TYPING OF INTERROGATIVE SENTENCES IN XAVANTE

Abstract

Abstract: This work seeks to investigate the structure of interrogative constructions in Xavante, a Brazilian indigenous language belonging to the Jê family, Macro-Jê trunk. We will see that interrogative sentences in this language differ from declarative sentences through the syntactic movement of the WH words and the use of an interrogative morpheme that occurs at the beginning of the sentence. Following the focus of the generative theory (CHOMSKY; LASNIK, 1993; CHOMSKY (1995), CHANG (1997) states that interrogative sentences need to be typified either through the WH syntactic movement or by the use of interrogative particles, with the simultaneous use of both means prohibited for reasons of economy. Thus, the Xavante language poses a problem for this proposal, since it uses both ways of typing an interrogative clause.