The syntactic structure of English clefts

Reeve, Matthew M.

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2010.05.004

Cited by 34 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…1. The copula in clefts selects as its sentential complement a CP (in line with several previous analyses, Ruwet 1975, Heggie 1988, Kayne 1994, Clech-Darbon, Rebuschui, Rialland 1999, Reeve 2011.…”

Section: Essential Aspects Of the Assumed Analysissupporting

confidence: 82%

The Focus Map of Clefts: Extraposition and Predication

Belletti¹

2015

Beyond Functional Sequence

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Section: Essential Aspects Of the Assumed Analysissupporting

confidence: 82%

The Focus Map of Clefts: Extraposition and Predication

Belletti¹

2015

Beyond Functional Sequence

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“…This is not to say that the objective is not worthwhile; there is certainly evidence to support the claim that the postcopular element and the cleft clause form a constituent, including number agreement, VP-constituency tests, and perhaps also syntactic connectedness. See Hedberg (2000), Han & Hedberg (2008), and Reeve (2010Reeve ( , 2011, who adopt this aspect of the expletive approach without assuming an expletive it.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The historical development of the it-cleft

Patten

2012

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This paper compares two approaches to a particular grammatical change. While Ball (1991Ball ( ,1994 investigates the development ofthe ¿i-cleft configuration from within the generative tradition ofthe 1990s, I have recently re-examined the historical it-cleft data from a constructional perspective (see Patten 2010, forthcoming). In this paper, I show how our different theoretical assumptions lead us to categorize and analyse the data differently. I conclude that a constructional approach is better at interpreting the diachronic facts.

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“…Akmajian (1970), Emonds (1976), Belletti (2011) ; see Reeve (2011Reeve ( , 2012 for a survey. F&R do not comment on this difference in their discussion of Italian.…”

Section: Frascarelli and Ramaglia (In Press)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The architecture ofit-clefts

2013

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This paper examines quasi-monoclausal left-peripheral analyses of English it-clefts.Though attractive because such analyses bring out commonalities between it-clefts on the one hand and focus fronting and wh-questions on the other, the range of word order variations available in English it-clefts reveals that such monoclausal analyses of it-clefts lead to considerable complications of implementation, ultimately undoing the gain in terms of economy that initially would seem to justify them. In particular, we will show that, on closer inspection, the presumed focus fronting in it-clefts cannot be targeting the position deployed for ' regular ' left-peripheral focus fronting. Moreover, both implementations of the monoclausal analysis discussed make the wrong predictions with respect to the distribution of it-clefts. In particular, as already argued by Hooper & Thompson (1973) and Emonds (1976), English it-clefting, unlike ' regular ' focus fronting, is not a main clause phenomenon. Given these objections, we conclude that the left-peripheral analyses of it-clefts are ill-founded. for discussion. Thanks to three anonymous referees of Journal of Linguistics for thorough and thought-provoking comments. On the basis of their comments and extensive suggestions we have been able to sharpen our minds about the core issues of our paper. Obviously, they are not responsible for the way we have used their comments.

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The syntactic structure of English clefts

Cited by 34 publications

References 35 publications

The Focus Map of Clefts: Extraposition and Predication

The Focus Map of Clefts: Extraposition and Predication

The historical development of the it-cleft

The architecture ofit-clefts

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