Making the case for distinguishing information structure from specification in English it-clefts

In this chapter, we argue against the view that the syntax of clefts codes focus-presupposition semantics. Theoretically, we assume that grammar and prosody code distinct types of functional organisation, while descriptively, we ground the proposed account in corpus study of contextualised spoken data. We argue that it-clefts are specificational constructions, whose relative clause and antecedent represent an open proposition and its filler, i.e. the variable and value, related to each other by the identifying matrix, which triggers an implicature of exhaustiveness. Onto the specificational relation, a great variety of prosodically coded information structures can be mapped. We classify and quantify the informational patterns attested in our dataset in terms of Halliday’s (1967a) influential distinction between unmarked presenting and marked contrastive focus. We establish that the most common information structure of it-clefts, if we take full and reduced clefts together, is that in which contrastive focus relates to presupposed information. However, in a significant minority of cases, full it-clefts manifest the information structure in which recoverable information precedes a presenting focus, while, most commonly, full it-clefts involve a combination of the contrastive focus pattern on the matrix and presenting foci on the cleft relative clause. We show that these patterns can also account for the neglected phenomenon of selective focus on an element of the value, and we discuss how this interacts with the implicature of exhaustive specification.

ISBN:9783110738605

Jaar van publicatie:2023

Toegankelijkheid:Closed