LINGUIST List 25.3041
Thu
Jul 24 2014
Review: Linguistic
Theories; Syntax: Hartmann & Veenstra
(2013)
Editor for this issue:
Malgorzata Cavar <gosialinguistlist.org>
Date: 04-Mar-2014
From: Avelino Corral Esteban
<avelino.corral
uam.es>
Subject: Cleft Structures
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Book announced at
http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-4908.html
EDITOR: Katharina Hartmann
EDITOR: Tonjes Veenstra
TITLE: Cleft Structures
SERIES TITLE: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics
Today 208
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Avelino Corral Esteban, Universidad
Complutense de Madrid
SUMMARY
This book consists of a collection of 11 papers
that aims at shedding light on the analysis and
interpretation of cleft constructions by
addressing different aspects of these
constructions in a range of languages from new
theoretical and empirical perspectives.
The introductory chapter, written by Katharina
Hartmann and Tonjes Veenstra (the editors of
this volume), lays the foundation for the
remainder of the book. It presents a general
review of previous work on clefts and discusses
fundamental issues regarding their typological
variation, giving an overview on views on their
origin, their syntactic structure, discourse
functions, semantic interpretation and their
prosodic characteristics. The chapter concludes
by presenting a summary of the remaining 11
articles included in this volume.
The remainder of the book is organized into
three main sections. Part I (Chapters 1 to 3)
focuses on the interpretation of cleft
constructions as specificational or
predicational sentences. Issues regarding the
syntactic representation of clefts and the
internal structure of their constituents are
analyzed in Part II (Chapters 4 to 6). Finally,
Part III (Chapters 7 to 11) examines mostly the
information structure of clefts. There is also
a language index and a subject index. Below is
a chapter-by-chapter summary of the 11
chapters.
In Chapter 1, Marcel den Dikken, in his paper
entitled “Predication and specification in the
syntax of cleft sentences,” transfers the
distinction between predication and
specification from copular sentences (Higgins,
1979) to the realm of clefts, by applying the
three criteria (i.e. word order, control,
distribution of the copula in non-finite
predications embedded under propositional
attitude predicates) used by Higgins in order
to claim that a predicational / specificational
distinction also holds in the domain of
“it”-clefts. Thus, den Dikken provides an
original analysis of “it”-clefts by arguing
that: 1) specificational “it”-clefts are a
particular subtype of inverse specificational
copular sentences where “it” acts as a
pro-predicate, which inverts its position with
its subject by means of syntactic derivation;
2) in contrastive-focus “it”-clefts, the
pro-predicate “it” takes the projection of the
focus as its subject and the cleft clause is a
headless relative clause structurally related
to the projection focus via asyndetic
specification, rather than predication; and 3)
in continuous-topic “it”-clefts, both the value
and the relative constitute the focus of the
cleft that occupies the subject position of the
construction whose predicate is the
pro-predicate “it”.
Edith Aldridge analyzes the relationship
between “wh”-clefts and verb-initial word order
in Austronesian languages, arguing that there
is a parallelism between the derivation of
basic word order in verb-initial languages and
the fact that “wh”-questions are formed on
clefts in a broad range of these languages. In
the first case, the absolutive DP moves to a
topic position in the left periphery and the
remnant TP is fronted to a higher focus
position above the topic, which derives the VOS
word order. Regarding the formation of clefts,
the cleft clause, which is a headless relative,
is treated as the topic, whereas the “wh”-word
forms part of the predicate, since it is
contained in the fronted remnant TP, which
moves to the focus position. Therefore,
Aldridge argues that the focus must be part of
the predicate and consequently is not the
subject. Likewise, this positioning leads to a
bi-clausal analysis that accounts for the
irreversibility of clefts in these
languages.
In “Pseudo-clefts at the
syntax-prosody-discourse interface,”Mara
Frascarelli and Francesca Ramaglia take an
interface approach to the study of “it”-cleft
and pseudo cleft constructions by investigating
their syntactic, semantic, discourse and
intonational properties cross-linguistically.
In contrast to the general (traditional) view
that the relative clause corresponds to the
predicate of the relevant copular sentence and
the focused element acts as the subject in a
small clause, these authors argue that it is
the clefted constituent that has the properties
of a main predicate in a copular construction
and that the relative DP is a dislocated
constituent, namely as a right-hand Topic in
“it”-clefts and a left-hand Topic in
pseudoclefts, which explains their
presuppositional behavior in the
construction.
