Cleft Constructions in Context:
Some Suggestions for Research Methodology*
JUDY DELIN and JON OBERLANDER
Abstract
In this paper, we argue for a view of clefts as representing a package of four distinctive
discourse features: uniqueness, stativising, presupposition, and separate information
structure. We suggest that, while the major sentence categories of it-cleft, wh-cleft, and
reverse wh-cleft have these features in common, it is not always the case that all four
features are a vital part of the cleft's function on a given outing in a given context.
Moreover, other linguistic devices are capable of conveying each of the features, and
frequently do. We introduce the notion that the four cleft features may be present either
superfluously, in that they are not necessary in the context but are not doing any harm, or
redundantly, in that they are also signalled by devices other than the cleft. Both situations
have implications for current research methodologies, particularly cross-linguistic
studies that place an emphasis on the results of translating clefts in one language to
observe the results in another. We suggest that an understanding of superfluity and
redundancy in context, especially cases in which functions are realised by some device
outside the 'target sentence' in the second language, must be included in the paradigm of
cross-language research. The picture will ideally broaden, then, into one in which the
maintenance or otherwise of function across languages is emphasised, and the role of a
wider range of linguistic devices, rather than single constructions, is assessed.
1.
Introduction
As we know, the group of constructions known as the cleft, pseudo-cleft, and inverted
pseudo-cleft were originally defined for English by researchers primarily interested in
syntax. It was first discussed by scholars of English grammar such as Fowler and Fowler
(1906) and Jespersen (1928/1965), and later examined by researchers in the theory of
syntax (cf. Akmajian 1970, Harries 1972, Hankamer 1974 inter alia). Lambrecht (1999)
presents the following definition of ‘cleft construction’:
A Cleft Construction is a complex sentence construction consisting of two
clauses, a matrix clause containing a copula whose non-subject complement is
a focus phrase and a relative (or relative-like) clause one of whose
arguments is coindexed with the focus phrase. Together, the main and the
relative clause express a logically simple proposition, which can normally
also be expressed in the form of a single clause.
This definition is not an unusual one, and hinges on syntax, co-reference, the semantics
of an underlying proposition, and, finally, ‘replaceability’ with a single clause. Fawcett
and Huang (1995) discuss the it-cleft construction from a functional standpoint and term
it 'enhanced theme'. They are content to exemplify, rather than define, the construction. It
is as if we all know what we mean by 'it-cleft'. However, the literature has also seen the
emergence of a group of constructions that exhibit, or are claimed to exhibit, ‘cleftness’
or ‘cleftlikeness’. The ‘construction family’ now admits an ever-larger number of
structures: ‘inferential clefts’ (e.g. Delahunty 1999) as in (1) below, ‘have’ clefts as in
(2), (Lambrecht 1999) and ‘there’ clefts (3) (all constructed examples) cases in point.
(1)
It’s not that I’m not interested in developing this area. It’s just that there’s
so much else we need to do.
(2)
I have ten pounds [that] says you can’t.
(3)
There’s also the range of phenomena that you need to consider.
The purpose of this paper is to examine some assumptions about clefts as a group of
constructions, and see how the relationship of function and the notion 'construction' be
seen to shift once we begin to look at sentences in context. We take the view that,
although clefts can be seen to share some obvious syntactic, semantic, and even
pragmatic features, and to convey these as a neat package in the language, problems arise
if we assume that every cleft relies on or conveys all these functions in a given context.
We agree that clefts can serve as signals for processing discourse and conveying
'additional' meaning, making an examination of their 'special functions' over those of
canonical declaratives worthwhile. However, we wish to suggest that some emerging
paradigms of research, such as replacement with non-clefts, and translation studies, may
allow us to assume that all the cleft's functions are all equally in use on a given outing.
We suggest, instead, that clefts can signal discourse information both redundantly (i.e.
when it is not really required at all) and superfluously (i.e. when it is already supplied by
context outside the cleft). This means that the functional load of the overall discourse
must be assessed before any conclusions can be reached about the relative 'cleftfulness' of
different languages, or the comparative functions of cleft in each.
We allude below to research in which the notion of 'construction' is itself problematised,
albeit for different reasons. We hope to propose an approach to comparative analysis of
discourse functions that overcomes these concerns, and which takes a functional view at a
more inclusive range of the expressive resources of the language(s) of study.
In what follows, we first of all set out four features that we take to be relatively
uncontroversial about the 'central' group of clefts: it-clefts, reverse wh-clefts, and whclefts. We look in section 3 at some examples of ways in which these functions can be
conveyed by other linguistic resources in English, showing a functional overlap between
clefts and other devices that speakers have at their disposal. In section 4, we suggest a
move from the idea that it is useful to study any one 'construction' to a study of how
certain features are achieved, perhaps in a distributed way, by sentences in the language.
