An account of the use of fronting and clefting in Cornish English

Abstract

Unlike Standard English, Celtic English varieties generally use word order shifts or special syntactic devices to give emphasis to a specific clausal constituent. This study analyses the frequency of use of focusing devices in a number of Cornish English stories and compares the results with those obtained in other studies for other Celtic English varieties. Likewise, this paper attempts to provide an explanation for why Cornish English shows a preference for fronting over clefting by referring to the structure of focal constructions in Cornish. Finally, this paper offers an account of the discourse-pragmatic functions of fronting and clefting in Cornish English and compares them with those found in Standard English to provide evidence in support of its Celtic substratum.