Ebook: Completive Aspect in Jamaican Creole: the Complete Story?

Publisher: GG@G (Generative Grammar in Geneva)
Publication date: 2007
Number of pages: 15Aspectual markers in Jamaican Creole all obligatorily precede the VP with the exception of one: the completive marker don, which can also be found in a post-VP configuration (Cassidy 1961, Bailey 1966, Durrleman 2001). In addition, a completive reading may be derived in the absence of the overt realization of don in certain instances. I take these two properties to be related. Following Durrleman (2001), I adopt an analysis of the marker don as the head of the Completive Aspect Projection in the clausal structure, and account for post-VP realizations in terms of VP-movement
1. I further propose that such an analysis has repercussions on deriving a completive reading in the absence of the overt realization of don: it is this movement of the VP to the Specifier of CompletiveP that suffices to render the projection visible and as such allows for its head, Completiveº, to be left morphologically null.