Lisa L.-S. Cheng and Laura Downing´s paper
“Clefts in Durban Zulu” is a study of the
structure of clefts in this aboriginal Bantu
language spoken in South Africa. According to
these authors, clefts in this language are
bi-clausal structures involving a copular
sentence formed by a copula and a cleft phrase,
and an adjoined DP or an adjoined adverbial
clause, depending on whether the cleft phrase
is nominal or non-nominal respectively. These
two constituents are not only syntactically
independent from each other, but also in
prosodic terms, since each forms an independent
intonational phrase. Likewise, following Adger
and Ramchand´s (2005) assumption for a special
copular sentence (i.e. the augmented copular
construction) in Scottish Gaelic, they claim
that the copula is the head of a predicate
phrase which hosts the cleft phrase in its
specifier and has a null pronominal element as
its predicate. Thus, the adjoined element
provides a definite description for the
interpretation of the variable in the semantic
representation of the pronominal predicate.
Matthew Reeve, in “The cleft pronoun and cleft
clause in English”, provides new evidence on
the nature of the cleft pronoun, the
interpretation of the cleft clause, and the
relation between the clefted element and the
cleft clause. Based on Hedberg (2000), Reeve
firstly offers a great number of syntactic and
semantic arguments for an analysis of the cleft
pronoun as a referential pronoun, and not as an
expletive, and claims that both the cleft
pronoun and the cleft phrase form a
discontinuous definite description, which
reflects the structural similarity between
clefts and specificational sentences. Yet, the
author departs from the traditional
specificational analyses on claiming that the
cleft clause is a restrictive relative clause
functions as a modifier of the cleft phrase, to
which it is adjoined, and therefore it cannot
be extraposed from the cleft pronoun. Finally,
Reeve compares both relative clauses and clefts
in terms of connectivity effects to show that
DP-clefts (and some PP-clefts) are
derivationally ambiguous since they may present
two different structures: one structure where
the clefted constituent occurs in postcopular
position and another in which the clefted
constituent is raised from inside the cleft
clause.
Harold Torrence explores “The morphosyntax of
Wolof clefts” in terms of their structural and
movement properties. In Wolof, a Congo-Niger
language spoken in Senegal and the Gambia,
there exist two syntactically different types
of clefts, depending on whether the clefted
element functions as subject of the
construction or not. As regards their internal
structure, the copula, the head of the copular
phrase, of a subject cleft occurs with a
TP-structure, while its counterpart in a
non-subject cleft occurs with a CP-like
structure. Torrence provides detailed evidence
that the cleft phrase undergoes overt A´-
movement, via SpecCopP in subject clefts or
directly in non-subject clefts, to the cleft
position (SpecFocP). This fact shows that
clefts in this language resemble their English
counterparts since in both languages clefting
involves A´- movement. However, they also
differ in that in Wolof clefting does not
involve the presence of a silent operator.
Nancy Hedberg examines the information
structure of English clefts in a paper entitled
“Multiple focus and cleft sentences”. Assuming
that the syntax of clefts reflects the semantic
interpretation, she takes a bi-clausal analysis
of clefts to show that the two semantic units
of a cleft construction, that is the exhaustive
focus and the pragmatic presupposition, are
mapped onto the two syntactic constituents,
namely the clefted element and the cleft
clause. Next, she provides a detailed analysis
of the two semantic elements -- the exhaustive
focus and the pragmatic presupposition -- in
terms of their informational properties to
illustrate that clefts can display distinct
types of organization, that is topic-comment
and comment-topic, which reflect the
distinction made by Prince (1978) between
´informative presupposition` and ´stressed
focus`. Thus, in topic-comment clefts the cleft
clause carries the primary sentence accent and
presents information that is new in the
discourse. By contrast, in comment-topic
clefts, the cleft clause expresses an activated
presupposition and the clefted element, which
usually carries the primary sentence accent,
expresses a focus that is used to make a
correction, to answer a question, or to present
a contrast. In addition to these two types,
Hedberg examines three subtypes of clefts that
contain prosodic prominence on both the clefted
constituent and the cleft clause (i.e.
all-comment organization) and shows that the
prosodic focus in both cases can be considered
to present semantic focus in the sense of
Krifka (1992, 2007). Thus, a prosodic focus on
the clefted constituent can be associated with
the exhaustive focus operator, whereas a
prosodic focus on the cleft clause can be
associated with an assertive focus operator. In
addition, the focus particles ´only` and ´also`
/ ´even` can also appear if the prosodic focus
is on the clefted element and the cleft clause
respectively. A prosodic focus on the entire
cleft proposition can possibly be associated
with the assertive focus operator and may also
associate with a focus particle.
