Journal articles: 'Cleft construction'

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Zhan, Fangqiong, and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. "The constructionalization of the Chinese cleft construction." Studies in Language 39, no. 2 (August 18, 2015): 459–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/sl.39.2.06zha.

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This paper addresses the emergence and development of the Chinese cleft construction, with particular attention to the period from Early Archaic Chinese through Late Medieval Chinese. Prototype copulas are typically of the form [NP SHI NP], are predicational or specificational, and cue information focus. We trace the gradual development over time of copula clefts in addition to prototype copula constructions. A key factor in their development is the use in Medieval Chinese of nominalizations in post-copula position. Copula clefts typically have the form [NP SHI XP DE] and cue both specificational and contrastive meaning. The study is a contribution to the developing field of constructionalization by making more explicit the way in which individual constructional changes contribute sequentially to constructionalization. It also demonstrates one way in which a complex contrastive cleft construction may come into being.

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Weber, Elizabeth G. "The Bondei object pronoun in clefts and pseudo-clefts.pdf." Studies in African Linguistics 19, no. 2 (August 1, 1988): 233–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.v19i2.107464.

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Verbs in Bondei, a Bantu language spoken in East Africa, have crossreferencing pronouns which agree in noun class with the subject and object of the clause. This paper will examine the distribution of the syntactic category object pronoun in four grammatical constructions: (a) basic affirmative declarative clauses; (b) relative clauses; (c) clefts; and (d) pseudo-clefts. In declarative and relative clauses, the presence of the object pronoun does not require a definite interpretation of the object noun; the absence of the object pronoun does not preclude a definite interpretation of the object noun. In both cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions, however, the object pronoun obligatorily functions to grammatically mark clef ted and pseudo-clef ted objects as definite. In the cleft constructions, the definiteness of the clef ted NP forces a contrastive interpretation. Thus, a judgement concerning the function of this grammatical construction with regard to contrastive function will be made on the basis of the distribution of the syntactic category object pronoun. possible to make the same judgment. Contrastive function is unambiguously signaled by the relative morphology on the verb of the pseudo-cleft. In this constuction, the object pronoun serves only to force a definite interpretation of the NP. In the pseudo-cleft constructions, it is not possible to make the same judgment. Contrastive function is unambiguously signaled by the relative morphology on the verb of the pseudo-cleft. In this constuction, the object pronoun serves only to force a definite interpretation of the NP.

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Creissels, Denis. "Remarks on the grammaticalization of identificational clefts." Faits de Langues 52, no. 1 (July 23, 2021): 13–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201002.

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Abstract Identificational clefts dissociate the assertion of the exclusive identification of a participant in an event from the rest of the information about the event. In all languages, this can be achieved by combining equative predication and participant nominalization, but in the evolution of languages, the routinization of such a construction as the usual way of expressing participant focalization may result in its grammaticalization as a specific type of construction. After proposing to reformulate the usual distinction between ‘pseudo-clefts’ and ‘clefts’ as a distinction between ‘plain clefts’ and ‘grammaticalized clefts’, this article discusses successively the relationship between cleft constructions and the notion of subordination, the changes that may convert plain clefts into grammaticalized clefts, the emergence of focus markers from cleft constructions, semantic aspects of the evolution of clefts, and the trend towards monoclausality in the evolution of clefts.

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Collins, Peter. "Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions." Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 12, no. 2 (January 1, 1989): 89–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/aral.12.2.06col.

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Abstract 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.

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Palancar, Enrique L. "Biclausal vs. monoclausal focus constructions in Tilapa Otomi." Faits de Langues 52, no. 1 (July 23, 2021): 139–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201007.

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Abstract This paper tackles issues that involve distinguishing clefts from other monoclausal focus constructions when describing the syntax of lesser-known languages. I concentrate on Tilapa Otomi, which is, morphologically speaking, the most conservative language of the Otomi family from Mexico (Oto-Pamean; Oto-Manguean). I propose that Tilapa Otomi has (at least) two specialized focus constructions: one that is a biclausal, and which I analyze as a cleft construction, and another that is monoclausal, and it is thus not a cleft but which could be superficially mistaken to be a cleft with a zero copula. I use various syntactic tests to distinguish both constructions, which mainly involve word order and negation.

