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The Co-occurrence of Predicate Clefting and WH-Questions in Trinidad Dialectal English

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An Erratum to this article was published on 26 October 2006

Abstract

This paper examines the properties of a grammatical construction called a predicate cleft (PC), which occurs in a regional dialect of English, Trinidad Dialectal English (TDE), spoken on the Eastern Caribbean island of Trinidad. The examination of the PC in TDE is of typological interest inasmuch as it resembles similar constructions in certain West African languages. A PC renders focus or contrastive focus to a verb in a given sentence by copying the verb and preposing it. Similar verb focusing constructions have been observed for many West African languages, including Vata and Nweh, as well as for Caribbean Creoles (Koopman 1984, Piou 1982). The PC in TDE is also of theoretical interest when combined with wh-question formation; the wh-subject/object asymmetries explored here provide interesting support for an escape hatch for wh-phrases in an intermediate position between VP and Tense that is comparable to a VP-adjoined position (Chomsky 1986). Evidence is also provided for a CP-like domain lower in the clause; I argue that both a wh-phrase and a verb focused in a PC have focus features that must be checked in a Focus Phrase (FocP). The current investigation enriches the characterization of both PCs and wh-question formation by looking not only at each operation individually but also examining their interaction with one another as well as with adverbs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, 77 Mass Avenue, Bldg. 32-D808, Cambridge, MA, 02139-4307, USA

    Franz K. Cozier

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  1. Franz K. Cozier
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Correspondence to Franz K. Cozier.

Additional information

I give thanks to my mentors Hilda Koopman and Tim Stowell for their guidance in this endeavor. This paper has benefited immensely from their input and so have I. This paper grew out of my UCLA undergraduate thesis (Cozier 2003); I gratefully acknowledge the UCLA Department of Linguistics for providing the resources to make this research possible. I also thank my mother, Dianna Shively, for her Trinidad Dialectal English (TDE) judgments as well as for the innumerable, stimulating conversations that we have shared in TDE among other language options. Thanks also to the linguistics departments at Ben Gurion University and Tel Aviv University for inviting me to present this paper in January 2004. Finally, I thank two anonymous referees and editors John Moore and Joan Maling for their helpful comments and suggestions. All shortcomings are my responsibility.

An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11049-006-9013-6

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Cozier, F.K. The Co-occurrence of Predicate Clefting and WH-Questions in Trinidad Dialectal English. Nat Language Linguistic Theory 24, 655–688 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-006-2962-y

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