Rosmin Matthew, in a paper called “Recursion of
Focus Position in Malayalam” explores cleft
constructions in Malayalam, a Dravidian
language spoken in South India, especially
focusing on their focus-related properties by
adopting a mono-clausal analysis. By means of a
comparison between clefts, which involve the
focus marker “a:nu”, and another type of focus
non-cleft construction, she gains a better
understanding of the proposed focus position
for two domains, namely, CP in clefts and vP in
non-clefts. Her analysis presents
morphological, syntactic and semantic evidence
that these two positions involve a different
syntactic behavior and distinct Information
Structure properties of Focus. Thus, whereas
cleft constructions with the focus marker
“a:nu” involve a higher position at the left
periphery of the CP and express Exhaustive
Focus, non-cleft constructions involve a
preverbal Focus position and expresses
Information Focus. Consequently, the author
shows that the two positions available for the
Focus, namely, in the vP level (i.e. in the
lower IP area) and in the CP level (i.e. in the
left periphery), encode Information Structure
of a different nature, and, therefore, it would
be wrong to assume that the same Information
Structure appears recursively at every Phase,
at least for this language.
In “Multiple ´wh`- questions and the cleft
construction in Malayalam”, Punnapurath
Maadhavan, also examines the formation of
“wh”-questions in Malayalam. Despite the
commonly held view that Malayalam is a
“wh”-in-situ language, Maadhavan presents
detailed evidence that “wh”-questions can also
be formed by means of a different strategy: 1)
clefting the “wh”-element or 2) clefting the
whole cleft clause containing the “wh”-element,
with the clefted element occupying the cleft
focus. In addition to this, Maadhavan also
observes an interesting asymmetry regarding the
formation of “wh”-questions: unlike the
strategy of clefting, which may occur in both
matrix and embedded clauses, it is not possible
to have an in-situ “wh”-phrase in an embedded
context, in this case the only option being to
cleft the whole embedded clause. Consequently,
these proposals are not only significant for
their contribution to the study of clefts in
this language, but also because they provide
valuable insight into the cross-linguistic
typology of “wh”-questions, leading to the
conclusion that a finer-grained typological
account than that dealing with the dichotomy
between “wh”-in-situ languages and “wh”-moving
languages is required.
In “Cleft partitioning in Japanese, Burmese and
Chinese”, Daniel Hole and Malte Zimmermann
provide a comparative account of clefts in
these three (South) East Asian languages that,
despite showing typological variation in terms
of several morpho-syntactic (e.g. word order,
case marking, among others) and phonological
parameters (e.g. tone system), they all exhibit
clefts displaying syntactic cleft partitioning,
which in these languages involves a
backgrounded clause headed by a nominalized
element. Yet, the author notes some differences
between Japanese and Burmese, on the one hand,
and Chinese, on the other hand, regarding the
position of the copula, the relationship
between the different constituents of the cleft
construction, and its interpretation. Thus, in
Japanese and Burmese, the copula follows the
cleft clause and the cleft focus phrase, with
which it forms a constituent, which in its turn
is opposed to the cleft clause, thereby
illustrating an example of syntactic
partitioning; the nominalizer heads the
backgrounded cleft clause and is followed by a
topic marker. By contrast, in Chinese, the
copula precedes the complete cleft
construction; the nominalizer is the element
responsible for the linking of the cleft phrase
with the cleft clause and therefore it is also
the element that triggers the syntactic
partition. Finally, they show that syntactic
partitioning in the form of clefting leads to
an exhaustive interpretation in all three
languages, although the exhaustivity effect in
Japanese and Burmese is linked to the presence
of the Topic marker attached to the nominalized
cleft clause, unlike in Chinese where the
exhaustivity effect is tied to the nominalizer
de.
In the final paper, Italian clefts and the
licensing of infinitival subject relatives”,
Petra Sleeman analyzes the licensing of
infinitival subject relative clauses by clefted
constituents. The author shows that, unlike in
English or French, infinitival subject
relatives are not only licensed by superlatives
and comparable modifiers, but they are also
licensed by cleft constructions with clefted
DPs and two types of cleft constructions with
clefted quantifiers. In order to account for
this fact, Sleeman provides detailed syntactic
evidence that clefts in Italian are used with a
somewhat negative presupposition and therefore
express a contrastive focus, which allows these
constructions to license infinitival subject
relative clauses. Furthermore, regarding the
structure of clefts in this language, she adds
that the infinitival relative clause functions
as the complement of the cleft phrase - which
is in a high position- , rather than an
adjunct, since, except when it occurs with one
type of “che”-cleft, the infinitival relative
clause allows for extraction from it.
