[GRGC] Anne Zribi-Hertz & Loïc Jean-Louis (UMR 7023, Paris 8 & CNRS)

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Anne Zribi-Hertz & Loïc Jean-Louis (UMR 7023, Paris 8 & CNRS)

On naming and definiteness - New evidence from Martinique Creole
Describing a modern variety of Martinique Creole spoken by French- Creole bilinguals, we show that this language uses two different subgrammars to express ‘definiteness’, viz to signal a uniqueness presupposition on a discourse referent: (i) the enclitic determiner -la, arguably located in a phrase-peripheral D head which has been shown by Térosier (2021, 2022) to convey two subtypes of discourse-linking; (ii) a dedicated morphosyntax for noun phrases we call names, which are rigid designators. Our study leads us to distinguish names (a class of noun phrases) from proper nouns (a class of lexemes); and to discard the assumption that Definiteness instantiates a single feature (possibly either ‘strong’ or ‘weak’) linked to a single phrase-peripheral D head (Longobardi passim, Matushansky 2023). The grammar of MQ rather indicates that uniqueness presuppositions may arise independently of the D head.