Belgian Journal of Linguistics - Volume 32, Issue 1, 2018

In this article we present an overview of current debates in the analysis of cleft sentences. The types of sentences that are often seen as prototypical examples of the cleft category are introduced by it is or a cross-linguistic equivalent; in addition, they have specificational semantics and a focus-background information structure articulation. We argue here that other, less prototypical types of constructions, which have received less attention, also belong to the cleft category: sentences that are introduced by expressions such as there is and you’ve got (and their cross-linguistic equivalents), as well as sentences introduced by it is which do not have specificational semantics and which express other types of information structure articulations (e.g. all-focus or topic-comment). We argue that it is fruitful to analyse these ‘non-prototypical’ clefts in more depth, not only to come to a better understanding about these sentence types in their own right, but also to arrive at insights in the phenomenon of ‘clefts’ in general.

Presentational constructions are linguistic structures that can convey all-focus utterances with no topic constituent that serve to introduce a referentially new entity or event into the discourse. Like many other languages, Dutch has several presentational constructions, including a Prosodic Inversion Construction (PIC), a Syntactic Inversion with Filler Insertion Construction (SIFIC) and a Non-Prototypical Cleft Construction (NPC). This article investigates these structures as alternating presentational constructions and focuses on referential givenness as a possible factor influencing the alternation. Based on a data elicitation task, referential givenness is shown to play a role in the choice of alternant. The PIC is predominantly used with unused/inactive and accessible Mental Representations of Referents (MRRs), but it can also contain brand-new MRRs. The NPC is exclusively used with brand-new MRRs. The SIFIC is used mostly with brand-new MRRs, but it can also contain accessible MRRs, in particular in positions other than the syntactic subject. The data elicitation task yielded a number of additional Dutch linguistic structures that could also be considered presentational constructions, including a construction with a perception verb used in a weak verb-like fashion and a construction with an existential sentence combined with a coordinated canonical topic-comment clause.

Constructions that are typically used to introduce a new referent into the discourse may extend this function so as to introduce a new event or situation. In this paper, I examine the case of presentational ci-sentences in Italian, which have developed exactly this new function out of existential sentences. Despite being superficially similar to existential sentences, as well as to clefts, presentational ci-sentences must be kept separate from both sentence types, and must be treated as an independent construction with distinct structural and functional properties. Unlike existentials, presentational ci-sentences assert the existence of an event or situation and involve a predicational structure characterized by a CP (the relative clause) that functions as the predicate of the DP. Unlike clefts, which are typically used to mark narrow focus, presentational ci-sentences display a sentence-focus structure whereby the event is presented as all new. A contrastive analysis of presentational ci-sentences against existentials and clefts will thus allow us not only to understand the exact boundaries between these constructions, but also to identify more precisely the distinctive characteristic properties of each sentence type.

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.

This paper discusses a specific subclass of English it-clefts posited in the theoretical literature, so-called predicational clefts. The main point of the paper is to show that there is no need to postulate such a separate class. Predicational clefts look special because of the narrow focus on the adjective within an indefinite pivot, but their special properties can all be derived from this narrow focus in a focus analysis in which it-clefts express contrasting focus. Contrasting focus means that besides the assertion of the proposition expressed in the cleft, there is one contrasting proposition which is excluded. The focus on the adjective in apparent predicational clefts gives rise to a narrow set of relevant alternatives, all of which differ only in the adjectival property within the pivot. The analysis developed here can account for many of the observations for apparent predicational clefts. Other properties are shown to be not conclusive. Thus, predicational clefts need not be considered a special subclass beyond their special focus characteristics.

Several recent studies devoted to French clefts involving a pronominal/adverbial morpheme such as pour ça (for that), là (there), ainsi (like this), alors (then) and comme ça (like this) demonstrate that these are likely to behave in two distinct ways, one of them being somewhat “non-prototypical” in comparison with the most commonly described narrow focus clefts. The subject of our article is to deepen the examination of c’est comme ça que sequences (lit: it is like this that, “this is how”), since they have not yet received detailed attention as to their use in modern French. The 8,600,000 word corpus which was used indicates that such forms are considerably more frequent in spoken than in written data. After recalling some of the major syntactic characteristics of clefts, we will suggest that two distinct types of c’est comme ça que sequences must be identified: the first type corresponds to the most prototypical clefts endowed with a “contrastive” effect related to the expression of manner; the second type, which will be described in greater detail, cannot be viewed as a cleft but rather as a specific discourse connector, which speakers mostly use in narrative texts, in order to introduce a consequence of the set of facts previously mentioned.