Relative and Cleft Constructions in Kréol Rényoné: A Comparative Investigation with French and the French Creoles

This book provides an in-depth comparative study of relative and cleft constructions in Kréol Rényoné, a French Creole spoken on Reunion Island. Comparing Kréol Rényoné to varieties of French and other French Creoles, it sheds light on the parameters of grammatical variation in the domains of relativisation and clefting in this group of cognate languages. Current Kréol Rényoné data from corpora and fieldwork are used to describe the language’s headed relatives, free relatives, it-clefts and there-constructions, comparing them with those of French and several other French Creoles, including Haitian, Mauritian and Louisiana Creole.

The book presents the first detailed and cohesive treatment of relative and cleft constructions within the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) framework. Considering data from a family of languages that are lesser studied in this domain of syntax, the book both improves our understanding of those individual languages and expands and refines existing analyses of the relevant constructions, highlighting the advantage of a framework that places equal weight on the semantic and discourse-pragmatic components of grammar as it does the syntax for understanding such constructions.

Alina McLellan, University of Manchester, England.