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On naming and definiteness

New evidence from Martinique Creole

ORCiD logo with link | Université Paris 8, France | SFL, CNRS, France
 | Université Paris 8, France | SFL, CNRS, France
Published online: 2 February 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.25003.zri
Abstract
Describing a modern variety of Martinique Creole spoken by French-Creole bilinguals, we show that this language uses two different subgrammars to express ‘definiteness’, viz to signal a uniqueness presupposition on a discourse referent: (i) the enclitic determiner -la, arguably located in a phrase-peripheral D head which has been shown by Térosier (Térosier, Stéphane. 2021. Definiteness and specificity in the Martinican Creole DP: evidence from relative clauses. Proceedings of the 2019 annual conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association. 〈[URL]〉, . 2022. Aspects de la syntaxe du créole martiniquais. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Université de Montréal.) to convey two subtypes of discourse-linking; (ii) a dedicated morphosyntax for noun phrases we call names, which are rigid designators. Our study leads us to distinguish names (a class of noun phrases) from proper nouns (a class of lexemes); and to discard the assumption that Definiteness instantiates a single feature (possibly either ‘strong’ or ‘weak’) linked to a single phrase-peripheral D head (Longobardi passim, . 2023. On an(n)-. In Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, Heerby Glaude & Elena Soare (eds.), La grammaire est une fête/Grammar is a moveable feast, 259–274. Paris, SFL/CNRS 〈 [URL]〉). The grammar of MQ rather indicates that uniqueness presuppositions may arise independently of the D head.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.DP structure in MQ: Background assumptions
    • 2.1Simplex DPs
    • 2.2The split-DP hypothesis
  • 3.Proper nouns and names
    • 3.1Proper nouns and definiteness
    • 3.2Deriving names for proper nouns
      • 3.2.1Countries
      • 3.2.2Cities and people
      • 3.2.3Other singular names derived from proper nouns
      • 3.2.4Abbreviation-based proper nouns
      • 3.2.5Patronyms and collective names
    • 3.3Partial recap
  • 4.Deriving names from kind nouns
    • 4.1From Kinds to Unikas
    • 4.2A survey of MQ names derived from kind nouns
    • 4.3Names and bare kind nouns
  • 5.From French to Creole morphosyntax
    • 5.1Surface similarities
    • 5.2Creole innovations
      • French
      • MQ
      • French
      • MQ
      • French
      • MQ
      • French
      • MQ
  • 6.Revisiting DP structure
    • 6.1Deriving names
    • 6.2Names and the -la determiner
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations used in our glosses
  • Items left unglossed
  • References
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