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Latrouite, Anja. "Specification predication: Unexpectedness and cleft constructions in Tagalog." Faits de Langues 52, no. 1 (July 23, 2021): 227–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201011.

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Abstract English exhibits a large number of cleft constructions. Out of these constructions, the English it-cleft construction, which may express more than one information-structural packaging (Declerck 1988), is often taken to translate syntactically rather different constructions in other languages. In this paper, I will explore the morphosyntactic make-up and functional range of a construction in Tagalog that is often equated with, or translated by, but vastly more frequent, than the English it-cleft in our corpus. In a first step, the notion of cleft construction will be reviewed and critically investigated with respect to how appropriate it is for a language like Tagalog. In a second step, the discourse function of the ang-inversion construction in contrast to the English cleft constructions is explored on the basis of examples taken from the Tagalog version of the trilogy The Hunger Games Trilogy (Collins, 2008-2010; translated into Tagalog by Janis de los Reyes, 2012). A crucial goal is to gain a better understanding of those cases, in which the Tagalog ang-construction is used, but the English cleft construction is ruled out or at least dispreferred.

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Van Valin, Robert D. "An unusual cleft construction in Lakhota (Siouan, North America)." Faits de Langues 52, no. 1 (July 23, 2021): 255–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201012.

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Abstract This paper investigates a construction in Lakhota (Siouan, North America) to ascertain whether it has the properties of a cleft construction. The construction in question is marked by čha, a word-form that has numerous functions in the grammar. It is shown that the čha-construction in question has the properties of a cleft construction, even though the distribution of the focussed and presupposed material is the opposite of that in the usual cleft constructions. It is suggested that it is an inverted cleft construction.

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Herget Christensen, Marie. "Sætningskløvninger koder fokus og non-fokus i dansk." Ny forskning i grammatik, no. 26 (September 18, 2019): 54–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/nfg.v0i26.115993.

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It is a central claim in most Danish grammars that the Danish cleft construction encodes the clefted constituent with the function focus and that other sentence types do not have any grammatical focus encoding. This article will argue that not only does clefts encode focus, the construction also encodes the other part of the cleft – the cleft clause – with the anti-function of focus, non-focus. Further it will argue that while non-clefted sentence do not encode focus, they do encode both potential focus in one part and anti-focus in another part of the sentence. Thus, the article will show that focus structure in Danish consists of four different encodings making focus structure coding relevant for all sentence types in Danish.

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Ennaji, Moha, and Fatima Sadiqi. "The Syntax of Cleft Sentences in Berber." Studies in Language 10, no. 1 (January 1, 1986): 53–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/sl.10.1.04enn.

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This paper claims that the cleft sentence in Berber has many interesting aspects of both the simple and the complex sentences; however, this construction seems to derive from the basic simple sentence rather than from the complex sentence, since it involves just one main verb and behaves like an S, and not like an NP. The pragmatic implications of the cleft sentence reveal that the clefted constituents are generally contrasted with other constituents of the same structural status in some previous discourse. It is also argued that a WH-movement analysis of the cleft construction is intuitively plausible since clefting involves constituents being moved to the initial position of the sentence. The aim of this paper is to give a syntactic description of the cleft sentence in Berber.1 The reason for undertaking this study is that clefts in Berber pose interesting problems in terms of their structural possibilities, their pragmatic effect and their possible derivation.

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Ahlemeyer, Birgit, and Inga Kohlhof. "Bridging the Cleft." Languages in Contrast 2, no. 1 (December 31, 1999): 1–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lic.2.1.03ahl.

