Towards the copular status of clefts—-Evidence from diachrony

Cleft constructions in a contrastive perspective Towards an operational taxonomy 3 The terminology used in the literature to refer to the cleft components varies quite significantly (on this issue, also see note 23). The term cleft / clefted constituent, which is used for instance in Hedberg (1988) and Calude (2009), is called differently in other studies, in particular according to the point of view that is adopted: Collins (1991: 2), for instance, prefers to use the term highlighted element, which he considers to be "neutral as to the semantic/syntactic/textual/logical role of the constituent in question" (p. 217). In his view, this element should be called identifier in propositional semantic terms, complement of the copula be (or post-copular constituent) in syntactic terms, new or comment in textual terms and focus in logical terms (cf. Collins 1991: 217). Again in line with Hedberg (1988) and Calude (2009), the same is true for what we call cleft clause: Declerck (1984) calls this part of the cleft wh-that clause, and Collins (1991) and Lambrecht (2001) label it relative clause. All of these labels have advantages and disadvantages that we cannot discuss in detail here. In a way, these labels are therefore to be interpreted as a practical, compromise solution.

Journal of Semantics 25. 345-380, 2008

In this paper, we examine two main approaches to the syntax and semantics of it-clefts as in 'It was Ohno who won': an expletive approach where the cleft pronoun is an expletive and the cleft clause bears a direct syntactic or semantic relation to the clefted constituent, and a discontinuous constituent approach where the cleft pronoun has a semantic content and the cleft clause bears a direct syntactic or semantic relation to the cleft pronoun. We argue for an analysis using Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) that captures the best of both approaches. We use Tree-Local Multi-Component Tree Adjoining Grammar (MC-TAG) to propose a syntax of it-clefts and Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammar (STAG) to define a compositional semantics on the proposed syntax. It will be shown that the distinction TAG makes between the derivation tree and the derived tree, the extended domain of locality characterizing TAG, and the direct syntax-semantics mapping characterizing STAG allow for a simple and straightforward account of the syntax and semantics of it-clefts, capturing the insights and arguments of both the expletive and the discontinuous constituent approaches. Our analysis reduces the syntax and semantics of it-clefts to copular sentences containing definite description subjects, such as 'The person that won is Ohno.' We show that this is a welcome result, as evidenced by the syntactic and semantic similarities between it-clefts and the corresponding copular sentences.

Cleft sentences are a well-known structure in most of the languages of Europe: in many grammatical accounts they appear as a Focus-marking device, but in some cases they may also show additional functions. However, the issue of a Latin counterpart, if not a Latin ancestor, has seldom been addressed after Bengt Löfstedt's path-breaking article. Building on recent studies on information structure , a corpus study has been carried out, that demonstrates not only that Latin could mark an argument-focus using a cleft, but also that this sentence evolved by developing different informational values through grammaticalization.

In her review article on my Studies on copular sentences, clefts and pseudo-clefts , points out a couple of 'inconsistencies' in my book and proposes a taxonomy of copular sentences that is somewhat different from the one I advocate. Since it is my feeling that the 'inconsistencies' are largely a matter of misinterpretation, and since I cannot agree with Keizer's taxonomy, I think it is necessary to have a closer look at the argumentation.

nicolas.guilliot.chez-alice.fr

The goal of this study is to correlate two independent accounts about est-ce que/qui questions in French (est-ce que/qui as a question marker, or as a decomposed element) with two independent accounts about cleft sentences (focused element in situ or displaced). Instead of trying to tease these two respective accounts apart, we argue that the two syntactic strategies do exist and compete for cleft constructions, and hence for est-ce que/qui questions: the first strategy relates to a (partial) movement strategy, whereas the second one refers to the 'relative' strategy. We give several empirical arguments in favor of that claim, based notably on the nature of complementizers (subordination versus relativization) and the distribution of specific adverbs (such as donc "then"). Interestingly, such an assumption for two competing strategies makes nice predictions with respect to the relation between focus and accentuation, typological differences, or connectivity/reconstruction effects.

Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 2018

The goal of this contribution is to deepen our knowledge of French cleft sentences through the study of a special category of clefts called 'adverbial clefts'. The issues that we will address concern their form, discourse frequency and boundaries with resembling structures. In order to shed light on these issues, we start by defining the concept of 'adverbial' from a morphosyntactic and functional point of view. We then present a corpus-based description of the categories of adverbials that can be cleaved. Finally, we propose a general semantic principle capable of describing and explaining, in a coherent and unitary way, both the data obtained in our empirical study and found in the form of constructed examples in the existing literature. In addition to explaining why certain adverbials can be cleaved while others cannot, this principle also allows for a distinction to be made between two syntactic realizations of the structure ‘c’est Adv que p’, as well as for a solution to the controversial issue of the status of domain adverbials.

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.

University of North Dakota Working Papers, 2003

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.

2007

This paper † examines the syntactic behavior of the Mauritian copula in predicative and extracted sentences. As it is the case in many languages, the Mauritian copula ete is absent in certain constructions: It only appears in extraction contexts. Our aim is to show that the postulation of a null copula, which has been proposed in various analyses, is inadequate for the Mauritian data. The phenomenon, as it is argued, rather lends itself to a strictly construction-based analysis within the framework of HPSG and is based on the distribution of weak pronouns and TAM markers.