What we show is indicative both of some danger areas within the current paradigms for
assessing the function of cleft 'constructions' in different languages, and of some potential
avenues for a more inclusive survey of how speakers achieve meanings in context.
2.
‘Givens’ of cleft function
In this section, we look briefly at what we take to be ‘givens’ of cleft structure and
function. Not all of these are uncontroversial, but we wish to state what is in our view
convincingly established in the literature about clefts and can be taken for granted for our
purposes. In the following discussion, we refer only to what are arguably the ‘central’
examples of clefts: the specificational it-cleft, wh-cleft, and headless reverse wh-cleft.
First, we take it for granted that there are four features shared by these structures that are
inalienable to them: uniqueness, presupposition, separate information structure, and
stativising.
Clefts convey ‘uniqueness’. It is well established in the literature that all clefts convey an
assumption that the element(s) named by the clefted constituent are an exhaustive listing
of the element(s) to which the presupposed predicate applies, assuming some salient set
of potential such elements. That is, when a cleft such as it was John who left early is
uttered, it is taken to mean that John and only John left early, and not John among others.
Clefts are presuppositional. All clefts, by virtue of their syntax, are presuppositional (cf.
Prince 1978: 884, Gazdar 1979: 128, Delin 1992: 291, 1995; 98). The presupposition can
be derived by substituting the relativizer for a suitably existentially-quantified phrase
(represented in the examples below as someone or something). Thus, the clefts in the (a)
examples below yield the factive presuppositions expressed in the (b) examples:
(4)
a.
b.
It is the angel who uses this form of greeting.
Someone uses this form of greeting.
(5)
a.
b.
What really happened was a visit from a labour agent who attracted
many local young men away to Bohemia, with the promise of good wages.
Something really happened.
a.
b.
This is what the Minister proposes.
The minister proposes something.
(6)
These presuppositions are derived in every case, regardless of context. Nonetheless, as
we have argued elsewhere (Delin and Oberlander 1995), context strongly influences the
effect the presupposition will have in a given instance of use. Some have suggested that
the presuppositional nature of the cleft is no more than pragmatic presupposition
consisting of shared knowledge. However, we regard it is as vital to the understanding of
clefts’ discourse functions that the notions of presupposition and shared knowledge be
kept separate. We enlarge on this point below.
Presupposition and Information Structure are Separate. In the early literature on clefts, it
was often assumed that clefts conveyed ‘Old’ or ‘Given’ information in the
presupposition, and ‘New’ information in the clefted constituent (e.g. Akmajian 1970,
Keenan 1971). However, Prince (1978) recognised a distinction between stressed-focus
it-clefts such as (7), and informative-presupposition it-clefts such as (8):
(7)
Well we can do lower-level specifications of what’s needed. I mean it’s basically
PROtocols you’re specifying.
(8)
A: and does the Head know?
B: no. Oh, wait a minute. It was the head who arrANGED it.
These are termed by Hedberg (1990) topic-clause and comment-clause clefts
respectively, as the clauselike element conveys topic information in (7), and comment
information in (8). Hedberg’s notion of topic, following Gundel (1985), is that the topic
conveys what the sentence is about, and is “given” in the discourse in the sense that both
speaker and hearer ‘have previous knowledge of or familiarity with’ the topic (cf.
Hedberg 1990: 135ff, Gundel 1985, 1988). The topic-clause cleft, therefore, conveys
information that is shared in this way, while the comment-clause cleft conveys in its
presupposition information that is new. This is seen particularly clearly in lengthy
examples of clefts that most often appear in writing, which stretch beyond feasibility any
assumption that the presupposed information is already shared. This is the case in (9)
below: note in particular the introduction of Lore using an indefinite article:
(9)
Ruin and destruction seemed inevitable. It was then that a beautiful young
girl, named Lore, accompanied by a crowd of small children, offered to go out
to meet the Colonel and to beg pity for the town. But before the plan could be
realised the Swedish troops had entered the city, ready to destroy it.
In our research, we have used Hedberg’s terms topic clause and comment clause (TC and
CC) to refer to these differing information structures in clefts of all kinds. This helps
avoid the perhaps confusing overtones of Prince’s use of the word ‘focus’ in her
nomenclature to refer to a fixed position in syntax. Delin and Oberlander (1995) go into
some detail about how it-clefts with different information structures have different
functions. They indicate how information structure interacts with syntactically-derived
presupposition to signal to readers and hearers how to integrate information into their
model of discourse content.
