Edited by Katharina Hartmann and Tonjes Veenstra
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 208] 2013
► pp. 165–186
In this paper I argue against both ‘specificational’ and ‘expletive’ analyses of English clefts. I provide new evidence that the cleft pronoun it is non-expletive, and that the cleft clause is interpreted as a discontinuous definite description with it, as under specificational analyses. On the other hand, I argue that specificational analyses are mistaken in positing a syntactic modification relationship between the cleft clause and it. Rather, the evidence shows that the cleft clause behaves in all relevant ways as if it is a syntactic modifier of the clefted XP. Keywords: cleft constructions; relative clauses; copular sentences; definite descriptions.
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