the grammatical information is carried almost entirely by the syntactic system". We will see that Jamaican Creole is not an exception to this generalisation. 1.1. Absence of morphological inflection for nouns Nouns in JC are exempt of morphological structural case. To start with lexical DPs, we see that they appear in the same form regardless of whether they are assigned Nominative or Accusative case: (1) Di gyal nuh tan good none-at-all The girl [neg] behave good [neg] at all 'The girl doesn't behave well at all' (2) Im nuh gi di gyal nutn S/he [neg] give the girl nothing 'S/he doesn't give the girl anything' The situation is similar for pronominal DPs 1 : * My first word of thanks goes to Liliane Haegeman who has inspired me throughout my studies in linguistics and guided me through the writing of this dissertation. I am also indebted to Eric Haeberli for teaching me a vast majority of what I know in linguistics, as well as for reading this work and providing me with valuable suggestions. Thanks are also due to Enoch Aboh for useful comments and criticisms on the draft. Of course all remaining inadequacies are my own. Finally, many thanks to Evelyn Miller, Leah DePass, and Deborah DePass for informing me of their intuitions on the data here considered.

Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 1988

In this paper we examine several aspects of Haitian Creole syntax in light of the recent proposal that a determiner can be the head of a minor maximal projection. We argue that an incorporation of this proposal into the analysis of several aspects of Haitian Creole syntax, including clause structure, question formation, and relative-clause formation, can resolve several puzzling problems. In addition, the paper adds to the theory of minor heads in that it shows that such heads must be considered to inherit major category features from their complements.