Cover not available
Article published In:
Australian Review of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 12:2 (1989) ► pp.89–106

Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions

A corpus-based account

| University of New South Wales

This paper reports findings from a study of clefts and pseudo-clefts in two standard corpora of English, one spoken and one written. The distributional patterns of the constructions across the various genres of the two corpora are explored, and explanations offered in terms of their distinctive communicative functions. Pseudo-clefts, which were considerably more popular in the spoken genres than in the written, attach special status to given information, presented in the form of a subordinate clause which is at the same time presupposed and, in the unmarked construction, thematic. Clefts, which were marginally more frequent in the written genres, are oriented towards newness. In both unmarked clefts and one type of marked cleft new information is highlighted via thematic predication.

Published online: 1 January 1989
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.12.2.06col
References
Collins, P.C.
(1982) Cleft sentences in English discourse. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 5 (1): 60–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1985) Th-clefts and all-clefts. In J.E. Clark (ed.) The cultivated Australian.: Festschrift in honour of Arthur Delbridge. Hamburg, Buske: 45–53.Google Scholar
(1987) Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions in English spoken and written discourse. ICAME (International Computer Archive of Modern English) Journal 111: 5–17.Google Scholar
(1988) Cleft constructions and shared knowledge. In W.R. Albury and P. Slezak (eds) Dimensions of cognitive science. Sydney, University of N.S.W. Press: 103–25.Google Scholar
Declerk, R.
(1984) The pragmatics of it-clefts and WH-clefts. Lingua 641: 251–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gundel, J.
(1985) Shared knowledge and topicality. Journal of Pragmatics 91: 83–107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M.A.K.
(1967) Notes on transitivity and theme in English, Part 2. Journal of Linguistics 31: 199–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1985) An introduction to functional grammar. London, Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Higgins, F.R.
(1979) The pseudo-cleft construction in English. New York, Garland Publishing, Inc.Google Scholar
Jones, L.B. and L.K. Jones
(1985) Discourse functions of five English sentence types. Word 361: 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Muraki, M.
(1970) Presupposition and pseudo-clefting. Proceedings of the 6th Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society: 390–99.Google Scholar
Prince, E.F.
(1978) A comparison of WH-clefts and it-elefts in discourse. Language 541: 883–906. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1981) Toward a taxonomy of given-new information. In P. Cole (ed.) Radical pragmatics. New York, Academic Press: 223–55.Google Scholar
Sornicola, R.
(1988) - It-clefts and WH-clefts: two awkward sentence types. Journal of Linguistics 241: 343–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Svartvik J. and M. Eeg-Olofsson
(1982) Tagging the London-Lund corpus of spoken English. In S. Johansson (ed.) Computer corpora in English language research. Bergen, Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities: 85–102.Google Scholar