Syntactic constraints on discourse structure: the case of it-clefts

Delin, Judy; Oberlander, Jon

doi:10.1515/ling.1995.33.3.465

Cited by 74 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Focus-background it-clefts-with the bipartite structure consisting of a focused cleft pivot and a backgrounded existential presupposition cleft relative-have been claimed to be licensed by discourse-semantic factors, for instance, by discoursestructural (Delin 1992;Delin & Oberlander 1995) or metalinguistic discourse factors (Destruel & Velleman 2014); cf. common-ground management in Krifka 2008.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contradicting (not-)at-issueness in exclusives and clefts: An empirical study

DeVeaugh-Geiss

Zimmermann

Onea

et al. 2015

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We present two empirical studies on exclusives, it-clefts, and pseudoclefts (i.e., identity statements with a definite description) in which the at-issue and not-at-issue content-a factor that has not been properly controlled for in prior experimental work on cleft exhaustivity-were teased apart systematically. The results show that violations of exhaustivity in it-clefts, a not-at-issue inference, patterned differently from the necessary presupposition failures of the not-at-issue semantic inferences. These findings pose a new experimental challenge to semantic accounts of exhaustivity in it-clefts, while being in line with pragmatic accounts.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contradicting (not-)at-issueness in exclusives and clefts: An empirical study

DeVeaugh-Geiss

Zimmermann

Onea

et al. 2015

SALT

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“…7 Delin & Oberlander (1995) make a similar claim about the subordinate clause of cleft sentences: they count as presuppositional also when they convey information that is expected to be known. 8 The English equivalents of (7b) and (16b) are called comment-clause clefts by Delin and Oberlander (1995). (17) Problem (viii) was the question why a universal quantifier cannot be focussed.…”

Section: This Is How the Proposed Analysis Accounts For Problems (I)-mentioning

confidence: 99%

Deriving the Properties of Structural Focus

Kiss

2017

Contrastiveness in Information Structure, Alternatives and Scalar Implicatures

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This paper proposes a theory of structural focus derived via focus movement which can account for all the focus-related facts attested in Hungarian, among them facts which other current theories cannot explain. It will claim that focus movement serves the purpose of creating a predicate-subject structure, in which the focus-moved constituent functions as a specificational predicate. The properties of both the focus and the background follow from the independently established properties of specificational predication constructions.Section 2 of the paper briefly introduces two recent theories of focus movement: the "movement for stress" theory of Szendrői (2003), and the "movement for the checking of the exhaustive identification feature" theory of Horvath (2005), pointing out the problems which they cannot handle. Section 3 presents the proposal argued for. Section 4 demonstrates how the problems observed in section 2 receive a natural solution in the proposed framework. Section 5 discusses a further consequence of the proposed theory, involving the definiteness effect attested in presentational constructions. Some current theories of structural focus Structural focus as a phonological phenomenonSzendrői"s (2003) influential theory of structural focus aims to provide a unified analysis of English-type prosodic focus and Hungarian-type structural focus: both are claimed to be motivated by the stress-focus correspondence principle (Reinhart 1995, and Zubizarreta 1998), according to which (1) The focus of a clause is a(ny) constituent containing the main stress of the intonational phrase, as determined by the stress rule.Whereas in an English-type language the stress-focus correspondence is usually attained by stress shift, in a Hungarian type language it is claimed to be achieved by the movement of focus into the position of main stress, at the left edge of the verbal projection. (Szendrői analyzes the Hungarian sentence as a VP. Topic constituents are claimed to be extrametrical adjuncts, which are skipped by the stress rule.) The V

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“…Hedberg, 1990 ;Geluykens, 1991). Dans une perspective alternative, Delin (1990) et Delin & Oberlander (1995) montrent que les constructions clivées peuvent contribuer à structurer certains aspects du discours qui relèvent de la gestion de l'interaction. En l'occurrence, Delin (1990) décrit trois tâches que les constructions clivées accomplissent de manière régulière dans le corpus (anglais écrit et conversationnel) que la chercheuse a exploré : a) correction move : cette fonction -qui rappelle l'emploi contrastif traditionnellement attribué aux constructions clivées -permet de corriger, de " réparer " un énoncé ou une partie d'un tour de parole précédent ; b) continuation move : souvent, les constructions clivées permettent aux locuteurs de marquer la " continuation " d'un tour de parole, ou, en d'autres termes, d'exhiber qu'ils sont en train de développer un énoncé étendu ; c) fill move : les constructions clivées peuvent intervenir également dans la deuxième partie d'une paire adjacente du type question/réponse.…”

Section: Les Aspects Interactionnelsunclassified

De la malléabilité des structures syntaxiques dans l'interaction orale : le cas de la clivée

Stefani¹

2008

Congrès Mondial De Linguistique Française 2008

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Syntactic constraints on discourse structure: the case of it-clefts

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

Cited by 74 publications

References 11 publications

Contradicting (not-)at-issueness in exclusives and clefts: An empirical study

Contradicting (not-)at-issueness in exclusives and clefts: An empirical study

Deriving the Properties of Structural Focus

De la malléabilité des structures syntaxiques dans l'interaction orale : le cas de la clivée

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