Cover not available
Part of
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2012: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' Leuven 2012
Edited by Karen Lahousse and Stefania Marzo
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 6] 2014
► pp. 91–108

Against the matrix left peripheral analysis of English it-clefts

In the wake of the proposals for the articulated left periphery (Rizzi 1997), Meinunger (1997, 1998), Frascarelli & Ramaglia (2009, 2013) and Sleeman (2011) assign to it-clefts a representation modeled on that of wh-interrogatives and of focus fronting. This paper first outlines one precise cartographic implementation of this analysis and then it is shown that such an analysis presents a number of problems of implementation, which concern the external and internal syntax of it-clefts. Distributionally, it-clefts are shown to pattern differently from sentences with focus fronting. Moreover the monoclausal analysis raises problems of implementation, in particular given that the cleft focus can itself undergo focus fronting and wh-movement.

Published online: 18 December 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.6.04hae
References
Authier, Jean Marc
1992 “Iterated CPs and Embedded Topicalisation.” Linguistic Inquiry 23, 329-336.Google Scholar
Alrenga, Peter
2005 “A Sentential Subject Asymmetry in English and its Implications for Complement Selection.” Syntax 8 (3): 175-207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Belletti, Adriana
2009  Structures and Strategies . Routledge: New York.Google Scholar
Bianchi, Valentina, and Mara Frascarelli
2010 “Is Topic a Root Phenomenon?” Iberia 2, no. 1, [URL] (2 February 2013).Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo
1999 Adverbs and Functional Heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo, and Luigi Rizzi
2010 “The Cartography of Syntactic Structures.” In The Oxford Handbook of Grammatical Analysis, ed. by Bernd Heine, and Heiko Narrog, 51–65. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Clech-Darbon, Anne, Georges Rebuschi, and Annie Rialland
1999 “Are there Cleft Sentences in French?” In The Grammar of Focus, ed. by Laurice Tuller, and Georges Rebuschi, 83-118. Amsterdam; Philadelphia, PA : John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collins, Chris, and Paul Postal
2014 Classical Neg Raising: an Essay on the Syntax of Negation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Declerck, Renaat
1988 Studies on Copular Sentences, Clefts and Pseudo-clefts. Leuven: University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Den Dikken, Marcel
2006 Relators and Linkers: The Syntax of Predication, Predicate Inversion and Copulas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew
1996 “Focus, Pragmatic Presupposition and Activated Propositions.” Journal of Pragmatics 26, 475-523. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Emonds, Joseph
1970 Root and Structure-preserving Transformations. Ph.D. diss., Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
1976 A Transformational Approach to English Syntax. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Frascarelli, Mara, and Francesca Ramaglia
2009 (Pseudo)cleft Constructions at the Interfaces. Lingbuzz. [URL])Google Scholar
Frascarelli, Mara & Francesca Ramaglia
2013 “(Pseudo)clefts at the Syntax-Prosody-Discourse Interface.” In Cleft Structures, ed. by Katharina Hartmann, and Tonje Veenstra, 97-140. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frascarelli, Mara, and Roland Hinterhölzl
2007 “Types of Topics in German and Italian.” In On Information Structure, Meaning and Form, ed. by Susanne Winkler, and Kerstin Schwabe, 87–116. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane
2000a “Negative Preposing, the Neg Criterion and the Structure of CP.” In Negation and Polarity, ed. by Laurence Horn, and Yasuhiko Kato, 29–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2000b “Inversion, non-adjacent Inversion and Adjuncts in CP.” In Transactions of the Philological Society, Special Issue: Papers from the Salford Negation Conference, vol. 98, ed. by Paul Rowlett, 121-160.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael
1967 “Notes on Transitivity and Theme in English, Part II.” Journal of Linguistics 3, 199-244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hedberg, Nancy
2000 “The Referential Status of Clefts.” Language 76, 891–920. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hegarty, Michael
1992 Familiar Complements and their Complementizers: On some Determinants of A’-locality. Ms., University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Hooper, Joan, and Sandra Thompson