Clefts are ‘stativising’ constructions. The use of a cleft, in comparison to the use of a
declarative, introduces a copula as main verb. As Delin and Oberlander (1995) have
argued, this has the effect of ensuring that the sentence’s aspect is stative. It is by virtue
of this state description (as opposed to an event or a process, cf. Bach 1986) that the rest
of the cleft content is incorporated into the hearer’s model of the ongoing discourse. This
has a range of effects. In some cases, it can make it seem as if the cleft content is
backgrounded with respect to the main action of the discourse. In other cases, it can make
it seem as if the material conveyed by the cleft is temporally prior to the material
preceding it. For example, in (10a) below (repeated from Delin and Oberlander
1995:491) it is easy to interpret the action of turning the body over as the cause of
Victoria’s knowing the killer’s identity. In (10b), it seems as if Victoria may have had
this knowledge before:
(10)
a.
Victoria turned over the body. She knew the killer’s identity.
b.
Victoria turned over the body. It was she who knew the killer’s identity.
Even in cases where the verb in the cleft clause is also a stative (as is knew, in this
example) the copular as main verb has the effect of detaching the cleft content from the
time-line of the discourse. This prompts additional inferences on behalf of the
reader/hearer to interpret it in other ways (cf. also Oberlander and Delin 1996). This fact
is perhaps the least known of the four main cleft features: although Fawcett and Huang
(1995: 121) argue for 'taking seriously the functional implications of the presence of the
verb be', they do not explore the aspectual or temporal implications.
In addition to the four ‘basic’ facts about clefts, it is also helpful to point out some myths,
as well as some additional factors about clefts that are perhaps less well-known in the
literature.
Clefts are not focusing constructions. More controversially, once we take on board the
view that ‘new’ information can appear in a variety of positions in cleft constructions, it
is hard to uphold any version of the view that they are ‘focusing’ constructions. As Delin
(1989: 20ff) argues, the relative freedom of placement of accented new information in the
cleft clause in clefts of all kinds (although there are restrictions on the wh-cleft, as we
shall see in a moment) militates against a conclusion that clefts ‘focus’ on the clefted
constituent. To begin with, it is possible for the ‘new’ ‘focal’ or otherwise ‘foregrounded’
element of the cleft construction to appear in the clefted constituent, but for this
constituent also to convey a residue of non-focal material. We take this as the first piece
of evidence that focusing behaviour is not completely determined by the structure of the
cleft, and even as an indication that it has little to do with it. For example, in (11) below
(repeated from Delin 1989: 51), the ‘new’, contrastive, or otherwise focal information is
not the extension of the entire clefted constituent (a comedienne), it is the fact that Billy
Connolly is a male comedian and the comedian that the speaker refers to is female. The
intended contrast is therefore the feature ‘female’:
(11)
A: And then Billy Connolly came on?
B: No, next it was a comediENNE that was on.
A second piece of evidence against focusing can be found when we examine the notion
that clefts focus on a clefted constituent to ‘promote’ a target for subsequent pronominal
anaphora, a once popular view in the computational literature on anaphora resolution (cf.
Sidner 1979, Reichman 1981, 1985). This view of focus, and of clefts as perpetrating it,
cannot be upheld, simply because clefted constituents are poor providers of antecedents –
or, at least, the clefted constituent is no surer a target than the rest of the construction.
Delin (1989: 27) presents a small study of 92 pronouns within three or fewer sentences of
the cleft which had pronoun antecedents in the cleft itself. Only the wh-cleft presented a
better likelihood than chance that an antecedent would be provided by the clefted
constituent, while it-clefts and reverse wh-clefts more frequently presented antecedents
elsewhere in their structure. The results are given in Table 1.
Cleft Type
it-cleft
wh-cleft
reverse wh-cleft
Total
Location of Antecedent
Clefted constituent Elsewhere in cleft
10 (43%)
13 (57%)
32 (78%)
9 (22%)
3 (11%)
25 (89%)
45 (49%)
47 (51%)
Tokens
23
41
28
92
Table 1: Clefts as likely providers of pronominal antecedents.
What these results show is that there is no simple metric for cleft constructions that
predicts what kind of information will appear, where. We could summarise this in terms
of a number of distinctions available in the literature to express the difference between
‘new’ ‘focal’ information and the ‘shared’, ‘known’ or ‘presupposed’ residue. Following
Partee’s (1991) description of the ‘focus vs. something’ distinction as ‘focus’ versus
‘frame’, we believe that cleft syntax minimally constrains what is available in terms of
the focus-frame options of the information content of the sentence. In fact, cleft
information structure in this regard is only marginally more constrained than the
information structure of any canonical declarative.
We can show this by looking first at accent placement in a simple non-cleft sentence and
the effect of context on the resulting focal scope. It is a commonplace the final
placement of a nuclear accent in an information unit permits a broad scope reading of the
information in an appropriate context. So, for example, the sentence with the accent
placement in (12) is compatible with any of the focus scope readings in a-c, from
maximally broad to quite restricted:
(12)
Peter ran to the BANK.
a.
