WU-Type Construction in Karaja

Abstract

This paper studies the left periphery of the clause in Karaja, a Macro-Je stock language spoken by about 3,000 people on and around the Bananal Island in Central Brazil. We analyze interrogative constructions of the Wh and yes/no types, topic and focus constructions, as well as constructions with the txibo "whether" conditional operator in order to propose an integrated account for those structures. We follow the Principles and Parameters framework of Chomsky & Lasnik (1993), Chomsky (1995), :md particularly, Rizzi (1997) in which an expanded CP system is proposed .