Article In:
Functions of Language: Online-First Articles

Everything-cleft constructions in spoken British English

A neglected construction

ORCID logo | Lund University
 | University of Oslo
 | Lund University
Within the framework of Construction Grammar, this study examines constructions with a cleft form containing everything, e.g., that’s everything that’s happened, in spoken British English, using the London-Lund Corpora and the British National Corpora. We trace the development of everything-clefts in recent history and make comparisons with all-clefts since both all and everything express totality. Our aim is to determine the form-meaning properties of everything-clefts, to examine whether everything-clefts too express the smallness and exhaustiveness readings associated with all-clefts, and whether everything-clefts are also dialogically contractive. The frequency per million words of everything-clefts, however, is 3.3, which is lower than for all-clefts. Also, based on the distinction between regular predicational, reverse predicational and reverse specificational everything-clefts, we find that most everything-clefts are predicational and express quality and that only a small number of reverse specificational everything-clefts express exhaustiveness and are dialogically contractive. Moreover, an even smaller number of everything-clefts also express smallness. We argue that exhaustiveness in everything-clefts stems from a metonymic link to the boundary involved in the totality meaning of everything in analogy with reverse all-clefts. The reverse exhaustive specificational everything-clefts are similar to all-clefts and clearly deserve a place in the constructional network of English specificational cleft constructions.
Keywords: everything-clefts, exhaustiveness, smallness, specification, Construction Grammar, dialogic contraction
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Quantification
    • 2.2Clefting and all-clefts
    • 2.3(Diachronic) Construction Grammar and language change
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1The frequency of occurrence of everything-clefts
    • 4.2The form-meaning properties of everything-clefts
    • 4.3 Everything-clefts in the constructional network of English specificational copular constructions
    • 4.4The development of everything-clefts
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
References (34)
References
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey N. Leech, Susan Conrad & Edward Finegan. 2021. Grammar of spoken and written English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
BNC Consortium. 2007. The British National Corpus, XML edition [Computer software]. Oxford: Oxford Text Archive. [URL]
Bonelli Tognini, Elena. 1992. ‘All I’m saying is ...’ The correlation of form and function in pseudo-cleft sentences. Literary and Linguistic Computing 7(1). 30–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burnage, Gavin & Glynis Baguley. n.d. The British National Corpus. Retrieved 25 March 2024, from [URL]
Bybee, Joan L. 2015. Language change. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Kerstin. 2015. Conversation, Construction Grammar, and cognition. Language and Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language and Cognitive Science 7(4). 563–588. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fried, Mirjam. 2013. Principles of constructional change. In Thomas Hoffmann & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford handbook of Construction Grammar, 418–437. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Greenbaum, Sidney & Jan Svartvik. 1990. The London-Lund Corpus of spoken English. In Jan Svartvik (ed.), The London-Lund Corpus of spoken English: Description and research, 11–59. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
Homer, Vincent. 2019. That’s all. In Richard Stockwell, Maura O’Leary, Zhongshi Xu & Zhou Z. L. (eds.), Proceedings of the 36th West Coast conference on formal linguistics, 1–21. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. [URL]
Kay, Paul. 2013. The limits of Construction Grammar. In Thomas Hoffmann & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford handbook of Construction Grammar, 32–48. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of cognitive grammar. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
2008. Cognitive grammar: A basic introduction. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009. Investigations in cognitive grammar. Berlin: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016. Nominal grounding and English quantifiers. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 3(1). 1–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Love, Robbie, Claire Dembry, Andrew Hardie, Vaclav Brezina & Tony McEnery. 2017. The Spoken BNC2014: Designing and building a spoken corpus of everyday conversations. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22(3). 319–344.Google Scholar
Martin, J. R. & Peter R. R. White. 2005. The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paradis, Carita. 1997. Degree modifiers of adjectives in spoken British English. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
. 2001. Adjectives and boundedness. Cognitive Linguistics 12(1). 47–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Configurations, construals and change: Expressions of degree. English Language and Linguistics 12(2). 317–343. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Metonymization: A key mechanism in semantic change. In Réka Benczes, Antonio Barcelona & Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez (eds.), Human Cognitive Processing 281. 61–88. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Patten, Amanda L. 2012. The English it-cleft: A constructional account and a diachronic investigation. Berlin: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Payne, John & Rodney Huddleston. 2002. Nouns and noun phrases. In Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.), The Cambridge grammar of the English language, 323–524. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Põldvere, Nele, Matteo Fuoli & Carita Paradis. 2016. A study of dialogic expansion and contraction in spoken discourse using corpus and experimental techniques. Corpora 11(2). 191–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Põldvere, Nele, Victoria Johansson & Carita Paradis. 2021. On the London-Lund Corpus 2: Design, challenges and innovations. English Language and Linguistics 25(3). 459–483. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Põldvere, Nele & Carita Paradis. 2019. Motivations and mechanisms for the development of the reactive what-x construction in spoken dialogue. Journal of Pragmatics 1431. 65–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seitanidi, Eleni, Nele Põldvere & Carita Paradis. 2023. All-cleft constructions in the London-Lund Corpora of spoken English: Empirical and methodological perspectives. Journal of Pragmatics 2071. 78–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swan, Michael. 2005. Practical English Usage. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Talmy, Leonard. 2011. Cognitive Semantics: An overview. In Claudia Maienborn, Klaus von Heusinger & Paul Portner (eds.), Semantics 33(1). 622–642. Berlin: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tellings, Jos. 2020. An analysis of all-clefts. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 5(1). e111.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 2008. ‘All that he endeavoured to prove was…’: On the emergence of grammatical constructions in dialogual and dialogic contexts. In Robin Cooper & Ruth Kempson (eds.), Language in flux: Dialogue coordination, language variation, change and evolution, 143–177. London: College Publications.Google Scholar
2018. Modeling language change with constructional networks. In Salvador Pons Borderia & Oscar Loureda Lamas (eds.), Beyond grammaticalization and discourse markers: New issues in the study of language change, 17–50. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. & Richard B. Dasher. 2002. Regularity in semantic change. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. & Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Constructionalization and constructional changes. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar