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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 16: Selected papers from the 47th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Newark, Delaware
Edited by Irene Vogel
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 16] 2020
► pp. 155–170

Clause typing and Quebec French -tu

| Concordia University
| McGill University

This paper focuses on the Quebec French particle -tu, which occurs in interrogatives, exclamatives and declaratives indicating surprise. We propose that -tu is the overt instantiation of a polarity (Pol) head that is neither negative nor positive and that -tu also carries an epistemic modality (Mod) feature that is keyed to an ignorant Speaker (S) and a knowledgeable Addressee (A).

Keywords: tu , Quebec French, Polarity, Modality, epistemic commitment, Speaker, Addressee
Article outline
  • 1.General properties of -tu
    • 1.1Distribution
      • 1.1.1Interrogatives
      • 1.1.2Exclamatives
      • 1.1.3Declaratives: Narratives indicating surprise
      • 1.1.4Imperatives
    • 1.2Interpretation of -tu
  • 2.Proposal
    • 2.1‘Tu’ and Polarity
    • 2.2‘Tu’ and modality
    • 2.3Analysis
  • 3.Accounting for the distributional restrictions
    • 3.1Interrogatives
    • 3.2Exclamatives
    • 3.3Declaratives
    • 3.4Imperatives
  • 4.Previous analyses
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.16.10isa
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