Chapter 1
On the use of there-clefts with zero subject relativizer
This chapter investigates the use of there-clefts without a subject relativizer (e.g. There’s a man came into the bar) in contemporary British English, a much neglected construction that is often dismissed as non-standard. Using data from the Spoken British National Corpus 2014, the study shows that it is clearly attested, with a total of 170 instances, and thus more than just a marginal syntactic anomaly. Omission of the relativizer is most frequent with the presentational-eventive type, which narrowly outnumbers the specificational type (viz. enumerative-specificational and quantifying-specificational). The relative frequency of the former is attributed to its unique pragmatic function, combining a new predication with a new referent. Structurally, this type is analysed as mono-clausal with an invariable existential prefix there’s.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.
There-clefts: Charting the territory
- 3.Delimitation and corpus retrieval
- 4.Overall frequencies
- 5.Enumerative specificational there-cleft
- 6.Quantifying-specificational there-cleft
- 7.Presentational-eventive there-cleft
- 8.Discussion: The discourse functions of there-clefts without relativizer
- 9.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
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Cited by (3)
Cited by 3 other publications
Davidse, Kristin, Ngum Meyuhnsi Njende & Gerard O’Grady
2023.
Structural Assemblies and Semantics of the Four Existential Constructions with Relative Clause. In
Specificational and Presentational There-Clefts,
► pp. 75 ff.
Davidse, Kristin, Ngum Meyuhnsi Njende & Gerard O’Grady
2023.
Introduction. In
Specificational and Presentational There-Clefts,
► pp. 1 ff.
Davidse, Kristin, Ngum Meyuhnsi Njende & Gerard O’Grady
2023.
Paradigms of Relative Markers. In
Specificational and Presentational There-Clefts,
► pp. 49 ff.
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