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Using real translation data, this paper examines the facts and reasons underlying the various translations of English it-clefts into German. Corpora of translated English-German texts reveal that only about a third of English it-clefts (or less, depending on text type) are translated with the German equivalent, a Spaltsatz. This may in part be due to differences in the restrictions the two languages place on the focused XP with regard to both grammatical function and category. Against this background we look at the different structures that German uses to render the English it-cleft. It is notable that even where the German Spaltsatz is a grammatically possible translation, other structures are frequently employed instead. This shows that factors such as the discoursefunction (s) of cleft sentences also play a decisive role in selecting stylistically well-formed translations. After a thorough study and analysis of a small sample of translated it-clefts (English-German) in their contexts, we propose the following hypothesis: The main discourse function of English it-clefts — the focusing of an XP element — may not only be translated into German with a Spaltsatz, but can also be presented adequately by introducing specific word orders, focusing particles, or both. In this way, the often cumbersome German cleft construction is dropped in favor of mono clausal sentences.

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Haude, Katharina. "Clefting and nominal predication: Two focus-marking constructions in Movima." Faits de Langues 52, no. 1 (July 23, 2021): 117–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201006.

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Abstract Movima (isolate, Bolivia) has two focus constructions that superficially look very similar. One is a simple clause with a noun in predicate position and a verb placed inside the argument phrase. Its pragmatically marked status stems from the inversion of the prototypical association of lexical and pragmatic categories. In the other construction, the predicative noun is additionally preceded by a free pronoun. This construction is a cleft, the pronoun and noun together constituting an equational matrix clause. The two constructions also differ in function: the simple clause with a nominal predicate is a simple predication, while the cleft is a specificational sentence.

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Kato, Mary. "Clivadas sem operador no português brasileiro (Clefts without an operator in Brazilian Portuguese)." Estudos da Língua(gem) 8, no. 2 (December 30, 2010): 61. http://dx.doi.org/10.22481/el.v8i2.1128.

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O português apresenta um tipo de sentença que tem sido tradicionalmente analisado como uma pseudo-clivada reduzida, as semi-clivadas, obtidas através do apagamento do operador-Q. Construcões semelhantes são também encontradas no Espanhol Caribenho (EsC) e analisadas como tendo um Operador nulo. Percebendo que nem todas as pseudo-clivadas têm uma reduzida correspondente, Bosque (1999) e Camacho (2006), tratando do EsC, e Mioto (2008), tratando do português brasileiro (PB), propoÃÉem uma derivação independente para as semi-clivadas. O presente trabalho se constitui numa tentativa diferente de explicar as semi-clivadas, independentemente das pseudo-clivadas, para dar conta de construções não permitidas em EsC. A diferença proposta é que, enquanto nas pseudo- clivadas o foco é o argumento, o adjunto ou o VP, nas semi- clivadas o foco é o resíduo de VP (depois da subida do verbo) ou Adverbiais adjuntos a VP.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Construções de Foco Estreito e Contrastivo. Espanhol Caribenho. Movimento Residual. Português Brasileiro.ABSTRACT Portuguese exhibits a type of sentence which has been traditionally analyzed as the reduction of a pseudo-cleft, built up through the deletion/ erasure of the wh-operator. Similar constructions are also found in the Caribbean dialects of Spanish (CS) and analyzed as containing a null Operator. Realizing that not all pseudo-clefts with an overt wh-operator have a corresponding reduced cleft, or semi-cleft, Bosque (1999) and Camacho (2006), for CS, and Mioto (2008), for Brazilian Portuguese, propose an independent derivation for semi-clefts. This paper is another attempt at deriving reduced or semi-clefts independently of pseudo-clefts, an analysis that can account for constructions found out in BP, which are inexistent in CS. I claim that, while pseudo-clefts focalize arguments, VP or adjuncts, reduced clefts focalize only remnant VPs and VP-adjuncts.KEYWORDS: Narrow and Contrastive Focus Construction. Caribbean Spanish. Remnant Movement. Brazilian Portuguese.