What happened?
[Peter ran to the BANK]foc
b.
What did Peter do?
Peter [ran to the BANK]foc
c.
Where did Peter run to?
Peter ran to [the BANK]foc
The placement of an accent in final position in the cleft, on the other hand, does not
permit the broad scope reading of the entire content of the sentence as being focal
(example 13a). What the cleft does, then, is divide the content into two domains for focal
scope, the relative clause element providing a ‘boundary’ that makes the clefted
constituent inaccessible to an accent appearing in the cleft clause.
(13)
It was Peter who ran to the BANK.
a.
What happened1?
# [It was Peter who ran to the BANK]foc
b.
What did Peter do?
It was Peter who [ran to the BANK]foc
c.
Where did Peter run to?
It was Peter who ran to [the BANK]foc
The cleft construction, then, appears to obstruct an interpretation which allocates a single
information unit to the entire construction: it is only here we can see evidence of a
genuine ‘cleaving’ in any informational sense. However, as we have seen in the
distinction between TC and CC clefts, despite this informational split, there is still no
guarantee of the extent or information status of the content that will be found in either
1
The examples in (10) are slightly misleading, in that clefts are often unacceptable as answers to questions;
the questions in this case are intended to clarify the focal scope reasons, rather than act as a realistic
connected discourse.
part. The information units that the cleft is divided up into continue to behave as
information units do: containing new information, given information, or a mixture2.
Generalisations about information structure are possible. The conclusion that clefts are
not simply ‘focusing’ constructions does not imply that their information structure is
completely random: generalisations based on usage are possible, although these do not
serve to unite clefts as a class. We will attempt here to summarise them.
All clefts must convey some new information, by virtue of the fact that even a
conjunction of ‘old’ elements presents a novel, second-order connection between
the two. This is termed by Delin (1989: 213) the minimal informativeness
constraint, specifying that the relationship between the clefted constituent and the
variable in the cleft presupposition must not already be part of the shared
discourse context.
No cleft may carry all new information, even in cases where a declarative might.
So, while a cat’s stuck up a tree may be a good ‘news’ sentence (perhaps in
response to what’s happening?) no cleft version of the same information is
acceptable (it’s a cat that’s stuck up a tree, what’s stuck up a tree is a cat, a cat is
what is stuck up a tree). Clefts are not good ‘news’ sentences: they serve to make
special and specific links with the preceding discourse.
Clefts have different preferences for coherent relationships with preceding
context. As Prince (1978), Delin (1989), Oberlander and Delin (1996) among
others have shown, different cleft types relate to context in different ways. Thus,
it-clefts, as we saw above, can carry New information as presupposition. By
contrast, wh-clefts cannot: the information conveyed in the wh-clause must either
have an antecedent in the discourse, or one must be inferrable. (See Delin 1989:
197ff for a discussion; and see Oberlander and Delin 1996 for a discussion of the
information structure of the reverse wh-cleft). A thumbnail sketch of the three
kinds of cleft information structure is given in Table 2.
2
Delin (1989:174) reports on the structure of fifty of each cleft type in terms of tone groups, drawn from
the tone group boundaries supplied in the Survey of English Usage corpus. It is a puzzle to us now how it is
possible for 30 it-clefts in that sample to be analyzed as containing only one tone group, as this is a clear
counterexample to our observations above concerning focal scope. However, Delin reports 25 of the same
50 it-clefts as containing two nuclei, one on the clefted constituent and another in the cleft complement –
also present in the SEU annotation, and clearly incompatible with the ‘single tone group’ analysis. It is
clear that these apparently irreconcilable observations require further investigation.
Cleft type
It-cleft (CC or IP)
It-cleft (TC or SF)
Wh-cleft
Reverse wh-cleft
Reverse wh-cleft
Clefted constituent
‘old’
‘new’
‘new’
‘old’
‘old’ but contrastive
Cleft complement
‘new’ or ‘inferrable’
‘old’ or ‘inferrable’
‘old’ or ‘inferrable’
‘new’ or ‘inferrable’
‘old’ or ‘inferrable’
Table 2: Schematic information structures of three cleft types
There are, then, some preferences for information structures among the clefts, but also
some overlaps: particularly, in English, between the information structures of the noncontrastive reverse wh-cleft and the CC/IP it-cleft.
We hope in this section to have staked out the ground in terms of our beliefs about what
is true of clefts, and also what we believe to be false about them. We have brought out the
importance of four main features: uniqueness, presupposition, separate information
structure, and stativisation, describing these as packaged together in the cleft.
3.
