Cleft Structures
Editors
| Universität Wien
| ZAS Berlin
The phenomenon of clefts is beyond doubt a golden oldie. It has captivated linguists of different disciplines for decades. The fascination arises from the unique syntax of clefts in interaction with their pragmatic and semantic interpretation. Clefts structure sentences according to the information state of the constituents contained in them. They are special as they exhibit a rather uncommon syntactic form to achieve the separation of the prominent part, either focal or topical, from the background of the clause. Despite the long-lasting interest in clefts, linguists have not yet come to an agreement on many basic questions. The articles contained in this volume address these issues from new theoretical and empirical perspectives. Based on data from about 50 languages from all over the world, this volume presents new arguments for the proper derivation of clefts, and contributes to the ongoing debate on the information-structural impact of cleft structures. Theoretically, it combines modern syntactic theorizing with investigations at the interface between grammar and information-structure.
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 208] 2013. viii, 348 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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List of contributors
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vii–viii
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1–32
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Part I. Specificational/predicational clefts
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35–70
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71–96
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97–138
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Part II. Monoclausal/biclausal analyses
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141–164
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165–186
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187–224
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Part III. The focus potential of clefts
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227–250
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251–268
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269–284
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285–318
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319–342
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Language index
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343–344
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Subject index
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345–348
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“Cleft constructions are ubiquitous in languages, and their analysis is relevant to just about every aspect of theoretical linguistic investigation from prosody to pragmatics. This book discusses an impressive array of cleft constructions in different languages and language families: Autronesian (Seediq, Niuean, Tagalog, Malagasy, Fijian), Bantu (Zulu), Dravidian (Malayalam), Indo-European (Italian, French, English, Dutch), Japonic/Altaic (Japanese), Niger-Congo (Wolof), and Sino-Tibetan (Burmese, Mandarin). Hartmann and Veenstra’s comprehensive and enlightening introduction is lucid and thorough, emphasizing all the myriad respects in which cleft constructions are challenging for theoretical analysis, including typological variation in structure, prosody, interpretation and use. Almost all the chapters in the book undertake comparative analysis and together, all the chapters introduce a wealth of new data for consideration. I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in linguistic interfaces and analysis.”
Dr. Rochemont, University of British Colombia, Canada
Cited by
Cited by 6 other publications
BRANDTLER, JOHAN
2019. The question of form in the forming of questions: The meaning and use of clefted wh-interrogatives in Swedish.
Journal of Linguistics 55:4 ► pp. 755 ff. 
Christopher, Nadezda
2020.
In Information-Structural Perspectives on Discourse Particles [Studies in Language Companion Series, 213],
► pp. 72 ff.
DESTRUEL, EMILIE & BRYAN DONALDSON
2017. Second language acquisition of pragmatic inferences: Evidence from the Frenchc'est-cleft.
Applied Psycholinguistics 38:3 ► pp. 703 ff.
Gheorghe, Mihaela
2017. (Pseudo)cleft constructions in old Romanian.
Diacronia :6
Gheorghe, Mihaela
2017. Construcții (pseudo)scindate în româna veche.
Diacronia :6
Güldemann, Tom, Sabine Zerbian & Malte Zimmermann
2015. Variation in Information Structure with Special Reference to Africa.
Annual Review of Linguistics 1:1 ► pp. 155 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 may 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
BIC Subject: CFK – Grammar, syntax
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General