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BRANDTLER, JOHAN. "The question of form in the forming of questions: The meaning and use of clefted wh-interrogatives in Swedish." Journal of Linguistics 55, no. 4 (January 30, 2019): 755–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022226718000634.

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This paper addresses the meaning and use of clefted wh-interrogatives (I-clefts) in Swedish. It is shown that I-clefts always relate immediately to the topic under discussion and serve to clarify a matter in relation to this topic. They are never used in out-of-the-blue contexts. I argue that I-clefts have the same information structure as typically assumed for declarative clefts: the clefted clause expresses an existential presupposition and the cleft phrase is the identificational focus of the utterance. I further argue that the implication of existence commonly associated with canonical argument questions is weaker (a conversational implicature) than the existential presupposition associated with clefts. The results from an extensive corpus survey show that argument I-clefts (who, what) constitute no less than 98% of the total number of I-clefts in my material. This frequency is linked to the presuppositional status of the cleft construction: in contexts where the denoted event is presupposed as part of the common ground, the clefted variety is the more effective choice, due to its clear partitioning of focus and ground. The ‘cost’ of using a more complex syntactic structure (the cleft) is thus counterbalanced by the benefit of being able to pose a question adjusted to the contextual requirements. As non-argument questions are typically presuppositional irrespective of syntactic form, the gain of using a cleft is less obvious – hence their infrequency in the material.

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Katz, Stacey. "Categories of C’est-Cleft Constructions." Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 45, no. 3-4 (December 2000): 253–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008413100017709.

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AbstractIn this article, a system of categorizing the c’esf-cleft into different types is developed, based on their pragmatic, syntactic and prosodic properties. This goal has already been accomplished in English linguistic studies for a similar construction, the it-cleft. The c’est-cleft, however, is found more frequently than the it-cleft, and in many contexts, it is obligatory. In general, in the relative clause of the c’est-cleft, there is an open proposition that is saturated through replacing the missing variable by the element that is found in post-copular position. In most cases, the material found in the relative clause is presupposed; however, there are some cleft types for which this is not necessarily the case. This study is based on Lambrecht’s study of Information Structure.

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Fischer, Klaus. "Cleft Sentences: Form, Function, and Translation." Journal of Germanic Linguistics 21, no. 2 (June 2009): 167–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1470542709000257.

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Although cleft sentences are possible constructions in both English and German, they are far more frequent in English texts. Durrell (2002: 479) observes in his Hammer's German Grammar and Usage that “with the exception of the type Er war es, der mich davon abhielt […], cleft sentence constructions sound unnatural in German and should be avoided.” The article discusses the form and function of cleft sentences in the context of other focusing devices. It shows that, although German and English cleft sentences have the same information structure, their stylistic value is very different. Using a short translation, Durrell's observation is confirmed: in translating cleft sentences into German, semantic equivalence is often sacrificed for stylistic appropriateness. Although structural features of both languages are the ultimate cause of the contrast, they cannot explain choices in each individual case. The article argues that structural typology should be complemented with a typology of parole: the respective frequencies of cleft sentences in both languages reflect neatly into the more verbal style, more hierarchical sentence construction and, in certain respects, greater semantic transparency of English texts (by comparison with their German counterparts).*

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Yong-Tcheol Hong. "Animacy of kes in kes Cleft Construction." Studies in Generative Grammar 27, no. 3 (August 2017): 713–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.15860/sigg.27.3.201708.713.

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Li, Moying, and Lian Zhang. "The Linearity of Verb Copying Cleft Construction in Chinese: Semantic Underspecification and Pragmatic Enrichment." Journal of Language Teaching and Research 12, no. 3 (May 1, 2021): 429–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1203.13.

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In Standard Chinese, verb doubling cleft construction (henceforth VDCC) has received little attention in the linguistic literature. Recently, Cheng and Vicente (2013) claim that VDCC has the same internal syntax as regular clefts, and two verbs stand in A-bar movement relation based on the lexical identity effect. In this paper, we argue that (1) VDCC is derived in line with the principle of linearity; (2) the first verb is a reduced minimal form acting as a topic which is pragmatically enriched via contextual information; (3) the second verb is interpretively dependent on the first verb.