Functional overlap
While our four particular discourse features – uniqueness, presupposition, separate
information structure, and stativisation – are inalienable to the group of clefts, it is
nevertheless the case that none of these features is only available through the use of a
cleft construction.
It is certainly not the case that clefts are the only presuppositional constructions. For
example, Gazdar (1979) and van der Sandt (1988) both provide lists of presupposition
‘triggers’. These include definites, wh-questions, and the complements of factive verbs:
definites
Definite referring expressions, including possessives,
are a source of existential presuppositions: therefore,
the dog, this dog, and my dog all presuppose the existence
of a dog;
wh-questions
Questions with who, why, where, when etc. all presuppose
factively the residue of the sentence content: as in why
did you pour all that on the floor? (you poured all that on
the floor for some reason); when did you get back from
Airdrie? (you got back from Airdrie at some time);
factive verbs
Verbs such as realise, regret and stop presuppose the
truth of their complements, as in Pauline realised she
had the wrong shoes on; Martin stopped digging the
garden.
Similarly, a ‘unique’ reading can also be had from a non-cleft construction or phrase. It
can be triggered as a conventional implicature from words such as just and only. There
are also syntactic triggers in which, as Delin (1989: 151ff) has argued, the uniqueness
reading actually falls out of the presence of an existentially-quantified presupposition.
We can therefore expect uniqueness to arise out of definite referring expressions, as well.
Following Hawkins (1978), we can say that the felicitous use of definite referring
expressions requires that the expression refers to the totality of objects currently in the
discourse context that can satisfy the description in the referring expression. So, an
expression such as the dog requires that there is no other dog in the discourse context that
falls outside the set that the speaker wishes to indicate by using the phrase the dog. In the
case of a cleft such as it was a dog that John stroked, there must be no object such that
John stroked it that falls outside the intended reference of the clefted constituent, a dog.
The dissociation between presupposition and information structure is also not specific to
clefts. Other presupposition triggers, such as the temporal connectives before, after, when
and since, can allow the presupposed content to be either old or new in the discourse.
Compare:
(14)
a.
b.
This news came after the stock market had closed.
Mr. Krushchov remained at the airport to join President Brezhnev in
welcoming Dr. Sukarno, President and Prime Minister of Indonesia, who
arrived by Boeing 707 jet on a state visit 40 minutes after Mr. Khrushchov
had arrived from Vienna.
In (14a), it is presupposed that the stock market closed, and this is new information in the
discourse context. By contrast, in (14b), it is presupposed that Mr Khrushchov arrived
from Vienna, and this is old information, given the full prior context.
Finally, it is uncontroversial that the stativising effect of clefts is shared by other
constructions. Aspectual modifiers, such as the progressive and the perfect have very
similar effects:
(15)
a.
b.
c.
d.
John ran to the station
John was running to the station
John had run to the station
It was John who ran to the station
While (15a) denotes an event, both (15b) and (15c) denote states. (15d) denotes two
eventualities: the event of someone running to the station, and the state of John being that
someone.
Considering the four inalienable features in this slightly broader context also helps to
show that, while other linguistic devices have functional overlaps with clefts, there does
not appear to be another single linguistic device which carries all four of these features.
4.
Methodologies in clefts research
In the previous two sections, we established two things:
1)
There are four inalienable characteristics that all clefts in
English share: presupposition, separation from information structure,
uniqueness, and stativisation.
2)
Other structures in the language can perform one or more of these
functions, but none performs all of them.
Both these facts have implications for dominant methodologies in contrastive pragmatics.
The first methodology, declefting, is one we have adopted ourselves (cf. Delin and
Oberlander 1995, Oberlander and Delin 1996). This consists simply of locating naturallyoccurring clefts and replacing them with suitable non-cleft constructions. The second,
translation, is widely practised in European and particularly Scandinavian linguistic
studies (cf. for example papers in Aijmer, Altenberg and Johansson 1996). This consists
of taking a cleft in context in a source language, and examining translations of it
produced in some target language. Conclusions are drawn then about the functions of the
cleft and its substitute constructions in both source and target. The two methodologies
have something in common as they are both attempts to produce comparative texts in a
relatively artificial way, hoping to shed light on the 'natural' form. In the first case, the
'translation' is within the same language, and in the second, it is across languages.
We made the point above that no other construction in the language provides the same
‘package’ of functions as the family of cleft constructions. This would suggest,
apparently, that clefts cannot be replaced by non-cleft constructions with a felicitous
result. As Bolinger (1972) memorably stated (also quoted in Prince’s 1978 paper on
clefts):
There are situations where the speaker is constrained by a grammatical rule, and
there are situations where he chooses according to his meaning …; but there are
no situations in the system where “it makes no difference” which way you
go…This is just another way of saying that every contrast a language permits to
survive is relevant, some time or other.
