Back to list

Detail of contribution

Auteur: Liliane HAEGEMAN

Titre:
The syntax of preverbal en in (West) Flemish


Abstract/Résumé: Goals: - Discuss the distributional differences between (West) Flemish (WF) en and French ne, focussing on the fact that WF en is a prefix on a finite verb. - Discuss the interpretive import of WF en. - Discuss whether (and if so, how) the fact that en is used to convey contrastive focus on the polarity of the clause should be represented syntactically. The data extend work by Breitbarth & Haegeman showing that the WF ‘negative’ particle en has an emphatic function. The main distributional properties of en will be presented and a crucial empirical observation will be added concerning the incompatibility of en with the discourse marker weer ‘again’. Like English again, the particle weer (lit. ‘again’) can be used to ask for information to be repeated. Though WF weer is compatible with negative sentences, negative sentences containing en are not compatible with weer. A syntactic analysis will be explored according to which WF en is associated with a low FocP in line with proposals by Jayaseelan (2011).