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Article published In:
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 30:2 (2015) ► pp.265–306

Nominal architecture in Jamaican Creole

| University of Geneva

Our study shows that the extended projection of nominals in Jamaican Creole (JC) is composed of a rich array of hierarchically organized functional projections, in line with cartographic research (Cinque 2002, Rizzi 2004, Belletti 2004). The functional material identified strikes parallelisms with that previously reported for the clausal domain of JC, both in their distributive and interpretative properties and their tendency to overtly realize either their specifier or their head (Durrleman 2001, 2005, 2015). We argue that the identified nominal architecture, coupled with the last resort phenomenon of doubly filling both head and specifier positions (Chomsky & Lasnik 1977, Koopman 1993, Dimitrova-Vulchanova & Giusti 1998, Starke 2004), has implications for another construction in Creole, namely ‘bare sentences’ (Dechaine 1991). These sentences give rise to telicity effects depending on, amongst other things, properties of the internal argument, whose high functional structure must be made visible by respecting the doubly filled XP filter.

Keywords: Jamaican Creole, syntax, bare sentences, completive aspect, nominals, cartography, functional structure
Published online: 2 October 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.30.2.03dur
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