EVALUATION
This book is inspired by the conference
“Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft”,
which took place in November 2008 in Berlin,
but it is not only a relevant selection of
papers. A great effort was made in the review
process in order to strengthen links between
the different papers and the final result makes
this book a useful resource for scholars and
advanced students who are interested in cleft
constructions.
This volume provides the reader with a
comprehensive picture of research trends on
clefts, and consequently, the overall goal of
this book, which consists in solving the
problems derived from the interaction between
syntax, semantics and pragmatics in the
analysis and interpretation of cleft
constructions, is met with incredible
success.
One of the strongest assets of this volume is
that it brings together a wide array of
contributors (all top scholars in the field) to
successfully represent current research trends
in a coherent fashion. The assortment of
languages and the wide range of aspects dealt
with in this edited volume is indicative of
just how much the study of clefts has advanced
since Akmajian (1970), Chomsky (1977) and
Gundel (1977). Each chapter guides the reader
to the study of a specific aspect of this
construction in a particular language and
addresses questions that outline the current
state of knowledge and offer future lines of
research. Therefore, not only do these chapters
offer important insights into the origin,
structure, and meaning of clefts, but they also
provide the reader with the necessary
background information to further explore and
develop a greater understanding of the issues
that are of relevance to each of those lines of
research that arise from this book. Despite the
fact that it is very difficult to make strong
cross-linguistic claims regarding this
construction and many questions related to its
structure may remain unsolved and therefore
they will have to be dealt with in future
research, the findings obtained in this volume
mean a relevant step forward in the direction
of the right analysis of this construction.
While the variety of languages and the
methodological diversity of this compilation
are notable, it may perhaps be most appropriate
for audiences interested in studying this
construction through a generative lens. This
book includes a wide range of examples of cleft
constructions in languages belonging to many
different families, such as Indo-European,
Austronesian, Bantu, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo,
Altaic, and Dravidian. The editors´ clear and
thorough introduction highlights the syntactic,
semantic and pragmatic aspects that make this
construction so challenging for theoretical
analysis. Afterwards, all the chapters in the
book offer a wealth of new data on the analysis
of this construction that contribute to our
current understanding of the issue.
Summarized below are the most relevant findings
included in these papers. Firstly, den Dikken
transfers the distinction between
specificational and predicational copular
sentences to the analysis of cleft
constructions and examines the syntactic
structure of specificational “it”-clefts,
contrastive-focus “it”-clefts, and
continuous-topic “it”-clefts. Aldridge accounts
for the derivation of clefted “wh”-questions by
comparing it to the derivation of basic word
order in VOS languages and argues that the
absolutive DP is a topic that moves to the left
periphery and the remnant clause is fronted to
a focus position above the topic. Frascarelli
and Ramaglia offer an interface approach to the
cross-linguistic interpretation of pseudo and
“it”-cleft constructions at different levels of
analysis that supports the view that (pseudo)
cleft sentences are Topic-Comment structures
that may host different types of topics either
in the left or in the right periphery . Cheng
and Downing accounts for the syntactic
properties of Zulu clefts by analysing their
prosodic properties, which leads to their
analysis as copular sentences with an adjoined
DP/CP, depending on the type of pivot. Reeve
argues against both specificational analyses
and expletive analyses of English clefts by
claiming that the cleft clause functions as a
syntactic modifier of the clefted element and
that the cleft pronoun is non-expletive.
Torrence offers two different types of
syntactic structure for clefts in Wolof,
according to their syntactic function, and
examines their derivation on the basis of the
overt movement of their clefted constituent.
Hedberg discusses the information structure of
English clefts by examining how the semantic
components of exhaustive focus and pragmatic
presupposition map onto the categories of topic
and comment, which leads to an analysis of
certain types of clefts as multiple focus
constructions. Mathew analyses the two
different types of Focus, namely
Identificational Focus and Information Focus,
in Malayalam clefts by focusing on the position
that these two different types of Focus occupy
in their respective domains. Madhavan provides
a typological account of clefted “wh”-questions
in Malayalam to prove that this language is not
a typical “wh” in-situ language like Chinese.
