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Project

The interaction between specification and information structure in English clefts, pseudoclefts and specificational copulars.

This project develops a new take on specificational constructions, i.e. copular ('The best British beer is WATNEYS'), pseudocleft ('What we want is WATNEYS') and it-cleft ('It’s WATNEYS that we want'). It criticizes the unwarranted restriction in the mainstream to the specificational constructions with exhaustiveness implicature cited above. It reconceptualizes the field as offering a systematic choice between exhaustive and non-exhaustive specificational constructions with copulars ('A popular British beer is WATNEYS'), pseudoclefts ('Something I want is WATNEYS') and there-clefts ('There’s WATNEYS that we want'). Intrinsic to this is the principled distinction between the lexicogrammatically coded value-variable relation and the textual patterns that run through specificational constructions. The referents of value and variable may or may not be discourse-given, and within specificational constructions varied patterns of prosodically marked focus marking are found. These three different dimensions of patterning will be systematically investigated in sets of English spoken data. Preliminary research suggests that, contrary to common assumptions, English specificational constructions typically and most frequently have foci on both value and variable. This calls for new motivations of the informational functions of specificational constructions. Important in this context is the aim to develop Esser’s notion of a hierarchy of foci on textual and technical phonological grounds.
Date:1 Oct 2021 →  31 Dec 2021
Keywords:Impact evaluation in efficiency and mach, Incumbent strategic policy behaviour, Local governments’ performance and fisca
Disciplines:Public economics, Econometric and statistical methods and methodology, Mathematical methods, programming models, mathematical and simulation modelling, Public management