It-clefts in the Meta-Informative
Structure of the Utterance in Modern
and Present-Day English
Ana E. Martínez-Insua (minsua@uvigo.es)
Javier Pérez-Guerra (jperez@uvigo.es)
Language Variation and Textual Categorisation Research Unit
University of Vigo
3e colloque interdisciplinaire international
Université Paris-Sorbonne IV - CELTA
15th-16th November, 2012
Outline
• Background and scope of study:
cleft-sentences and it-clefts
• Goal
• Description of it-clefts
– MIC-compliant
– Structural/grammatical description
– Informative description
• Identifying nature
– Meta-informative characterisation
• Corpus-based study
• Concluding remarks
• References
2
Background
• ‘cleft’ (already in Jespersen 1909-49: 1937):
(1)
What this paper describes is the cleft construction.
[basic pseudo-cleft or basic wh-cleft]
(2)
The cleft construction is what this paper describes.
[reversed or inverted pseudo- or wh-cleft]
(3)
It is the cleft construction that this paper describes.
[cleft or it-cleft]
(4)
That is the cleft construction (that) this paper describes.
[th-cleft]
(5)
They are real researchers that tackled this issue.
[pronominal cle
“apparent dismemberment of a single sentence entailed in their
derivation” (Delahunty 1982: 5)
3
Background
• ‘cleft’ (already in Jespersen 1909-49: 1937):
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
What this paper describes is the cleft construction.
[basic pseudo-cleft or basic wh-cleft]
The cleft construction is what this paper describes.
[reversed or inverted pseudo- or wh-cleft]
It is the cleft construction that this paper describes.
[cleft or it-cleft]
That is the cleft construction (that) this paper describes.
[th-cleft]
They are real researchers that tackled this issue.
[pronominal cleft]
“apparent dismemberment of a single sentence entailed in their
derivation” (Delahunty 1982: 5)
4
Background
• Common features
– Formal, semantic and communicative similarities
possibly “same objective information”
(Prince 1978: 884)
• Dissimilarities
– Pragmatic factors favour the choice of the type of
cleft
(Declerck 1988: 209)
– Semantic and informative differences
(Traugott 2008: section 3)
5
Scope of the study
• it-clefts
It is the cleft construction that this paper describes
–
–
–
–
Global CA: AS it (semantically empty)
Link verb
Local CA (semantically full)
Background: subordinate clause
[ItAS] Global CA [be] [Xi] Local CA (FOCUS) [introducer + [clause ...n.p.i...]]BACKGROUND
Beyond scope:
• Wh-clefts: copulative constructions (identifying or
attributive)
• Th-clefts and pronominal-clefts: nonrestrictive
relativisation or even right dislocation
6
Goal
Twofold:
• Profile the it-cleft construction from a MetaInformative Centering Theory (MIC)
perspective:
– focalising strategy
• Corpus-based analysis of its quantitative and
qualitative spread in the recent history of
English
7
it-clefts: MIC-compliant
representation
It is the cleft construction that this paper describes
• Global CA = AS it: expletive and semantically
empty
• Link verb
• Local CA: focalised semantically full
constituent
• Background (vs. the focus expressed in the
cleft part): subordinate clause
[ItAS] Global CA [be] [Xi] Local CA (FOCUS) [introducer + [clause ...n.p.i...]]BACKGROUND
introducer: that
n.p. = null pointer left by the focalisation of one of the constituents
of the clause [Xi]
8
it-clefts: MIC-compliant
representation
It is the cleft construction that this paper describes
• Assumptions:
– Rightmost clause = 2nd-level CA
(Wlodarczyk & Wlodarczyk 2006:8)
– it-cleft = link construction
– Linking of two (2nd-level) CAs (i.e. focus
and background) by means of a syntactic
design governed by an almost semantically
bleached linking verbal operator
9
it-clefts: structural & grammatical
description
• Local CA ([X]) and null pointer (n.p.) are
coreferring
X must materialise an entity (have a referent)
(Givón 1984: 731)
It is always expensive what Cambridge University Press sells
not cleft, but
- extraposition of the Subject what Cambridge University
Press sells
- filling of the empty Global CA slot with the AS it
10
it-clefts: structural & grammatical
description
• ‘introducer’:
–
–
–
–
Ø (Visser’s 1970: Chapter I apo koinou)
that
who
or which
vs.
