Resumen de New Insights on the Question Particle "a" in Sardinian
One of the various syntactic strategies to form yes-no questions in Sardinian is a structure that involves the question particle a (probably < lat. aut, DES I,34), which has been described in previous work (Jones 1993, Mensching 2008, Remberger 2010, Floricic 2010, among others).Among the known properties of this structure, which is found in the Logudorese and Nuorese varieties of Sardinian, are its incompatibility with negation and focus fronting and the obligatory post-verbal position of the subject, if present. In addition, Jones (1993:25) observed that “this particle is used predominantly, but not exclusively, in questions which are to be interpreted as requests […], invitations, offers, etc.”. The aims of this article are (i) to assess the latter statement; (ii) to take into account another property that has not been considered until now, namely the frequent coexistence of clitic right dislocation (CLRD) as in (1b); (iii.) to offer an approach to a principled explanation of (i.) and (ii.) as well as to the other properties of a within a cartographic generative framework.The main working hypotheses are:
