Presentational cleft sentences in French and Italian: a comparative corpus-based analysis. KU Leuven
Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL), Leuven, Comparative, Historical and Applied Linguistics, Leuven
Cleft sentences are sentences which have a split (cleft) form, but whose meaning corresponds to that of a simple sentence. They fall into two categories, specificational (1) and presentational (2) clefts, which are introduced by different types of presentative items (henceforth PIs).
(1) [Context: - Who is singing?]
F: - C’est Jean qui chante.
I: - È Gianni che canta.
lit. It’s John who is ...