Part of
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 16: Selected papers from the 47th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Newark, DelawareEdited by Irene Vogel
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 16] 2020
► pp. 155–170
This paper focuses on the Quebec French particle -tu, which occurs in interrogatives, exclamatives and declaratives indicating surprise. We propose that -tu is the overt instantiation of a polarity (Pol) head that is neither negative nor positive and that -tu also carries an epistemic modality (Mod) feature that is keyed to an ignorant Speaker (S) and a knowledgeable Addressee (A).