This chapter examines the diachronic rise of a syntactically and pragmatically complex construction type: pseudoclefts. Given that cleft constructions combine available components of grammar -relative clauses and copular clauses -do they arise in full-fledged form? If they emerge gradually, what constrains their development? We first present a corpus-based analysis of the history of English pseudoclefts and develop qualitative and quantitative measures to identify properties of pseudoclefts at different developmental stages. We then apply the same measures of grammaticalization in a synchronic comparison of pseudoclefts in contemporary spoken and written German, Swedish, and English in order to test their crosslinguistic validity. We find that pseudoclefts develop gradually in a process driven by the pragmatic exploitation of their presuppositional structure (Lambrecht 1994). 1

2009

Proceedings of Chicago Linguistics Society, 2013

Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 2014

Reviewed by Adam Szczegielniak 1 Research into the nature and structure of copular constructions has provided a lot of interesting insight into the architecture of the grammar and the interaction between syntax, morphology and semantics. For example, work by Andrea Moro (2000) on symmetry within the verb phrase, or Marcel den Dikken's (2006) proposals on phase extension, have spurred new approaches to how basic syntactic computations are carried out. The book under review here, "Copular Clauses in English and Polish. Structure Derivation and Interpretation" by Anna Bondaruk, is an interesting contribution to this already vibrant field of research. Her work has two aims: to provide a clear and state-of-the-art overview of existing proposals on a whole variety of copular constructions, and to offer an analysis of three major classes of such constructions in Polish. In order to achieve this goal, the book is divided into two sections. Part I discusses copular clauses in English, whereas Part II critically analyzes existing proposals on copular constructions in Polish and puts forward a novel analysis for these structures. This is a simple linear division of labor that has the advantage of providing the reader with an overview of research that is richer than what the author needs in her analysis of Polish. The downside to this approach is that it also gives the impression that work on these two languages remains to some degree disjoint. Fortunately, the author makes an effort to integrate some of the work on non-Slavic copulas into the discussion of her own proposals. The discussion concentrates on research carried out in the past twenty years within the generative framework of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995). The author's own proposals are also couched within this approach. The aim appears to be to accommodate Slavic data to the broad principles assumed within MP. The book is 371 pages long, and includes an index and references. The first three chapters, roughly one third of the book, are devoted to English. The discussion is very detailed providing an exhaustive taxonomy of copular constructions. The impression is that the goal of this section is to give the reader a sense of the richness of 'flavors' that copular construction come in when analyzed semantically and syntactically. In Chapter I, we are 1 I would like to thank Wayles Browne, Marcel den Dikken and Steven Franks for their comments, and Rosemarie Connolly for help with the text. Any errors are obviously mine. To appear in: Journal of Slavic Linguistics introduced to the taxonomy of copular constructions in English based on Higgins (1979) and to proposals in Mikkelsen (2004, 2005), whose work will resonate throughout the rest of the book. Chapter II gives an overview of the predicational and specificational clauses in English, and Chapter III introduces us to equatives in English. Each chapter follows a template where the properties of the constructions are introduced, followed by a critical overview of existing recent approaches. In that sense, the discussion is not so much driven by any given proposal or theory, other than broad minimalism, rather it is driven by taxonomy. Such an approach makes the first section a useful reference tool for any linguist interested in these constructions, but readers should not expect to find advocacy for any specific framework. Instead, they will find a critical overview and comparison of some of the existing proposals. Work by Mikkelsen (2005, 2011) and Roy (2006) plays an important role in the discussion. Proposals made by the latter are crucial for the author in that they introduce a subdivision of predicational clauses into characterizing and defining ones that is later used in the analysis of Polish. Polish copular clauses is what the second part of the book concentrates on. Chapter IV starts off with a typology of Polish copular constructions. The division is partly driven by the observation that Polish has two copulas: the verb 'być' (to be) and the pronominal 'to' (it), and both can occur simultaneously. Chapter V discusses the possible types of copular clauses that contain just the verbal copula 'to be'; the discussion here centers around the difference between copular constructions with be+DP (instrumental) vs be+DP (nominative). The author incorporates into her proposal Roy's (2006) observation that copular clauses can be either characterizing or defining. Bondaruk argues that the status of PredP determines the predicate DP's case so that clauses with instrumental DP's are characterizing, whereas the ones with nominative DP's are defining. Chapter VI tackles predicational clauses with both copular elements present. Bondaruk argues that the pronominal copula heads a Predicate Phrase, whereas the verbal one is in v. This is a modification of Citko (2008), who also argued that both copulas have verb hosting heads. A large part of this Chapter is devoted to the difference between agreement and case mechanisms in copular constructions and double object constructions where, following Citko (2011), the author assumes that two verbal heads value each object independently. Chapter VII discusses inverse copular constructions in Polish. The author argues against Tajsner (2008) who, based on Bailyn's Generalized Inversion, proposes that the subject in inverse copular constructions remains in-situ, and instead offers an account based on Slioussar (2007), where she assumes that the subject in inverse copular constructions is in Spec-T and the predicate has undergone A'-movement to Spec-CP, or Spec-Topic. The final Chapter is devoted to equatives in Polish, which, according to the author, exhibit a symmetrical structure similar to what has been argued for in Moro (1997, 2000) for English, and for Russian by Pereltsvaig (2007). The symmetry is broken via movement