Cover not available
Article published In:
Non-prototypical clefts
Edited by Lena Karssenberg, Karen Lahousse, Béatrice Lamiroy, Stefania Marzo and Ana Drobnjakovic
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 32] 2018
► pp. 121–143

A focus analysis of apparent predicational clefts

| IDS Mannheim
This paper discusses a specific subclass of English it-clefts posited in the theoretical literature, so-called predicational clefts. The main point of the paper is to show that there is no need to postulate such a separate class. Predicational clefts look special because of the narrow focus on the adjective within an indefinite pivot, but their special properties can all be derived from this narrow focus in a focus analysis in which it-clefts express contrasting focus. Contrasting focus means that besides the assertion of the proposition expressed in the cleft, there is one contrasting proposition which is excluded. The focus on the adjective in apparent predicational clefts gives rise to a narrow set of relevant alternatives, all of which differ only in the adjectival property within the pivot. The analysis developed here can account for many of the observations for apparent predicational clefts. Other properties are shown to be not conclusive. Thus, predicational clefts need not be considered a special subclass beyond their special focus characteristics.
Keywords: it-clefts, English, focus, contrast, focus alternatives, specificational copular clauses
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Contrastive it-clefts in English
  • 3.A focus analysis of apparent predicational clefts
    • 3.1Introduction
    • 3.2Contrasting focus with a predicative focus exponent
    • 3.3Accounting for the focus-related properties of apparent predicational clefts
      • 3.3.1Exhaustivity
      • 3.3.2Negation and contrast
      • 3.3.3Focus on indefinite plurals
      • 3.3.4Predicational questions and paraphrases
      • 3.3.5Summary
  • 4.Other criteria for apparent predicational clefts
    • 4.1Embedding in small clauses
    • 4.2Negation with no
    • 4.3 No inversion with pseudocleft equivalent
    • 4.4Coordination of predicational and specificational clefts
    • 4.5Modification by graded elements
    • 4.6Specificity of the pivot
    • 4.7Summary
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 January 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00018.har
References (74)
References
Akmajian, Adrian. 1979. Aspects of the Grammar of Focus in English. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Ball, Catherine. 1977. “Th-Clefts.” Pennsylvania Review of Linguistics 21: 57–69.Google Scholar
Beaver, David. 2012. “IT-constructions.” GLOW talk, Potsdam University.Google Scholar
Beck, Sigrid. 2006. “Intervention Effects Follow from Focus Interpretation.” Natural Language Semantics 141: 1–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Belletti, Adriana. 2008. “Answering strategies: new information subjects and the nature of clefts.” In Structure and Strategies, ed. by Adriana Belletti, 242–265. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
BNC. 2001. “British National Corpus, version 2 (world edition).” Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium.Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel. 2012. “What’s Given (and What’s New) in the Theory of Focus?.” In Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, February 8–10,2008, ed. by Sarah Berson, 403–424. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Ling. Soc.Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel and Manuel Križ. 2013. “It’s That, and That’s It! Exhaustivity and homogeneity presuppositions in clefts (and definites).” Semantics & Pragmatics 61: 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1977. “On Wh-Movement.” In Formal Syntax, ed. by Peter Culicover, Thomas A. Wasow, and Adrian Akmajian, 71–132. New York: Academia Press.Google Scholar
Cruschina, Silvio. 2012. “Focus in Existential Sentences.” In Enjoy linguistics!, ed. by Valentina Bianchi and C. Chesi. Siena: CISCL Press.Google Scholar
Davidse, Kristin. 2000. “A Constructional Approach to Clefts.” Linguistics 38(6): 1101–1131. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “On Specificational There-clefts.” Leuven Working Papers in Linguistics 21: 1–34.Google Scholar
De Cesare, Anna-Maria. 2007. “Sul cosidetto, ‘c’è presentativo’: Forme e funzioni.” In Lessico, grammatica e testualità, tra itlaiano scritto e parlato, ed. by Anna-Maria De Cesare and A. Ferrari, 127–153. Basilea: University of Basilea.Google Scholar
Declerck, Renaat. 1983. “Predicational Clefts.” Lingua 611: 9–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1988. Studies on Copular Sentences, Clefts and Pseudo-Clefts. Leuven: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Delahunty, Gerald P. 1984. “The Analysis of English Cleft Sentences.” Linguistic Analysis 13(1): 63–113.Google Scholar
Delin, Judy. 1992. “Aspects of Cleft Constructions in Discourse.” Arbeitspapiere des Sonderforschungsbereichs 340 191: 1–67.Google Scholar