• what, when (Declerck 1997) or where
extraposed headless relative clauses or pseudo-clefts
(Delahunty 1982: 268ff, Ball 1994: 181):
It is phrase-markers what I drew on the blackboard
[What I drew on the blackboard is phrase-markers]
vs.
It is phrase-markers that I drew on the blackboard
[*That I drew on the blackboard is phrase-markers]
11
it-clefts: structural & grammatical
description
• functions of null pointer within the rightmost
clause (I):
– Global CA:
It is a gapi that [[n.p.i] occurs in initial position]
– Local CA:
It is {#Ø/ to} me i that [he dedicated the book [n.p.i] ]
– (non-sentence) adverbial:
It was with much attention i that [I checked the last
proofs of the article [n.p.i] ]
– adverbial complement or obligatory adverbial:
It is to Boston i that [she went [n.p.i] ]
– prepositional complement of a verb:
It is to my article i that [she was referring [n.p.i] ]
12
it-clefts: structural & grammatical
description
• functions of null pointer within the rightmost
clause (II):
– prepositional complement of an adjective:
It was about that Ministeri that [the President was
angry [n.p.i] ]
– prepositional complement of a noun:
It was of Syntactic Structuresi that [he was the
writer [n.p.i] ]
– complement of a preposition:
That was the doctori [I was speaking to [n.p.i] ]
– predicative complement of the subject or of the
object in very special environments:
It’s prettyi that [my mother-in-law is [n.p.i], more
than anything else ]
It’s a teacheri that [he is [n.p.i], not a butcher! ]
13
it-clefts: structural & grammatical
description
• category of the Local CA:
–
–
–
–
NP
PP
Adverb Phrase
Particle of a phrasal verb
But
– not normally a clause, VP or (non-contrastive) AP
14
it-clefts: structural & grammatical
description
• rightmost clause:
– finite (supposedly a that-clause)
– or nonfinite (-ing or infinitive clause):
[Within the United States,] it is Robinson to appear
like a Jones. (Gibb:115)
• sentence-initial Anonymous Subject (AS):
materialised by dummy or expletive it
15
it-clefts: informative description
• Identifying nature:
– they specify a value for a variable (Enkvist 1979,
Declerck 1988, Halliday and Matthiessen 2004,
Thompson 2004)
– their semantic scheme: ‘x = y’; ‘assign the value y to
x’
– the value occupies the Local CA position and the
variable occurs in the Global CA position
Notice:
It is always expensive what Cambridge University
Press sells
[not an it-cleft but an attributive link construction]
16
it-clefts: informative description
• Certain indefinite NPs are acceptable in the
Local CA of (identifying) clefts thanks to the
contrastive content of their modifiers:
Was it an INTERESTING meeting that you went to last
night? [–No, it was a BORING meeting...]
17
it-clefts: meta-informative
characterisation
Meta-informative effects of clefting:
• Rearrangement of the topic-comment
structure of the sentence:
- the information in the rightmost thatclause is (presented as) pragmatically
presupposed
(Prince 1978, Declerck 1988, Harold 1995: 158)
- the Local CA is focal
(Declerck’s ‘stressed-focus’)
“clefted elements (...) express new information
and evoke presuppositional sets”
(Enkvist 1979: 151; our italics)
18
it-clefts: meta-informative
characterisation
Clefts determine pragmatic functions in a metainformative way
By means of the clefting device:
- the that-clause following the Local CA is formally
presented as pragmatically presupposed or given
(Engelkamp and Zimmer 1983: 40, Brömser 1984: 330)
from the speaker’s viewpoint, even though it may be
actually new for the hearer
- a certain (post-be) theme of the discourse is
brought forward as the focus of attention (the Local
CA)
clefts as meta-informative devices for focus-marking
(Rochemont’s 1986 ‘constructional focus construction’)
19
it-clefts: corpus-based analysis
• Frequency: not a productive thematic
mechanism in the history of English (but
important increase from eModE onwards)
Period
LME: 1420-1500
EModEI: 1500-1570
EModEII: 1570-1640
EModEIII: 1640-1710
LModE: 1710-1900
PDE: 1961
words
clauses
it-clefts
71,097
61,219
75,762
62,940
67,962
98,007
436,987
4,751
3,891
5,729
4,360
6,247
6,974
31,952
3
4
5
11
13
36
72
n.f./100,000
words
4.21
6.53
6.59
17.47
19.12
36.73
16.47
n.f./1,000
clauses
0.63
1.02
0.87
2.52
2.08
5.16
2.25
Table 1. The corpus (raw data and normalised frequencies [n.f.] per
100,000 words and 1,000 clauses)