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Widmer, Paul. "Satzspaltung im Avestischen und Altpersischen (mit einem Ausblick auf das Mittelpersische)." Indo-Iranian Journal 55, no. 2 (2012): 119–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/001972412x620178.

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AbstractThis paper investigates the formal and functional properties of cleft sentences in Avestan and Old Persian, a construction whose existence has not been recognised in these languages hitherto. In Avestan, cleft sentences mainly function as focussing device, whereas in Old Persian, their principal function consists in the structuring of information on a text level. It is, furthermore, pointed to the fact that the usage of cleft sentences increases considerably in Middle Persian where this construction developed a much wider range of formal and functional properties as compared to the older stages of Iranian.

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Hazari, Anita, Nigel S. G. Mercer, Ashwinikumar Pawade, and Alison M. Hayes. "Superior Sternal Cleft: Construction with a Titanium Plate." Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 101, no. 1 (January 1998): 167–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00006534-199801000-00028.

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Jong-Bok Kim. "On the Syntax of the It-Cleft Construction: A Construction-based Perspective." Linguistic Research 29, no. 1 (April 2012): 45–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.17250/khisli.29.1.201204.003.

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Peanchitlertkajorn, Supakit. "Presurgical Nasal Molding With a Nasal Spring in Patients With Mild-to-Moderate Nasal Deformity With Incomplete Unilateral Cleft Lip With or Without Cleft Palate." Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Journal 56, no. 2 (May 10, 2018): 280–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1055665618774773.

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Objective: Traditional nasoalveolar molding (NAM) requires steep learning curve for clinicians and significant compliance from parents. Nasal springs have been developed by the author to simplify presurgical nasal molding. This article presents the design, construction, and application of the spring. The treatment goal is to improve nasal deformity prior to primary repair in infants born with incomplete unilateral cleft lip with or without cleft palate. Method: The design, fabrication, and utility of the nasal spring are described. The spring has a simpler design and construction compared to a traditional NAM appliance. Participants: Two patients with incomplete unilateral cleft lip with and without cleft palate are presented. Interventions: The spring is constructed and delivered. The active arm of the spring can be 3-dimensionally (3-D) adjusted to mold the alar cartilage of the affected nostril. The spring does not require an oral plate for adherence as a traditional NAM appliance does, hence an oral impression is not needed. The spring is easy for clinicians to adjust. It also requires less compliance by parents. Main Outcome Measures/Results: The presurgical molding achieved by the use of a nasal spring improved surgical nasolabial aesthetic outcomes. Conclusion: The nasal springs are effective in reducing the initial cleft nasal deformity. This facilitates primary surgical cleft lip and nose correction and improves surgical outcomes in patients with incomplete unilateral cleft lip with or without cleft palate.

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Calude, Andreea S., and Gerald P. Delahunty. "Inferentials in spoken English." Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 21, no. 3 (September 1, 2011): 307–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/prag.21.3.02cal.

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Although there is a growing body of research on inferential sentences (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 1990, 1995, 2001, Koops 2007, Pusch 2006), most of this research has been on their forms and functions in written discourse. This has left a gap with regards to their range of structural properties and allowed disagreement over their analysis to linger without a conclusive resolution. Most accounts regard the inferential as a type of it-cleft (Declerck 1992, Delahunty 2001, Huddleston and Pullum 2002, Lambrecht 2001), while a few view it as an instance of extraposition (Collins 1991, Schmid 2009). More recently, Pusch’s work in Romance languages proposes the inferential is used as a discourse marker (2006, forthcoming). Based on a corpus study of examples from spoken New Zealand English, the current paper provides a detailed analysis of the formal and discoursal properties of several sub-types of inferentials (positive, negative, as if and like inferentials). We show that despite their apparent formal differences from the prototypical cleft, inferentials are nevertheless best analysed as a type of cleft, though this requires a minor reinterpretation of “cleft construction.” We show how similar the contextualized interpretations of clefts and inferentials are and how these are a function of their lexis and syntax.