In the following discussion, we hope to refine what can be meant by Bolinger's some time
or other. We suggest that not all contrasts are relevant all of the time, and this must have
repercussions for research methodology and the conclusions that can be drawn from it.
4.1.
Constraints on declefting
As a first test to Bolinger's statement, we can look at the removal of a cleft and its
replacement with a non-cleft. There are, in fact, many cases where this appears to make
little difference: at least in some contexts, there is no loss of felicity. First of all, it seems
that in English many wh-clefts are replaceable by declaratives. Examples appear in (16)(18). The a. sentences are those that actually occurred, while the b. sentences are their
constructed declarative replacements:
(16)
Do you know what I’m doing? I’m testing my memory.
a.
What it does is tests the whole of memory by writing to it and reading back
to see if what it wrote is still there.
b.
It tests the whole of memory by writing to it and reading back to see if
what it wrote is still there.
(17)
You seem to be able to do almost anything with them.
a.
What you can’t do is write cheques.
b.
You just can’t write cheques.
(18)
I quite like documentaries.
a.
What I loathe are these interminable heart transplants.
b.
But I loathe these interminable heart transplants.
Note that in (17b), felicity is preserved by the addition of a different element that
preserves uniqueness, or something like it: just. Similarly, in (18b), there seemed to be a
need to preserve or reinforce contrast, using but.. These additions obviously do not arise
from clefts, but preserve important elements of their function.
Some reverse wh-clefts, although a smaller number, also seem to be felicitously
replaceable:
(19)
Well we have to have the word inserted, so that it simply goes in between the
two.
a.
But is this what we WANT?
b.
But do we actually WANT this/that?
(20)
I’m concerned to get to the hard facts of what happened.
a.
And that’s what I’m determined to do.
b.
And I’m determined to do that.
(21), however, is an example where nothing else seems as good as a reverse wh-cleft:
(21b) is not in the dialect of the speaker, and (21c) does not convey the intended
meaning:
(21)
A; How are you with things like cabbage and cauliflower?
a.
B: Vegetables are what I should eat MOST of, so they’re fine.
b.
B: ? Vegetables, I should eat MOST of.
c.
B: I should eat MOST vegetables.
Felicitous exchanges are also possible for TC it-clefts, although with some loss of
contrast:
(22)
All you have to do is go to Leicestershire.
a.
Or Lancashire. It was in Lancashire that I HEARD it.
b.
Or Lancashire. I HEARD it in Lancashire.
(23)
So my conclusion said I needed a necessary condition.
a.
It’s suffICient ones I need. Yes, you’re right.
b.
I need suffICient ones. Yes, you’re right.
CC it-clefts seem to be more problematic:
(24)
Who else would expect one of the gurus of the film industry, Orson Welles, to
expound the philosophies that form the major insights of the film? To be fair,
though,
a.
it’s Welles who expounds the most interesting iDEAS.
b.
Welles expounds the most interesting iDEAS.
c.
Welles does expound the most interesting iDEAS.
In (24b), loss of uniqueness has occurred, apparently bringing the contrast into conflict
with the most in the complement. It cannot be salvaged by ‘just’ or ‘only’. Example (24c)
appears to be the best substitute, with emphasis provided by means of auxiliary do.
So far, then, there appear to be some cases where declefting is felicitous and 'safe', and
others where it is not. Before assessing the implications of the method, however, it is
worth looking at situations in which clefts can and cannot be exchanged for one another.
4.2.
Constraints on Exchanging Clefts
We do not wish to suggest by point (1) above that clefts are always interchangeable.
Prince (1978:883) first pointed out the non-interchangeability of it-clefts and wh-clefts.
She provides convincing examples, among them (25), in which a. is a naturally-occurring
it-cleft, and b. is Prince’s attempted wh-cleft version:
(25)
a.
b.
It is against pardoning these that many protest.
*What/where/how many protest is against pardoning these.
It is clear that the unacceptability of the cases such as (25b) is rooted in syntax. Out of a
total of 162 wh-clefts, Delin (1989:101) finds no examples with prepositional phrases as
clefted constituents. It seems that any wh-cleft constructed with such a clefted constituent
will be infelicitous. (25b) can therefore be ruled out on syntactic grounds. Two further
examples of Prince’s feature sentential clefted constituents, acceptable in wh-clefts but
very rarely found in it-clefts (Delin 1989 finds one case out of 245 it-clefts). Syntactic
barriers to interchangeability are therefore significant.
Another source of non-interchangeability is information structure and the maintenance of
coherence within the text. As we have seen, different cleft types have different
information structures. There are two sources of infelicity when one is replaced with
another. The first is that the cleft per se is not capable of carrying the particular
information structure. As Prince (1978:895) points out, for example, it–clefts do not
appear to make assumptions about the hearer’s knowledge, whereas wh-clefts do.
