From theory to corpus and back again – the case of inferential constructions
Andreea S. Calude
University of Reading
Reading, UK
a.s.calude@reading.ac.uk
Technological advances have revolutionised linguistics research via the use of corpora through
increased storage and computation power. However, the shift in paradigm from full introspection
to pure usage-based models (Barlow and Kemmer 2000) has not gone without criticism
(Newmeyer 2003). The current paper sets out to show that a combined approach, where both
these methods play a role in the analysis is most fruitful and provides a more complete picture of
linguistic phenomena. The case is made by presenting an investigation of the inferential
construction.
Starting from a theoretical viewpoint, constructions such as It’s that he’s so self-satisfied that I
find off-putting have been placed under the umbrella of it-clefts (Huddleston and Pullum 2002:
1418-1419). They are focusing structures, where the cleft constituent happens to be coded by a
full clause rather than a noun phrase as is (typically) found in it-clefts (compare the above
example to It’s a plate of soggy peas that I find off-putting).
However, an inspection of excerpts of spontaneous conversation from the Wellington Corpus of
Spoken New Zealand English (WCSNZE) (Homes et al 1998) suggests a different profile of the
construction. As also found by Koops (2007), the inferential typically occurs in the negative
form, and/or with qualifying adverbs such as just, like, and more. More problematically, the
inferential only rarely contains a relative clause (Delahunty 2001). This has caused great debate
in the literature with regard to whether the that-clause following the copula represents in fact the
cleft constituent (Delahunty 2001, Lambrecht 2001), or whether it is instead best analysed as the
relative/cleft clause (Collins 1991, and personal communication). Such debates culminated with
some banning the inferential from the cleft class altogether (Collins 1991).
Returning to the drawing board, we see further evidence that the inferential examples identified in
the corpus differ from it-clefts. While in it-clefts, the truth conditions of the presupposition
change with a change in the cleft’s polarity, in the inferential, this is not the case, as exemplified
below from the WCSNZE.
(1) It-cleft
a. It’s Norwich Union he’s working for. (WCSNZE, DPC083)
Pressupposition. He is working for Norwich Union.
b. It’s not Norwich Union he’s working for.
Pressupposition. He is not working Norwich Union.
(2) Inferential
a. It’s just that she needs to be on the job. (WCSNZE, DPC059)
Pressuposition: She needs to be on the job.
b. It’s not just that she needs to be on the job.
Pressuposition: She [still] needs to be on the job [but the real issue is something else, not just she
needs to be on the job].
As illustrated by the inferential construction, the power of a hybrid approach in linguistic inquiry
comes from the ability to draw on both resources, namely, real language examples found in
corpus data, and also, the wealth of theoretical tools developed by linguists to account for,
question, and (hopefully) explain linguistic phenomena.
References
Barlow, M. & Kemmer, S. 2000. Usage-Based Models of Language. Stanford: CSLI
Publications.
Collins, P. 2008. Inferential clefts. Personal Communication via e-mail.
Collins, P. 1991. Cleft and Pseudo-cleft constructions in English. London: Routledge.
Delahunty, G. 2001. Discourse functions of inferential sentences. Linguistics. 39(3):517-545.
Huddleston, R. & Pullum, G. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Holmes, J., Vine, B., & Johnson, G. 1998. Guide to the Wellington corpus of spoken New
Zealand English. Wellington, New Zealand: School of Linguistics and Applied Language
Studies. Victoria University of Wellington.
Koops, C. 2007. Constraints on Inferential Constructions. In G. Radden, KM Kopcke, B.
Thomas, P. Sigmund (eds.). Aspects of Meaning Construction, pp 207-224. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Lambrecht, Knud. 2001. A framework for the analysis of cleft constructions. Linguistics 39: 463–
516.
Newmeyer, F. 2003. Grammar is grammar and usage is usage. Language. 79(4): 682-707.