Hole and Zimmermann compare clefts and other
focus strategies in Japanese, Burmese and
Mandarin Chinese, showing that, despite having
different morpho-syntactic features, these
languages share the fact that clefts and
related focus constructions involve
backgrounded clauses headed by a nominalizing
element. Finally, Sleeman examines the
infinitival subject relative clauses licensed
by clefted constituents and argues that the
reason why clefts in Italian, unlike in other
languages, are able to license the infinitival
relative is due to the fact that they express a
contrastive focus, just like superlatives and
comparable modifiers.
This volume is certainly not an introductory
book owing to the complicated material included
and consequently a solid knowledge of the
specific linguistic issues (as well as
knowledge of generative grammar) is required.
It includes one of the most complete and
in-depth analyses of the topic to date. Its
rigor and clarity as well as the significance
and relevance of its contribution to the study
of such a complicated linguistic issue will
make this book useful and challenging to
students and researchers alike who are
interested in cleft constructions across
languages.
In conclusion, the papers collected in “Cleft
structures” highlight a great number of aspects
of cleft constructions that should be taken
into account in future research and therefore I
believe that this volume will become an
important reference on the matter.
REFERENCES
Akmajian, Adrian. 1970. On deriving cleft
sentences from pseudo-cleft sentences.
Linguistic Inquiry 1 (2): 149-168.
Chomsky, Noam. 1977. On wh-movement. In Formal
Syntax. Peter Culicover, Thomas Wasow &
Adrian Akmajian (eds), 71-132. New York NY:
Academic Press.
Cottell, Siobhán. 2002. The Comparative Syntax
of Cleft Constructions. Ph. D. dissertation.
University of Wales, Bangor.
Davidse, Kristin. 2000. A constructional
approach to clefts. Linguistics 28 (6):
1101-1131.
Declerck, Renaat. 1988. Studies on Copular
Sentences, Clefts and Pseudo-Clefts. Leuven:
Leuven University Press.
Delahunty, Gerald. 1981. Topics in the Syntax
and Semantics of English Cleft Sentences. Ph.
D. dissertation, University of California,
Irvine.
Delin, Judy. 1989. Cleft Constructions in
Discourse. Ph. D. dissertation. University of
Edinburgh.
Den Dikken, Marcel 2009. Predication and
specification in the syntax of cleft sentences.
Ms, City University of New York.
E. Kiss, Katalin. 1999. The English cleft
construction as a focus phrase. In Boundaries
of Morphology and Syntax [Current Issues in
Linguistic Theory 180], Lunella Mereu (ed.)
217-229. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gundel, Jeannette. 1977. Where do cleft
structures come from? Language 53: 543-559.
Halvorsen, Per-Kristian. 1978. The Syntax and
Semantics of Clefts. Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Texas.
Hedberg, Nancy. 1990. The Discourse Function of
Cleft Sentences in English. Ph. D.
dissertation, University of Minnesota.
Hedberg, Nancy. 2000. On the referential status
of clefts. Language 76 (4): 891-920
Heggie, Lorie. 1988. The Syntax of Copular
Sentences. Ph. D. dissertation, University of
Southern California.
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure
and Sentence Form, Topic, Focus, and the Mental
Representations of Discourse Referents.
Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 71. Cambridge:
CUP.
Lambrecht, Knud. 2001. A framework for the
analysis of cleft constructions. Linguistics
28(3): 463-516.
Pavey, Emma Louise. 2004. The English it-cleft
construction: a Role and Reference Grammar
analysis. Ph. D. dissertation. University of
Sussex.
Percus, Orin. 1997. Prying open the cleft.
Proceedings of NELS 27:337-351.
Reeve, Matthew. 2011. The syntactic structure
of English clefts. Lingua 121: 142:171.
Reeve, Matthew. 2012. Clefts and their
Relatives. Amsterdam. John Benjamins.
Sornicola, Rosanna. 1988. It-clefts and
wh-clefts: two awkward sentence types. Journal
of Linguistics 24 (2): 343-379.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Avelino Corral Esteban is an Assistant
Professor in the Department of English
Philology at both Universidad Autónoma de
Madrid and Universidad Complutense de Madrid,
Spain. His main research focus is the study of
the grammar of the Native American languages
spoken in the Great Plains area, such as
Lakhota, Cheyenne, Blackfoot or Crow, within
the Role and Reference Grammar framework.
Page Updated: 24-Jul-2014