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N. Hadi, Hussam aldeen. "Cleft Construction Is a Salient Feature in the ‘City of Glass’ a Novel by Paul Auster: A Stylistic Study." Sumerianz Journal of Education, Linguistics and Literature, no. 42 (April 15, 2021): 40–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.47752/sjell.42.40.47.

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The present study is an attempt to investigate using the grammatical devices of cleft construction as a stylistic feature in the ‘city of Glass’ a post-modernist novel by Paul Auster. The purpose behind using cleft sentence is to highlight the element which is a part of the sentence and it is important for the author’s perspective. The construction of cleft sentence composes of a matrix clause headed by copula and relative or relative-like clause. Both (matrix and relative) reflect a simple logical proposal, That could’ve been conveyed in the consisting of a specific attribute without changing the truth circumstances. So this structure allows the writer focusing on the important element that he /she believes to reveal the creative use of language.

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Yang, Kun, and Deng Liang. "Clausal Integration and the Generation of IT-Cleft Construction." International Journal of Linguistics 6, no. 6 (December 31, 2014): 91. http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v6i6.6718.

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Law, Paul. "The syntactic structure of the cleft construction in Malagasy." Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 25, no. 4 (November 2007): 765–823. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11049-007-9024-y.

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FILPPULA, MARKKU. "The rise of it-clefting in English: areal-typological and contact-linguistic considerations." English Language and Linguistics 13, no. 2 (July 2009): 267–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1360674309003025.

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Recent areal and typological research has brought to light several syntactic features which English shares with the Celtic languages as well as some of its neighbouring western European languages, but not with (all of) its Germanic sister languages, especially German. This study focuses on one of them, viz. the so-called it-cleft construction. What makes the it-cleft construction particularly interesting from an areal and typological point of view is the fact that, although it does not belong to the defining features of so-called Standard Average European (SAE), it has a strong presence in French, which is in the ‘nucleus’ of languages forming SAE alongside Dutch, German, and (northern dialects of) Italian. In German, however, clefting has remained a marginal option, not to mention most of the eastern European languages which hardly make use of clefting at all. This division in itself prompts the question of some kind of a historical-linguistic connection between the Celtic languages (both Insular and Continental), English, and French (or, more widely, Romance languages). Before tackling that question, one has to establish whether it-clefting is part of Old (and Middle) English grammar, and if so, to what extent it is used in these periods. In the first part of this article (sections 2 and 3), I trace the emergence of it-clefts on the basis of data from The York–Toronto–Helsinki Corpus of Old English Prose and The Penn–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition. Having established the gradually increasing use of it-clefts from OE to ME, I move on to discuss the areal distribution of clefting among European languages and its typological implications (section 4). This paves the way for a discussion of the possible role played by language contacts, and especially those with the Celtic languages, in the emergence of it-clefting in English (section 5). It is argued that contacts with the Celtic languages provide the most plausible explanation for the development of this feature of English. This conclusion is supported by the chronological precedence of the cleft construction in the Celtic languages, its prominence in modern-period ‘Celtic Englishes’, and close parallels between English and the Celtic languages with respect to several other syntactic features.

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Frascarelli, Mara. "Scope marking and Focus in Somali." Linguistic Variation Yearbook 2010 10 (December 31, 2010): 78–116. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/livy.10.03fra.

