Verb syncopation and predicate raising in Mauritian Creole

Tonal morphology in a creole: High-tone raising in Saramaccan serial verb constructions

The focus of this paper is on several cases of tone raising in Saramaccan, an Atlantic creole spoken in Surinam, which appear to be best analyzed as the manifestation of morphological floating high tones. Floating tones have been a well-recognized part of modern linguistic theory since at least Goldsmith (1976:57–62) who defined a floating tone as “a segment specified only for tone which, at so...

Tu dimunn pu vini kreol: The Mauritian creole and the

Verb Raising in Questions

Light Predicate Raising*

Following Ross (1967/86) many linguists have assumed that sentence pairs like (1)-(4) are related by a rule of "Heavy NP Shift": (1) a. Mary gave everything that he demanded to John. b. Mary gave to John everything that he demanded. (2) a. Max put all the boxes of home furnishings in his car. b. Max put in his car all the boxes of home furnishings. (3) a. I would consider anyone who leaves his ...

The emergence of creole subject-verb agreement