Delin, Judy and Jon Oberlander. 1995. “Syntactic Constraints on Discourse Structure: The Case of It-clefts.” Linguistics 331: 465–500. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Den Dikken, Marcel. 2006a. Relators and Linkers: The Syntax of Predication, Predicate Inversion, and Copulas. Cambridge, MA: MIT. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006b. “Specificational Copular Sentences and Pseudoclefts.” In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, ed. by Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk, Volume IV1, 292–409. Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. “Predication and Specification in the Syntax of Cleft Sentences.” In Cleft Structures, ed. by Katharina Hartmann and Tonjes Veenstra, 35701. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “The attractions of agreement.” Manuscript.Google Scholar
Destruel, Emilie, Daniel Velleman, Edgar Onea, Dylan Bumford, and Jingyang Xue. 2015. “A Cross-Linguistic Study of the Non-At-Issueness of Exhaustive Inferences.” In Experimental Perspectives on Presuppositions, ed. by Florian Schwarz, 135–156. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2004. The Phonology of Tone and Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. “Notions and Subnotions in Information Structure.” Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55(3): 381–395. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halvorsen, Per-Kristian. 1978. The syntax and semantics of cleft constructions. Austin, Texas: University of Texas.Google Scholar
Hartmann, Jutta M. 2008. Expletives in Existentials: English there and German da. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
2013. “Freezing in It-clefts.” Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue Canadienne de Linguistique 53(3): 487–496. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016. The Syntax and Focus Structure of Specificational Copular Clauses and Clefts. Habilitationsschrift.Google Scholar
in prep. “Exhaustivity and Focus Alternatives in Clefts: Experimental Evidence.” Manuscript.
Hedberg, Nancy. 1990. Discourse Pragmatics and Cleft Sentences in English. Ph. D. thesis, University of Minnesota, Minnesota.Google Scholar
Heggie, Lorie. 1988. The Syntax of Copular Constructions. Ph. D. thesis, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Heycock, Caroline. 1992. “Layers of Predication and the Syntax of the Copula.” Belgian Journal of Linguistics 71: 95–123. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1994. “The Internal Structure of Small Clauses.” In Proceedings of NELS 25, ed. by Jill Beckmann, 223–238. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, GLSA.Google Scholar
. 2012. “Specification, Equation, and Agreement in Copular Sentences.” Canadian Journal of Linguistics/ Revue canadienne de linguistique 57(2): 209–240. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Higgins, Roger. 1979. The Pseudo-Cleft Construction in English. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. 1981. “Exhaustiveness and the Semantics of Clefts.” In Papers from the 11th Annual Meeting of NELS, ed. by Victoria Burke and Pustejovsky James, 124–142. Amherst: GLSA.Google Scholar
Huber, Stefan. 2002. Es-Clefts und det-Clefts: Zur Syntax, Semantik und Informationsstruktur von Spaltsätzen im Deutschen und Schwedischen. Ph. D. thesis, Lund University, Lund.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney, Geoffrey K. Pullum, and Peter Peterson. 2002. “Relative Constructions and Unbounded dependencies.” In The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, ed. by Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, and Laurie Bauer, 1031–1096. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1927. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles: Band 3: Syntax. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
Karssenberg, Lena. 2017. “French il y a Clefts, Existential Sentences and the Focus-Marking Hypothesis.” Journal of French Language Studies 3(27): 1–26.Google Scholar
Karssenberg, Lena and Karen Lahousse. 2018. “The Information Structure of French il y a Clefts & C’est Clefts: A Corpus-Based Analysis.” Linguistics 56(3): 513–548. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Katz, Jonah and Elisabeth Selkirk. 2011. “Contrastive Focus vs. Discourse-New: Evidence From Phonetic Prominence in English.” Language 87(4): 771–816. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Katzir, Roni. 2013. “A Note on Contrast.” Natural Language Semantics 21(4): 333–343. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kenesei, István. 2006. “Focus as Identification.” In The Architecture of Topic and Focus, ed. by Valeria Molnár and Susanne Winkler, 137–168. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kiss, Katalin É. 1998. “Identificational Focus versus Information Focus.” Language 741: 245–273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika and Elisabeth Selkirk. 2010. “Distinguishing Contrastive, New and Given Information.” Talk given at the International Conference on Information Structure, sponsored by SFB 632 Informationsstruktur, Potsdam, July 2010.
