Relative and cleft constructions in Kreol Renyone

Abstract

This thesis provides the first in-depth study of relative and cleft constructions in Kreol Renyone (KR), a French-lexified creole language spoken on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. The thesis contributes new data from a corpus of oral and written materials compiled by the author, an acceptability judgement questionnaire, and interviews carried out during online and in-situ fieldwork with 40 native speakers. It offers a description of the language's headed relative clauses, free relative clauses, se-clefts (comparable to it-clefts) and nana-constructions (comparable to there-constructions, including presentational clefts and existentials). The thesis offers a syntactic analysis of these constructions using the Role and Reference Gram mar (RRG) framework (Van Valin & LaPolla 1997; Van Valin 2005, 2008a; Bentley et al. forthcoming and other works). It expands existing theoretical analyses of the relevant constructions in RRG, and constitutes the first analysis of KR grammar within RRG. The thesis contributes to our understanding of KR grammar in several respects. It details the relativising strategies found in the language, uncovers patterns of relative clause marking (or lack thereof) across different types of relative clause and compares the relative clauses found in headed relatives with those found in cleft constructions. Furthermore, it advances hypotheses regarding whether the language has truly free relative clauses or, rather, light-headed ones. Finally, it begins to address the syntax of focus in KR, considering cleft constructions against other available focalising devices. Throughout the thesis, the fields of Romance linguistics and Creole Studies are drawn together: KR is situated within the broader family of Romance, and frequent comparisons are offered with French, other Romance languages, and other French-based Creoles. The thesis draws attention to important gaps that have been neglected not only in KR, but in the broader study of creole grammars, including the structure and interpretation of free relative clauses and the syntax of focus, particularly broad focus constructions. The thesis has broader theoretical significance, though: first, it proposes a refinement of existing RRG analyses of relatives and clefts, contributing to our theoretical understanding of these constructions; second, it identifies key issues in the syntax-semantic interplay in free relatives, paving the way for further research on these structures, and third, it draws attention to the under-examined distinction between presentational clefts and existentials.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Delia Bentley (Supervisor) & Eva Schultze-Berndt (Supervisor)