HUU-FA THESIS DAT?: A Syntactic Analysis of Possessive Jamaican Creole Possessive WH-elements
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis discusses the differences between the Jamaican Creole expressions huu-fa and fi-huu. Jamaican Creole is a language that was born from a combination of the lexifier language English and the substrate language Twi, therefore it is reasonable to check whether the features of JC were derived from these languages. The distribution of huu-fa and fi-huu resembles the distribution of English whose. Fi-huu and huu-fa are WH-elements that show possession, similar to the English word whose. They are made of a WH-pronoun and a form of the preposition fi "for". Both terms differ in internal structure, and distribution. The difference between huu-fa and fi-huu will be dissected in terms of substrate and superstrate influences as well as the elements involved in their formation. Ultimately, this thesis states that the internal structure of the PP huu-fa prevents it from appearing adnominally.
abstract: This thesis discusses the differences between the Jamaican Creole expressions huu-fa and fi-huu. Jamaican Creole is a language that was born from a combination of the lexifier language English and the substrate language Twi, therefore it is reasonable to check whether the features of JC were derived from these languages. The distribution of huu-fa and fi-huu resembles the distribution of English whose. Fi-huu and huu-fa are WH-elements that show possession, similar to the English word whose. They are made of a WH-pronoun and a form of the preposition fi "for". Both terms differ in internal structure, and distribution. The difference between huu-fa and fi-huu will be dissected in terms of substrate and superstrate influences as well as the elements involved in their formation. Ultimately, this thesis states that the internal structure of the PP huu-fa prevents it from appearing adnominally.
author: Foster, Toni Ashlie
keywords: Latin American Languages and Societies, Latin American Studies, Linguistics, Creole, Jamaican, possessive, Syntax, Wh-element, who
date published: 2014-06-03T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:58:39Z
provider: City University of New York - Graduate Center
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York