Common ground management in wh-questions: The case of Martinican Creole LA-marked wh-questions

Stéphane Térosier

doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.447

Common ground management in wh-questions

The case of Martinican Creole LA-marked wh-questions

Authors

Stéphane Térosier

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Abstract

This paper investigates the syntax and pragmatics of a peculiar type of wh-questions found in Martinican Creole and characterized by the presence of the clausal determiner la in sentence-final position. Regular and la-marked wh-questions do not differ as far as their internal and external syntax is concerned. Pragmatically, however, la-marked wh-questions stand out in the two following ways: (a) they cannot be uttered out of the blue, and (b) they do not tolerate nothing-type answers. I attribute these properties to the presence of la, which I argue is the spell-out of a [+familiar] feature. Accordingly, a la-marked wh-question will refer to a familiar QUD introduced through the prior addition of an existential proposition to the common ground. On the basis of the interpretational properties of la-marked wh-questions, as well as the distribution of la, I propose that la is merged in the Grounding layer proposed by Wiltschko (2021). This is consistent with the fact that it plays a role in the management of the common ground. Beyond Martinican Creole, this analysis lends support to the assumption that certain pragmatic functions are encoded in the grammar.

Keywords

Martinican Creole, wh-questions, syntax-pragmatics interface, common ground, multifunctionality

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