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Abstract

Abstract

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 -, 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 , 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 , Matushansky 2023). The grammar of MQ rather indicates that uniqueness presuppositions may arise independently of the D head.

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2026-02-02
2026-03-06

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/content/journals/10.1075/jpcl.25003.zri
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On naming and definiteness
John Benjamins ; https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.25003.zri
/content/journals/10.1075/jpcl.25003.zri
/content/journals/10.1075/jpcl.25003.zri
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: rigidity ; DP morphosyntax ; language change under French-creole contact ; definiteness ; proper nouns ; Martinique Creole ; definite determiners ; names

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