1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910736021803321

Autore

Davidse Kristin

Titolo

Specificational and Presentational There-Clefts : Redefining the Field of Clefts / / by Kristin Davidse, Ngum Meyuhnsi Njende, Gerard O'Grady

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2023

ISBN

3-031-32270-3

Edizione

[1st ed. 2023.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (192 pages)

Altri autori (Persone)

NjendeNgum Meyuhnsi

O'GradyGerard

Disciplina

428.2

Soggetti

Linguistics

Psycholinguistics

Linguistics - Methodology

Theoretical Linguistics / Grammar

Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Lingusitics

Research Methods in Language and Linguistics

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Natural grammar -- Chapter 3. Compilation and prosodic analysis of data -- Chapter 4: Existential there versus demonstrative there -- Chapter 5: Paradigms of relative markers -- Chapter 6: Different antecedent–relative clause relations -- Chapter 7: Structural assemblies and semantics of the four existential constructions with relative clause -- Chapter 8: Determiners of existent NPs in the four four existential constructions with relative clause -- Chapter 9: Prosodic patterns in the four existential constructions with relative clause -- Chapter 10: Conclusion. .

Sommario/riassunto

"This study does nothing less than redraw the map of clefts. It provides a thought-provoking and stunningly comprehensive new take on a familiar construction, extending its scope in terms of the structures included and by according special attention to its semantics and prosody." -Gunther Kaltenböck, Professor at University of Graz, Austria This book proposes a radically new account of clefts in English. Since the 1960s, functional as well as formal linguists have generally



restricted clefts to constructions with an identifying matrix (it-clefts) and have claimed that they only code information structure. Clefts are assumed to unpack a simple proposition into a focus – presupposition structure. In this book, the authors reject these theoretical-descriptive assumptions, arguing instead that clefts form a field comprising it-clefts, there-clefts and have-clefts. They show that, like any other construction, clefts compositionally code propositional semantics, onto which a great variety of prosodically coded focus patterns may be mapped. The authors fundamentally challenge the existing approach by entering the debate with an in-depth account of the neglected specificational and presentational there-clefts, offering the first systematic data-based study of their grammatical and prosodic features. While the study is restricted to English, its findings have significant cross-linguistic relevance. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Functional, Cognitive and Formal Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, and usage-based study of grammar and prosody. Kristin Davidse is a Professor in the Linguistics Department at KU Leuven, Belgium. Ngum Njende is a PhD candidate in the Linguistics Department at KU Leuven, Belgium. Gerard O’Grady is a Professor in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University, UK. .