We are happy to announce a talk by Daniel Aremu (GU Frankfurt) and Chinedu Anyawu (University of Jos) in the Syntax Colloquium.
The talk will take online over Zoom. Please enroll in the OLAT course of the syntax colloquium to get the link or write to Katharina Hartmann.
Titles: More is going on upstairs than downstairs: There is a penthouse in Kuce
Date: October 31
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct
Abstract:
In this talk, we investigate polar interrogatives in Kuce (Kuche) or Ce (Che), a minority Plateau (Benue-Congo) language spoken in north-central Nigeria. The language employs a clause-final vowel lengthening strategy in polar questions (1-2). We, therefore, argue that: (a) the vowel quality of the question marker is determined by the final vowel of the clause; (b) the polar interrogative marking follows a strict-finality constraint; (c) the phenomenon is a main clause phenomena and (d) it is unavailable in focus construction. We show that unlike many lax prosodic languages with a single/uniform vowel, polar question marking.