Persian Cleft Constructions: A Role and Reference Grammar Analysis

The goal of this chapter is to provide a Role and Reference Grammar (RRG henceforth) analysis of cleft sentences in Persian with respect to the role of interaction over the domains of syntax, semantics and information structure. Clefting is functionally motivated by thematically marked expression of a single proposition via bi-partition syntax in the sense that a sequence of two clauses including a matrix and a cleft clause is employed in order to bring into focus an element that can be otherwise expressed as a non-focal element in the unmarked predicate-focus structure. This deviation from the unmarked predicate-focus structure feeds cleft sentences with a non-isomorphic/non-compositional feature that can be accounted for in terms of a constructional framework that encompasses the morphosyntactic, semantic and informational properties that a cleft construction has. RRG is equipped with a bi-lateral syntax-semantics representation that is enriched with discourse-pragmatic considerations which enables it to facilitate processing of linguistic properties of cleft constructions by means of constructional schemas. Non-compositionality in a cleft construction implies that the semantic composition of the whole cleft construction is not the "computable sum of the meaning of its parts" (Lambrecht 1994: 230). That is why a construction-based scrutiny will be necessary to explain how the mapping between semantics and information structure in clefting can be elucidated with respect to the syntactic juxtaposition of the constituents. It will be also discussed that there should be a necessity to distinguish between emphatic in in clefting and anaphoric in in extraposition in the Persian language with regard to the role of information structure that is distinctively formalized in the syntactic templates of the two constructions on the basis of the RRG constructional framework.

This thesis is concerned with the study of Persian cleft constructions within the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) framework. RRG, a structural-functional theory of language, intends to investigate the interaction of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics through the constituent, logical, and focus structure as independent, but interrelated domains of the paradigm. In this thesis, both the literary corpus-based and intuition-based data of Persian will be analyzed in order to display the specificational nature of the construction throughout the syntactic, semantic and informational domains. In Persian clefts, despite the fact that the clefted constituent is the semantic argument of the predicator of the relative clause, it bears the role of pragmatic predicate assigned by the matrix predicator and also the optional presence of the cleft pronoun (in case of clefted constituent being an NP). This fact originates from the non-isomorphic property of the cleft construction which expresses a single proposition via biclausal syntax. The agreement feature of copula with the clefted constituent and the focalizing function of matrix grammatical elements give rise to the consideration of the so-called demonstrative as emphatic pronoun which is projected in the PERIPHERY N . The distinction between the syntactic in 'this' in the extraposed sentences and the discoursally-interpreted in 'it' in the cleft sentences proves inevitable in this thesis. iv 6 CONTENTS PAGE Acknowledgement iii Abstract iv

The term cleft is commonly used to describe a syntactic pattern which serves to separate a discourse prominent constituent structurally from the rest of the clause. It is formed by dividing a more elementary clause into two parts. One of the two parts is foregrounded, and the other, backgrounded. The structure is characterized e.g. in English by the presence of a proleptic pronoun (it), a copula (be), and a relative clause (the cleft clause). This process (foregrounding through cleaving) is not limited to Indo-European languages and can be observed in other languages, e.g. Zaar, a Chadic language spoken in Nigeria. However, in this language ‘cleft’ structures do not use a proleptic pronoun (since copulas do not require a subject in Zaar) nor is there any morphological exponent of relativization in the cleft clause. A further morphological reduction of the structure can be observed when the left-dislocation of the foregrounded element is not accompanied by a copula. I propose to examine what characterises these foregrounding structures beyond the formal components defining them in e.g. English or French, and to find a unifying definition that sets it apart from presentational constructions with a plain restrictive relative clause. In the process I argue that this type of syntactic structure is best accounted for within the framework of Universal Dependency Grammar (UD) which only considers content words as governors in dependency relations, thus accounting for the absence of copula. Finally, I present a brief description of copulas in Zaar.

Journal of English Linguistics, 1997

This is a study into the syntactic, semantic, and communicative properties of cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions in contemporary English. More precisely, it is a corpus-based study of these constructions in Modern British English. The corpora examined are the London-Lund (LL) corpus, comprising 435,000 words of spoken language, and the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen (LOB) corpus, providing around one million words of written language. Chapter 1 provides a general introduction to the study, while Chapter 2 describes the database used. In Chapter 3, the author defines the classes of pseudo-cleft and cleft sentences. Readers who are familiar with the terms cleft and pseudo-cleft only through general handbooks (e.g., Quirk et al. 1985) will learn that Collins has not only looked at the most elementary types of clefts (it BE... who/that/where, etc.) and pseudo-clefts (Wh-... BE ...) but has included variant forms in his description. I shall return to this below.

University of North Dakota Working Papers, 2003

Linguistics, 2000

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present an account of the interpretation of it-cleft constructions that attempts to draw together the apparently diverse factors of aspect, information structure, syntax, and presupposition. We begin with the observation (due to Prince 1978) that some clefts have the effect of ''backgrounding'' the information they convey, and that, in addition, clefts appear to indicate that this information is in some sense ''known fact.'' We also add the observation that in some contexts clefts can induce temporal reversals in the interpretation of the narrative order of events and note that clefts appear to limit the range of coherence relations that can be inferred between their content and that of the preceding discourse. We argue that these effects arise out of the way cleft content is incorporated into the existing discourse context; further, we suggest that the integration of cleft content is further influenced by the individual semantic, pragmatic, and informational profile of the cleft concerned. Our account draws on the notion of clefts as state-making devices: that is, they introduce an eventuality description with stative aspect, due to the presence of copular be as main verb. We look at the implications this has for discourse processing, showing how the interpretation of the cleft's stative main verb as temporally overlapping an established reference time has effects on the integration of cleft content into the discourse model. While this aspectual profile is common to all clefts, integration is further influenced by whether the cleft's presupposition contains material already known to the hearer (topic) or new (comment). While we cannot provide a complete model of discourse and temporal relations, we hope to show that the specific discourse relations taken to hold between incoming and existing information depend on a subtle interaction between a range of factors that influence the integration process

Journal of Pragmatics, 1996

Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions in English have always been a testing ground for linguistic frameworks: generative in the sixties and early seventies, presuppositional in the seventies and early eighties, functional or discourse analytical in the eighties, and cognitive pragmatic in the nineties.

This paper is intended as a contribution to the understanding of the structure of emphatic sentences in general, in particular of those sentences which are now referred to in the English grammatical tradition as cleft and as pseudocleft sentences, as exemplified in (1a) and (1b), respectively.