Sources: ARCHER, A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760, The
Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus of British English
20
it-clefts: corpus-based analysis
• Information status:
period
LME
EModE
LModE
PDE
non-ref
1
3
1
4
Referentiality
low-ref
8
2
17
ref
2
9
10
15
Table 2. Referentiality of the sentence-final clause
21
it-clefts: corpus-based analysis
• Information status:
period
LME
EModE
LModE
PDE
non-ref
1
9
7
15
Referentiality
low-ref
1
5
4
8
ref
1
6
2
13
Table 3: Referentiality of the Local CA
22
it-clefts: corpus-based analysis
• Information status:
– Sentence-final clauses are referring or low-referring
in the majority of the cases
rejection of end-focus principle//givenbefore-new principle
Atlas and Levinson 1981: 16, the it-cleft
“contravenes the convention that old information
precede new information”
– Local CAs are normally non-referring, especially
from eModE onwards
it-clefts as focusing meta-informative
strategies
23
Concluding remarks
• MIC-compliant and structural description of
prototypical it-clefts:
Global CA in the form of the AS it + link verb +
Local CA + nonfinite/finite non-meta-informativelycentered clause (introduced by Ø, that, which or
who)
• information conveyed by Local CA is
unavailable
focusing meta-informative device,
not conditioned by the given-beforenew principle
• recent (statistical) consolidation in English,
corroborated quantitatively and qualitatively
24
References
Atlas, J. D. and S. C. Levison. 1981. It-clefts, informativeness, and logical form.
In P. Cole ed. Radical pragmatics. New York: Academic, 1-61.
Ball, C. N. 1994. Relative pronouns in it-clefts: the last seven centuries.
Language Variation and Change 6: 179-200.
Brömser, B. 1984. Towards a functional description of cleft constructions.
Lingua 62: 325-348.
Declerck, R. 1988. Studies on copular sentences, clefts and pseudo-clefts.
Leuven: Foris.
Declerck, R. 1997. When-clauses and temporal structure. London. Routledge.
Delahunty, G. P. 1982. Syntax and semantics of English cleft sentences.
Bloomington, In.: Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Engelkamp, J. and H. D. Zimmer. 1983. Dynamic aspects of language
processing. Focus and presupposition. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Enkvist, N. E. 1979. Marked focus: functions and constraints. In S. Greenbaum,
G. Leech and J. Svartvik eds. Studies in English linguistics for Randolph
Quirk. London: Longman, 134-152.
Halliday, M. A. K. and Ch. M. I. M. Matthiessen. 2004. An introduction to
Functional Grammar. Londond: Arnold.
Jespersen, O. 1909-1949. A modern English grammar on historical principles.
25
Vols. I- VII. Heidelberg: Ejnar Munksgaard.
Lambrecht, K. 2001. A framework for the analysis of cleft constructions.
Linguistics 39/3: 463-516.
Prince, E. F. 1978. A comparison of wh-clefts and it-clefts in discourse.
Language 54: 883-906.
Rochemont, M. S. 1986. Focus in generative grammar. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Thompson, G. 2004. Introducing Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.
Traugott, E. C. 2008. ‘All that he endeavoured to prove was’: on the emergence
of grammatical constructions in dialogual and dialogic contexts. In R. Cooper
and R. Kempson eds. Language in flux: dialogue coordination, language
variation, change and evolution. London: Kings College Publications, 143177.
Visser, F. T. 1970. An historical syntax of the English language. Part I:
syntactical units with one verb. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Walker, M. A., Joshi, A. K. and E. P. Prince. 1998. Centering in naturally
occurring discourse: an overview. In M. A. Walker, A. K. Joshi and E. F.
Prince eds. Centering Theory in discourse. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1-28.
Włodarczyk, H. 1999. Les marqueurs de la validation des énoncés en français
et polonais. Etudes Cognitives / Studia Kognitywne III (Warszawa, SOW,
PAN), 135-162.
Włodarczyk, A. and H. Włodarczyk. 2012, in press. Meta-informative grounding
of utterances. In A. Włodarczyk and H. Włodarczyk eds. Discourse
coherence in the MIC framework. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
26
It-clefts in the MetaInformative Structure of the
Utterance in Modern and
Present-Day English
Ana Elina Martínez-Insua (minsua@uvigo.es)
Javier Pérez-Guerra (jperez@uvigo.es)
Merci beaucoup!