Example (26), therefore (Prince’s example 33b, from Terkel 1974), does not appear to
make unlicensed assumptions about the hearer’s state of attention or knowledge as an itcleft (26a), but as a wh-cleft (26b), it does:
(26)
I’ve been bit once already by a German Shepherd. It was really scary.
a.
b.
It was an outside meter that the woman had.
?What the woman had was an outside meter.
I read the gas meter and was walking back out…
Wh-clefts are a stronger signal of the ‘expectedness’ of the presupposed information, and
therefore often cannot carry felicitously the same content as an it-cleft.
A second source of infelicity is some problem arising from a disruption of the
relationship between information in the cleft and information elsewhere: co-referential or
contrastive relationships, for example, may be stretched beyond retrievability. The
following it-cleft contains the referential chain the town of Soignies – there – painting –
the painter:
(27)
Part of Magritte's school holidays were spent with grandmother and an aunt in the
town of Soignies. It was there, whilst playing one day with a small girl in an
abandoned cemetery, that he first became aware of painting as a special and
somehow mysterious activity. 'We used to lift up the iron gates and go down into
the underground vaults. Regaining the light again, I found, in the middle of some
broken stone columns and heaped-up leaves, a painter who had come from the
capital, and who seemed to me to be performing magic'.
As Delin (1989: 177) points out, the substitution of a wh-cleft in this context not only
violates the information structure of that cleft type but also leads to a disrupted referential
chain: the town of Soignies – painting – there – the painter. The resulting text is therefore
much less acceptable:
(28)
Part of Magritte's school holidays were spent with grandmother and an aunt in the
town of Soignies. Where he first became aware of painting as a special and
somehow mysterious activity, whilst playing one day with a small girl in an
abandoned cemetery, was there: 'We used to lift up the iron gates and go down
into the underground vaults. Regaining the light again, I found, in the middle of
some broken stone columns and heaped-up leaves, a painter who had come from
the capital, and who seemed to me to be performing magic'.
The corresponding declarative, attempted in (29), produces a chain that is as
discontinuous as that of the wh-cleft (it is the same ordering of key elements), but more
preferable informationally.
(29)
Part of Magritte's school holidays were spent with grandmother and an aunt in the
town of Soignies. He first became aware of painting as a special and
somehow mysterious activity, whilst playing one day with a small girl in an
abandoned cemetery there: 'We used to lift up the iron gates and go down into the
underground vaults. Regaining the light again, I found, in the middle of some
broken stone columns and heaped-up leaves, a painter who had come from the
capital, and who seemed to me to be performing magic'.
We can begin to make predictions, then: clefts that are both informationally inappropriate
and referentially discontinuous will be worse substitutes than those sentences with only
one, or neither, of these drawbacks.
5.
The Defeasibility of Discourse Features: Superfluity and Redundancy
The few examples discussed above appear to show nothing more complicated than the
fact that it is sometimes possible to replace a cleft with a non-cleft, or with some other
construction, and sometimes it is not. It does, however, focus us particularly on
Bolinger’s observation that ‘there are no situations in the system where “it makes no
difference” which way you go’. It may well be that there are no such situations in
language as an abstract system (and in such a system, what is a situation?), but in
contextualised usage there are many cases where it does indeed make little or no
difference which way you go. This is particularly likely if there are other devices at hand
to bolster up what is ‘missing’ in terms of the required pragmatic features.
In fact, while the abstract notion of clefts as a group of constructions can be said to
convey or require our four features, things are rather different in practice. There are
several permutations of how the relevant features are realised. They may be signalled in
the cleft as well as elsewhere in the linguistic context, perhaps by some of the linguistic
devices we have already identified as having functional overlaps: we can term this
‘superfluous signalling'. In cases where features are superfluously signalled, it is possible
to ‘de-cleft’ without a loss of felicity. There is also another possibility: that the use of the
cleft involves the use of the four semantico-pragmatic features when, in some cases, the
speaker’s purpose may require only three, two, or even one of them. We will term this
‘redundant signalling’. Where the cleft’s redundant features do not positively obstruct the
message, it is possible to use the cleft and ignore them. It is likely in these cases, then,
that replacing the cleft with something else would result in little adverse effect to the
felicity of the resulting discourse.
Given that some of the cleft features may be redundantly or superfluously signalled on a
given outing, both of these practices appear problematic. It is only in the cases in which
all four cleft features are (i) non-redundantly present, and (ii) not superfluously signalled,
that the translation process must seek to preserve them all in whatever way is appropriate
in the target language. If a cleft is redundantly signalling some non-obtrusive but
unproblematic semantic or pragmatic feature, then a translation—or even a rewording in
the same language—may not see fit to preserve this feature, since it will not seem
important to the function or meaning of the text.
