Non-prototypical Clefts in French: A Corpus Analysis of Il Y a Clefts (Beihefte Zur Zeitschrift Für Romanische Philologie) (Beihefte Zur Zeitschrift Für Romanische Philologie, 424)

This monograph is the first large-scale corpus analysis of French __il y a__ clefts. While most research on clefts focusses on the English ‘prototypical’ it-cleft and its equivalents across languages, this study examines the lesser-known __il y a__ clefts – of both presentational-eventive and specificational type – and provides an in-depth analysis of their syntactic, semantic and discourse-functional properties. In addition to an extensive literature review and a comparison with Italian __c’è__ clefts and with French __c’est__ clefts, the strength of the study lies in the critical approach it develops to the common definition of clefts. Several commonly used criteria for clefts are applied to the corpus data, revealing that these criteria often lead to ambiguous results. The reasons for this ambiguity are explored, thus leading to a better understanding of what constitutes a cleft. In this sense, the analysis will be of interest to specialists of Romance and non-Romance clefts alike.

This monograph is the first large-scale corpus analysis of French il y a clefts. While most research on clefts focusses on the English ‘prototypical’ it-cleft and its equivalents across languages, this study examines the lesser-known il y a clefts – of both presentational-eventive and specificational type – and provides an in-depth analysis of their syntactic, semantic and discourse-functional properties.

In addition to an extensive literature review and a comparison with Italian c’è clefts and with French c’est clefts, the strength of the study lies in the critical approach it develops to the common definition of clefts. Several commonly used criteria for clefts are applied to the corpus data, revealing that these criteria often lead to ambiguous results. The reasons for this ambiguity are explored, thus leading to a better understanding of what constitutes a cleft. In this sense, the analysis will be of interest to specialists of Romance and non-Romance clefts alike.

Acknowledgments 7 Contents 9 General introduction 15 Part I: Delimitation of il y a clefts 35 1. Criteria for clefthood in previous studies 35 2. Corpora and extraction 62 3. Application of criteria to the corpus data 72 Part II: Distribution, morphosyntactic and semantic properties 109 4. Il y a clefts: two semantic types (eventive vs. specificational) 109 5. Il n’y a que clefts 118 Part III: Functions of il y a clefts 129 6. The function of avoiding “bad” preverbal subjects 129 7. The information structure of il y a clefts 154 8. Information structure: c’est clefts vs. il y a clefts 200 9. Other pragmatic functions of il y a clefts 213 Part IV: Italian c’è clefts (vs. French il y a clefts) 233 10. Italian c’è clefts (vs. French il y a clefts) 233 Part V: Il y a clefts: compositionality and status as a construction 277 11. The compositionality of il y a clefts 277 12. No evidence (yet) for il y a clefts as a construction 291 General conclusion 308 Appendix 323 Bibliography 345 Index 369