Chapter 5

Existential sentences in Romance based Creoles

In this Chapter we provide a comprehensive comparative overview of existentials sentences in Romance Creoles. Based on our empirical investigation, we also provide a theoretical analysis of existential constructions which mimic ‘transitive’ possession. Specifically, we assume that the pervasiveness of a predicative possession strategy for existentials in Creoles has reflexes in their syntax, for which a possession configuration, building on recent work of Manzini & Franco (2016), Franco & Manzini (2017a, b), will be draw. In essence, we argue that the ‘contextual domain’ of existentials (see Francez, 2007, 2009) can be encoded as the possessor of a (transitive) have predicate including the pivot as its internal argument (cf. Manzini & Savoia, 2005), with the coda which is (optionally) introduced as an adjunct encoding a further possessor (‘locative’ inclusor) of the predicate (cf. McNally, 1992).