Krifka, Manfred. 2008. “Basic Notions of Information Structure.” Acta Linguistica Hungarica 551: 243–276. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. “Projecting the Common Ground with Questions: Biases, Tags, and Alternatives.” Talk given at the Division of Labor Conference, Tübingen University.
Kruisinga, Etsko. 1932. A Handbook of Present-day English: Part II: English accidence and syntax. Vol.31. Groningen: Noordhoff.Google Scholar
Ladd, Dwight Robert. 1996. Intonational Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lang, Ewald. 1991. “Koordinierende Konjunktionen.” In Semantics: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research, ed. by Arnim von Stechow and Dieter Wunderlich, 597–623. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Mikkelsen, Line. 2005. Copular Clauses: Specification, Predication and Equation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Molnár, Valéria. 2006. “On Different Kinds of Contrast.” In The Architecture of Focus, ed. by Valeria Molnár and Susanne Winkler, 197–233. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Jerry. 1975. “Some remarks on the nature of sentences.” In Papers from the parasession on functionalism, ed. by Robin E. Grossman, L. James San and Timothy J. Vance. Chicago Linguistic Society: Chicago.Google Scholar
Moro, Andrea. 1991. “The Raising of Predicates: Copula, Expletives, and Existence.” In More Papers on Wh-movement, ed. by Lisa Cheng and Hamid Demirdache, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 119–181. Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
. 1997. The Raising of Predicates: Predicative Noun Phrases and the Theory of Clause Structure. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Patten, Amanda. 2010. Cleft sentences, Construction Grammar and Grammaticalization. Ph. D. thesis, Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Percus, Oren. 1997. “Prying Open the Cleft.” NELS 271: 337–351.Google Scholar
Poutsma, Hendrik. 1916. A Grammar of Late Modern English: Part II: Parts of Speech, Section IB. Pronouns and Numerals. Groningen: Noordhoff.Google Scholar
Repp, Sophie. 2010. “Defining ‘Contrast’ as an Information-Structural Notion in Grammar.” Lingua 1201: 1333–1345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. “Contrast: Dissectiong an Elusive Infomation-Structural Notion and Its Role in the Grammar.” In The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure, ed. by Caroline Féry and Shin Ishihara, 270–289. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rochemont, Michael S. 2013. “Discourse New, F-Marking, and Normal Stress.” Lingua [SI: Information Structure Triggers] 1361: 38–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Romero, Maribel. 2005. “Concealed Questions and Specificational Subjects.” Linguistics and Philosophy 28(6): 687–737. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2002. “Contrastive FOCUS vs. Presentational Focus: Prosodic Evidence from Right Node Raising in English.” In Speech Prosody 2002: Proceedings of the First International Prosody Conference, ed. by Bernard Bel and Isabelle Marlin, 643–646. Aix-en-Provence: Laboratoire Parole et Langage.Google Scholar
Spathas, Giorgos. 2010. Focus on Anaphora. Utrecht: LOT Publications.Google Scholar
Van der Wal, Jenneke. 2011. “Focus excluding alternatives: Conjoint/disjoint marking in Makhuwa.” Lingua 121(11): 1734–1750. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Velleman, Dan Bridges, David Beaver, Emilie Destruel, Dylan Bumford, Edgar Onea, and Liz Coppock. 2013. “It-clefts are IT (Inquiry Terminating) Contractions.” Proceedings of SALT VIII 221: 441–460.Google Scholar
Wagner, Michael. 2005. Prosody and Recursion. Ph. D. thesis, MIT, Cambridge, M.A.Google Scholar
. 2012. “Focus and Givenness: A Unified Approach.” In Contrasts and Positions in Information Structure, ed. by Ivona Kučerová and Ad Neeleman, 102–148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Washburn, Mary Byram. 2013. Narrowing the Focus: Experimental Studies on Exhaustivity and Contrast. Ph. D. thesis, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.Google Scholar
Washburn, Mary Byram, Elsi Kaiser, and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta. 2013. “The English It-Cleft: No Need to Get Exhausted.” Manuscript.Google Scholar
Wedgwood, Daniel. 2005. Shifting the Focus: From Static Structures to the Dynamics of Interpretation. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Malte and Edgar Onea. 2011. “Focus marking and focus interpretation.” Lingua 121(11): 1651–1670. DOI logoGoogle Scholar