Rosalind Brayfield (Linguistics, ’09) will present her comps research on Thursday, 26 February, at 4:30 pm in Goodsell 03.
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‘Run, I run – I really run!: questions and foci in the Belizean creole language’
Rosalind Brayfield
Based on Italian data, Rizzi (1997) argues that focus fronting and wh-fronting target the same syntactic position and are therefore two realizations of the same type of movement. I argue that focus movement and wh-movement are distinct in the Belizean creole, Kriol. First, focus fronting is optional while wh-movement is not. Second, focus fronting does not yield the that- trace effect while wh-fronting does. Finally, head fronting data suggests that focus movement is not constrained by locality (based on the behavior of TMA markers and phonological constraints) while wh-movement is.
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A reception immediately follows this talk. All are invited to attend.