Back to results

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

HUU-FA THESIS DAT?: A Syntactic Analysis of Possessive Jamaican Creole Possessive WH-elements

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

<p>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. </p>

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Arts
Level thesis:degree_level
Master
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Linguistics
Grantor
The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York
Year dc:date.available
2014

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Foster, Toni Ashlie
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Marcel den Dikken

Subjects

dc:subject × 9

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Repository record dc:identifier
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/209
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-1208

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
City University of New York - Graduate Center
Base URL
academicworks.cuny.edu/do/oai/
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Foster, Toni Ashlie. HUU-FA THESIS DAT?: A Syntactic Analysis of Possessive Jamaican Creole Possessive WH-elements. Master thesis, The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York, 2014. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/209