Questions and Answers in Creole Languages

• Applicant: Dr. Tonjes Veenstra
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2006 to 2010
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 26683110

• Final Report Year: 2010

Final Report Abstract

This research project was devoted to the study of the general process of question formation in creole languages. From a theoretical perspective, it aimed to evaluate the Clausal Typing Hypothesis (CTH) of Cheng (1997), and to explore the relationship between focus and questions as well as the question whether the filler-gap dependency in questions is the result of actual movement. The other perspective was comparative. One of the leading questions here was whether there is a clustering effect: (i) which properties of question formation are uniform across creole languages? The working hypothesis of the project was that creole languages conform to the CTH: a strict correlation between Y/N question particles and wh-in-situ-ness. The use of Cleft constructions saves the CTH-contradiction, i.e. question words surface in the left periphery. Focus-features are responsible for this placement. The proper analysis of cleft constructions is a bi-clausal analysis, in terms of base-generation. One of the outcomes of the project is that creole languages do not directly support the CTH. Furthermore, there does not seem to be a one-to-one relationship between Focus and Questions. Cleft constructions have been identified for most of the Creoles under investigation. They have been shown to be bi-clausal constructions. Exhaustivity is not a defining semantic feature of the Cleft construction. There is initial evidence from for the claim that "apparent" WH-dependencies are not the result of "actual" movement but that they can arise from a base-generation strategy, where the syntactic operation AGREE establishes the syntactic connection.

Publications

• Questions in Creoles. Syntax Circle. 11/2006, ZAS Berlin
  Veenstra, Tonjes
  
• Information Structure in Creoles: questions and some answers. Deuxieme Colloque des Jeunes Chercheurs sur les Langues Creoles (JCLC 2). 01.-02.06.2007, Universite de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III
  Veenstra, Tonjes
  
• Questions in Creoles. SPCL Summer Conference. 18.-21.07.2007, Universiteit van Amsterdam
  Veenstra, Tonjes
  
• Questions on, about and in Creoles: overview and prospects. 03/2007, Department of Language, Linguistics, and Philosophy, University of the West Indies, Mona
  Veenstra, Tonjes
  
• Introduction. Workshop on Clefts. 28.-29.11.2008, ZAS Berlin
  Haida, Andreas, Katharina Hartmann & Tonjes Veenstra
  
• Questions in Creoles: Implications for the Cartographic Approach. Formal Approaches to Creole Studies Workshop. 14.-15.11.2008, CASTL, University of Tromsoe
  Veenstra, Tonjes
  
• Typology of Questions in Creoles: questions on typology in Creoles. Colloquium on the typology of Creoles. 20.-23.08.2008, University of Toronto
  Veenstra, Tonjes
  
• On the structure of IT-clefts. 05.01.2009, Universität Hamburg
  Veenstra, Tonjes
  
• On the structure of IT-clefts. 18.06.2010, Universität Leipzig
  Veenstra, Tonjes