The syntax of copular constructions in Mauritian

Fabiola Henri (1) , Anne Abeillé (1)

1 LLF UMR7110 - Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle

This paper examines the syntactic behavior of the Mauritian copula in predicative and extracted sentences. As it is the case in many languages, the Mauritian copula ete is absent in certain constructions: It only appears in extraction contexts. Our aim is to show that the postulation of a null copula, which has been proposed in various analyses, is inadequate for the Mauritian data. The phenomenon, as it is argued, rather lends itself to a strictly construction-based analysis within the framework of HPSG and is based on the distribution of weak pronouns and TAM markers.

Mots clés: C-ACTI

Domaines: Linguistique

Fabiola Henri, Anne Abeillé. The syntax of copular constructions in Mauritian. 14th Conference on HPSG, 2007, Stanford, United States. pp.130-149. ⟨halshs-00751122⟩