{"id":16078,"date":"2024-02-26T06:08:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T11:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/2024\/02\/26\/syntax-square-2-27-christopher-legerme-mit-2\/"},"modified":"2024-02-26T08:40:45","modified_gmt":"2024-02-26T13:40:45","slug":"syntax-square-2-27-christopher-legerme-mit-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2024\/02\/26\/syntax-square-2-27-christopher-legerme-mit-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Syntax Square 2\/27 - Christopher Legerme (MIT)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaker: <\/strong> Christopher Legerme (MIT)

\nTitle: <\/strong>Movement Dependencies and Existential HAVE constructions in Haitian Creole

\nTime: <\/strong>Tuesday, February 27th, 1pm - 2pm

\nLocation: <\/strong>32-D461

\n

\nAbstract: <\/strong>For this upcoming Syntax Square, I will be presenting content from two papers which are relevant for an unresolved puzzle of Haitian Creole syntax: 1. Takahashi and Gracanin-Yuksek\u0092s (2008) Morphosyntax of Movement Dependencies in Haitian Creole<\/em> and 2. Myler\u0092s (2018) Complex copula systems as suppletive allomorphy<\/em>. Here\u0092s the puzzle. The Haitian Creole (HC) sentence kimoun ki te genyen<\/strong> is ambiguous.<\/p>\n

1. (a) Ki moun *(ki) te genyen?
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 WH person COMP PST win.
\n\u0093Who won?\u0094 (lit. Which person that won?)<\/p>\n

(b) Ki moun *(ki) te genyen?
\nWH person COMP PST have
\n\u0093Who was there?\u0094 (lit. Which person that had?)<\/p>\n

The surfacing of the complementizer ki<\/strong> after a wh-moved phrase is claimed to be symptomatic of subject extraction (Koopman 1982, DeGraff 2001, Takahashi and Gracanin-Yuksek 2008). Therefore, it\u0092s puzzling that ki<\/strong> obligatorily surfaces in (1b) given how the suppletive allomorphy approach (Myler 2018) deals with the syntax of existential \u0093copula\u0094 constructions like the following:<\/p>\n

2. (a) Te genyen yon moun
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 PST have a person
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u0093There was a person.\u0094 (lit. had a person)<\/p>\n

(b) Yon moun *(ki) sanble (ki\/?\/*ke) te genyen
\nINDF person COMP seem COMP PST have
\n\u0093There seemed to be a person.\u0094 (lit. A person that seems that had)<\/p>\n

Note that in (2b), the second ki<\/strong> is optional. To my knowledge, these facts of HC are unexplained in the literature. Related facts are the obligatory presence of ki<\/strong> with moved thematic arguments of certain (transitive?) verbs like jwe<\/strong> \u0093play\u0094 or anbrase<\/strong> \u0093hug\u0094.<\/p>\n

???3. (a) (Se) gita ki t ap jwe nan pak la
\nit.is guitar COMP PST PROG play in park the
\n\u0093GUITAR was playing in the park.\u0094 (lit. (It is) GUITAR that was play in the park)<\/p>\n

(b) (Se) ti moun yo ki t ap anbrase
\nIt.is small person PL COMP PST PROG hug \u0093THE KIDS were hugging\u0094 (lit. (It is) THE KIDS that was hug)<\/p>\n

HC apparently doesn\u0092t show subject inversion (DeGraff 1992: 48) nor English-style passive morphology (Deprez 1992: 208). Still some verbs inflect depending on whether its external argument is agentive or thematic, that is, there are verbs in HC that alternate between a transitive and intransitive form (DeGraff 2001: 75).<\/p>\n

4. (a) Mwen f\u00e8\/*f\u00e8t kabann lan rapid-rapid maten an
\n1SG make bed the fast-fast morning the \u0093I made the bed very quickly this morning.\u0094 (DeGraff 2001: 75)<\/p>\n

5. (b) Kabann lan *f\u00e8\/f\u00e8t rapid-rapid maten an
\nbed the made fast-fast morning the
\n\u0093The bed was made very quickly this morning.\u0094 (DeGraff 2001: 75)<\/p>\n

I do not have a solution to these puzzles, but I will present the analyses of complementizer ki<\/strong> and existential HAVE sentences of Takahashi and Gracanin-Yuksek (2008) and Myler (2018), respectively, to show how exactly a sentence such as (1b) is puzzling given the theories advanced in those papers, and I will speculate that the correct solution could come from how one might handle the null expletive there and complementizer agreement in the language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaker: Christopher Legerme (MIT) Title: Movement Dependencies and Existential HAVE constructions in Haitian Creole Time: Tuesday, February 27th, 1pm - 2pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract: For this upcoming Syntax Square, I will be presenting content from two papers which are relevant for an unresolved puzzle of Haitian Creole syntax: 1. Takahashi and Gracanin-Yuksek\u0092s (2008) Morphosyntax of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16078"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16093,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16078\/revisions\/16093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}