Functions of Language - Online First

This paper examines two variants of the pseudo-cleft construction which display a WHAT-NP-VP-be pattern with the VP realised with cognitive verbs and the proform do in the context of spoken British English dyadic and multi-party BBC podcasts. It is based on the premise that the construction’s referencing potentials are both cataphoric and projective, and that depending on its contexts, one of the two referencing functions is foregrounded while the other is backgrounded. The analysis focuses on those linguistic features and contextual configurations which either contribute to its cataphoric referencing function, or which go beyond the local cataphoric referencing function and indicate its projective, discourse-organising function. The research is corpus-based and uses quantitative and qualitative methodologies, filtering out the linguistic features and contextual configurations which contribute to assigning the two variants the status of a projective construction with a discourse-organising function. The features under investigation are (1) the semantics of the constitutive NPs and VPs marking for tense, aspect and modality and their uptake in the discourse, (2) degrees of continuity and discontinuity in the cohesive chains triggered by the constitutive parts of the construction. The paper shows that when semantic continuity between the what-clause and what follows is discontinued and thus deferred, the construction’s projective function is foregrounded.