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English Historical Linguistics: Historical English in contact
Edited by Bettelou Los, Chris Cummins, Lisa Gotthard, Alpo Honkapohja and Benjamin Molineaux
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 359] 2022
► pp. 35–56

Chapter 3
An account of the use of fronting and clefting in Cornish English

ORCID logo | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Unlike Standard English, Celtic English varieties generally use word order shifts or special syntactic devices to give emphasis to a specific clausal constituent. This study analyses the frequency of use of focusing devices in a number of Cornish English stories and compares the results with those obtained in other studies for other Celtic English varieties. Likewise, this chapter attempts to provide an explanation for why Cornish English shows a preference for fronting over clefting by referring to the structure of focal constructions in Cornish. Finally, I offer an account of the discourse-pragmatic functions of fronting and clefting in Cornish English and compares them with those found in Standard English to provide evidence in support of its Celtic substratum.
Keywords: Cornish English, fronting, clefting, Celtic substratum influence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The introduction and spread of English in Cornwall
  • 3.Cornish English
  • 4.Focusing devices
  • 5.Corpus and methodology
  • 6.Analysis
  • 7.A possible source for Cornish English fronting and the Celtic hypothesis
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 2 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.359.03cor
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