HAITIAN CREOLE SYNTAX: A CASE FOR DET AS HEAD Claire Lefebvre Diane Massam Université du Québec à Montréal University of Toronto In this paper we examine several aspects of Haitian Creole syntax in light of the recent proposal that a determiner can be the head of a minor maxi- mal projection. We argue that an incorporation of this proposal into the analysis of several aspects of Haitian Creole syntax, including clause struc- ture, question formation, and relative-clause formation, can resolve sev- eral puzzling problems. In addition, the paper adds to the theory of minor heads in that it shows that such heads must be considered to inherit major category features from their complements. 0. Introduction In traditional literature, it was held that major categories such as N and V are heads of syntactic projections (e.g., Chomsky 1970, Jackendoff 1977). In the last decade, the proposal has been made that elements such as INFL and COMP (Chomsky 1981, 1986), and more recently DET (e.g., Abney 1985, Brame 1981, Fukui 1986, and Speas 1986) can head projec- tions. In this paper we will concentrate on the notion of DET as the head of a projection, DP. We will show that the incorporation of this notion into the study of Haitian Creole (HC) syntax sheds light on several puzzling aspects of this language. Furthermore, our analysis of HC adds to the theory of minor heads in general, showing that such heads must be consid- ered to inherit major category features from their complements. In our con- clusions we will consider the consequences of this proposal for categories other than DET and for languages other than HC. A brief examination of other minor categories in certain languages supports our proposal. We consider that the position is a head in a language if there is some lexical item which projects this position at D-structure. This allows minor Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 3:2 (1988), 213-243. DOI 10.1075/jpcl.3.2.05lef ISSN 0920-9034 / E-ISSN 1569-9870 © John Benjamins Publishing Company