This paper focuses on the forms of ambiguity in cleft and pseudocleft constructions. To account for the fact that the ambiguity –whichever it is- in cleft or pseudocleft sentences is only outwardly, I argue by means of two basic lines: semantic properties and pragmatic arguments. In addition, the opposition ‘referential / predicative’ proves to be decisive on this matter. Moreover, this work demonstrates that the be/ser verb of ‘discontinuos’ It-cleft sentences with that is not ambiguous but just one copulative verb.

This paper provides empirical support to the hypothesis that habitual readings and dispositional/capacitative readings are different kinds of generic statements, generated by different operators: an aspectual operator HABASP is responsible for the habitual reading and a like modal dispositional operator MODDISP is responsible for the dispositional reading. We analyze the Spanish construction <ser muy de + infinitive>, ex. María es muy de fumar puros (lit. [María is very of smoking cigars]). This construction put together the meaning of a habitual sentence like María often smokes cigars, realized in the infinitive clause, and the meaning of an Individual Level predicate like María is a cigar smoker, realized in a predicative prepositional phrase muy de. Our analysis explains both the properties of the construction as an IL-predicate that contain an infinitive clause with habitual reading and the restrictions about the predicates that can enter the construction.

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