Thus, both the intra-lingual declefting approach, and the inter-lingual translation
approach face a difficulty which revolves around the difference between a construction in
the abstract, and a sentence in a context. The approaches have focussed on the fact that
the cleft as a construction will convey certain features, while what has been neglected is
that sentences in context may either use them redundantly, or may convey them through
superfluous signalling. In both cases, it is possible to lose the cleft in the target language
or manipulated text without much difficulty, and there are many ways in which the
alternative sentence may preserve some, all, or none of the features carried by the original
cleft. These alternative sentences require an analysis which goes beyond the binary
decision between ‘cleft’ or ‘non-cleft’, It is necessary to establish which, if any, of the
features of the original have been preserved.
To return to Bolinger’s (1972) observation, we draw attention to his wording: ‘every
contrast a language permits to survive is relevant, some time or other’ (our italics). We
suggest that there may be many occasions upon which the signalled contrasts are not
particularly relevant on the given outing. It is very difficult to say in general terms, then,
what the presence or absence of a cleft in some alternative rendition of the text reveals
about clefts as a construction.
Prince (1996) looks at the problematic nature of the notion ‘construction’ from the point
of view of borrowing of discourse functions between languages. The points she makes
are also applicable to language comparison. Prince argues that analysts and naïve
speakers alike identify structures in different languages as being instances of the ‘same’
construction on the basis of the ordering of the major constituents. This means that
matching is essentially a syntactic matter. She goes on to suggest that that relationship
between discourse functions and the constructions so identified is arbitrary. Discourse
functions come to be associated with constructions through usage, and a single
construction may have more than one discourse function.
We find this point of view appealing. Despite having identified four characteristic
features that our constructions share, the diversity of their information structures and the
many instances of non-interchangeability fit the varieties out for different discourse
functions. However, if Prince is correct, the tendency to identify constructions in a
language as ‘the same’ based on syntactic form alone may lead us into deep water when
we use this approach analytically. We would argue, then, for an approach that takes
seriously the notion of functional feature-marking and feature-preserving between
languages.
Taking functional features seriously has a number of consequences for future empirical
research on clefts within, and across, languages. The crucial step is to see clefts against a
broader background, so that we can identify when their features are superfluously or
redundantly signalled. For example, we have identified four central features that are
conveyed by clefts. Considering translation studies, it seems that will be most effective
when they acknowledge the influence on translations of the local discourse context. In
addition to isolating the construction that translates the cleft in each case, it will therefore
be instructive to examine to what extent the cleft's features are preserved, or not, in the
relevant target text span. If not all the features are preserved, it is possible that marking is
taking place elsewhere, perhaps within a span of several clauses. However, checking of
the source may reveal that the cleft's features are in fact signalled superfluously, and do
not therefore need to be preserved in the translation. By considering the ways in which
features are carried in the source and target, the independent contributions of the features
can be traced, and the scope of the studies extended to consider cases in which there are
in fact no clefts involved at either end of the translation function.
Once it has been acknowledged that features associated with clefts cannot be removed in
a surgical fashion, a map of function overlaps will help predict which declefts will work
in context, and which will not. Indeed, declefting can be considered a more subtle
process, in which single features (such as stativisation or uniqueness) are removed or
manipulated individually.
Once we have allowed for superfluous or redundant signalling, cleft research can take
advantage of experimental paradigms which probe the processing effects of superfluity
and redundancy. It may well be that clefts enable readers and hearers to access
information more quickly, since it is available from more sources: all the clues are lined
up. This proposal can be tested via reaction time studies on the processing of sentences in
simple discourses. Methods developed for the study of anaphora resolution can be
adapted to the case in hand. Double signalling, in particular, may be predicted to have
significant processing benefits. More generally, however, cleft sentences may or may not
be processed more rapidly than alternatives; which alternatives are effective in a context
will depend upon which features are available in that context, and how well-signalled
they are.
We have emphasised that there are cases where the four features are superfluously- or
redundantly-signalled. There will be others where—like presuppositions known to be
false—they are effectively neutralised. These uses of clefts will obviously not appear to
be clear-cut cases of, for instance, backgrounding. But that does not invalidate the
analyses we have offered in the past. More likely, it demonstrates again that clefts
function in a context. To characterise more generally the contexts in which cleft features
survive or are neutralised will certainly require further attention to the features of the cleft
construction. But as we have urged here, it will also require attention to other features
(which may or may not overlap) of the individual cleft sentence, and to the local and
global discourse context.
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*
Correspondence Address: Judy Delin, Department of English Studies, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9
4LA, UK. Email: j.l.delin@stir.ac.uk.