All-cleft constructions in English: A corpus-based approach

Abstract

The English all-cleft construction, consisting of an all-cleft clause with a gap, a copula and an element licensed in the post-copula position, displays a filler-gap dependency with connectivity effect. In addition, previous literature asserts, unlike the pseudo-clef, the all-cleft construction cannot be predicational, casting several analytical and empirical questions. Key research questions include if the construction is derived from derivational processes or base-generated, what grammatical properties distinguish the construction from the related cleft constructions, and so forth. To answer some of these research questions, we have performed a comprehensive corpus investigation. Based on our corpus data, we suggest a construction-based approach to the English all-cleft that can account for its syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties, while capturing its shared properties with related cleft constructions like the pseudo-cleft.