1973 “On the Applicability of Root Transformations.” Linguistic Inquiry, 465–479.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney, and Geoff Pullum
2002 The Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kiss, Katalin, É
1994 “Sentence Structure and Word Order.” Syntax and Semantics, Vol 27: The Syntactic Structure of Hungarian. Reidel: Dordrecht.Google Scholar
1998 “Identificational Focus versus Informational Focus.” Language 74. 245-273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lahousse, Karen, Christopher Laenzlinger, and Gabriela Soare
2014 “Intervention at the Left Periphery.” To appear in Lingua. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lahousse, Karen, and Marijke Borremans
2013 “The Distribution of Functional-Pragmatic Types of Clefts in Adverbial Clauses.” To appear in Linguistics.Google Scholar
Laka, Itziar
1990 Negation in Syntax: On the Nature of Functional Categories and Projections. Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, MA: MITGoogle Scholar
Meinunger, André
1997 “The Structure of Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Sentences.” In: Texas Linguistic Forum 38, The Syntax and Semantics of Predication, ed. by Moosally, M., and R. Blight, 235-246.Google Scholar
1998 “A Monoclausal Structure for (Pseudo–) Cleft Sentences.” In Proceedings of NELS 28, ed. by Pius N. Tamanji, and Kiyomi Kusumoto (eds.), 283–298. Amherst, MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
Molnár, Valéria, and Susanne Winkler
2010 “Edges and Gaps: Contrast at the Interfaces.” Lingua 120, 1392-1415. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nakajima, Heizo
1995 “Complementizer Selection.” The Linguistic Review 13, 143-164.Google Scholar
Poletto, Cecilia, and Jean-Yves Pollock
2004 “On the Left Periphery of some Romance wh-Questions.” In The structure of IP and CP, ed. by Luigi Rizzi, 251–296. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Progovac, Liliana
1994 Negative and Positive Polarity. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik
1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Radford, Andrew
2009a Analysing English Sentences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009b An Introduction to English Sentence Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reeve, Matthew
2010 Clefts. PhD. Diss., London: University College London.Google Scholar
2011 “The Syntactic Structure of English Clefts.” Lingua 121: 142-171. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi
1997 “The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery.” In Elements of Grammar, ed. by Liliane Haegeman, 289–330. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
2001 “On the Position Int (errogative) in the Left Periphery of the Clause.” In Current Studies in Italian Syntax: Essays Offered to Lorenzo Renzi, ed. By Guglielmo Cinque & Giampolo Salvi, 286-296. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
2004 “Locality and Left Periphery.” In Structures and Beyond, ed. by Adriana Belletti, 223-251. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2010 “The Cartography of Syntactic Structures: Criteria, Freezing and Interface Effects.” Paper presented at EALING, Paris: ENS. (16 September 2010)
2012 “Cartography, Criteria and Labeling.” Blaise Pascal lectures, Paris 11-13 September 2012.
Rochemont, Michael
1998 “Phonological Focus and Structural Focus.” In The Limits of Syntax: Syntax and Semantics 29, ed. by P. Culicover, and L. McNally, 337-364. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Ross, John R
1967 Constraints on Variables in Syntax. MIT diss.Google Scholar
Sleeman, Petra
2011 “Quantifier–focalization in French and Italian.” Handout presented at department of linguistics, KU Leuven (21 March 2011).
Skopetos, Stavros, and Gilbert Fanselow
2010 “Focus Types and Argument Asymmetries.” In Comparative and Contrastive Studies on Information Structure, ed. by Carsten Breul, and Edward Göbbel, 169-198. Amsterdam: John Benjamins DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Karssenberg, Lena, Karen Lahousse, Béatrice Lamiroy, Stefania Marzo & Ana Drobnjakovic
2018. Non-prototypical clefts. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 32 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Lahousse, Karen
2015. A case of focal adverb preposing in French*. In Structures, Strategies and Beyond [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 223], ► pp. 209 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.