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In this paper a novel approach is proposed for a particular type of cleft-like construction in Somali, the waxaa sentence, in which wax is a scope marker. As such, it operates a function choice in the alternative set overtly expressed in the embedded clause, which serves as a semantic restrictor. In this line of analysis, wax requires the realization of a bi-clausal, copular construction in which the relativized presupposition (i.e. the restrictor) is merged in subject position, while the focused phrase is the predicate. Indefinite wax is located in the position dedicated to focused constituents in Somali and incorporates the Focus Marker baa, allowing for the realization of an in situ Focus (an option otherwise excluded in this language) and obtaining a specific interpretation for the unfocused part of the sentence. Indeed, based on corpus analysis and interface considerations, evidence is provided that baa and waxaa constructions are by no means interchangeable narrow Focus constructions. Focusing by means of waxaa implies a context in which unfocused information is not properly ‘given’; rather it conveys a type of ‘weakly familiar’ information that contributes somehow to the informative part of the sentence. A discussion about the function and formal properties of internal Topics in Focus-prominent languages concludes the work. Keywords: cleft construction; discourse; (weak) familiarity; (narrow) Focus; presupposition; relative clause; scope marker; specificational (copular) sentence; internal Topic

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Bosiakov, Sergei, Anastasiya Vinokurova, and Andrei Dosta. "CRANIOFACIAL STRESS PATTERNS AND DISPLACEMENTS AFTER ACTIVATION OF HYRAX DEVICE: FINITE ELEMENT MODELLING." Facta Universitatis, Series: Mechanical Engineering 15, no. 3 (December 9, 2017): 517. http://dx.doi.org/10.22190/fume161210012b.

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Rapid maxillary expansion is employed for the treatment of cross-bite and deficiency of transversal dimension of the maxilla in patients with and without cleft of palate and lip. For this procedure, generally, different orthodontic appliances and devices generating significant transversal forces are used. The aim of this study is the finite-element analysis of stresses and displacements of the skull without palate cleft and the skull with unilateral and bilateral cleft after activation of the Hyrax orthodontic device. Two different constructions of the orthodontic device Hyrax with different positions of the screw relative palate are considered. In the first case, the screw is in the occlusal horizontal plane, and in the other, the screw is located near the palate. Activation of the orthodontic device corresponds to the rotation of the screw on one-quarter turn. It is established that the screw position significantly affects the distributions of stresses in skull and displacements of the cranium without palate cleft and with unilateral or bilateral palate cleft. Stresses in the bone structures of the craniums without cleft and with cleft are transferred from the maxilla to the pterygoid plate and pharyngeal tubercle if the screw displaces from the occlusal plane to the palate. Depending on the construction of the orthodontic appliance, the maxilla halves in the transversal plane are unfolded or the whole skull is entirely rotated in the sagittal plane. The stresses patterns and displacements of the skull with bilateral palate cleft are almost unchanged after activation of the orthodontic devices with different positions of the screw, only magnitudes of stresses and displacements are changed. The obtained results can be used for design of orthodontic appliances with the Hyrax screw, as well as for planning of osteotomies during the surgical assistance of the rapid maxillary expansion.

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Yang, Xiaolong, and Yicheng Wu. "A dynamic account of verb doubling cleft construction in Chinese." Language Sciences 59 (January 2017): 69–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2016.08.002.

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CHIU-MING, LI. "THE INFINITIVE CONSTRUCTION IN PSEUDO-CLEFT SENTENCES1(AND RELATED PROBLEMS)." World Englishes 4, no. 1 (March 1985): 59–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-971x.1985.tb00376.x.

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Belligh, Thomas. "The role of referential givenness in Dutch alternating presentational constructions." Non-prototypical clefts 32 (December 31, 2018): 21–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00015.bel.

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Abstract Presentational constructions are linguistic structures that can convey all-focus utterances with no topic constituent that serve to introduce a referentially new entity or event into the discourse. Like many other languages, Dutch has several presentational constructions, including a Prosodic Inversion Construction (PIC), a Syntactic Inversion with Filler Insertion Construction (SIFIC) and a Non-Prototypical Cleft Construction (NPC). This article investigates these structures as alternating presentational constructions and focuses on referential givenness as a possible factor influencing the alternation. Based on a data elicitation task, referential givenness is shown to play a role in the choice of alternant. The PIC is predominantly used with unused/inactive and accessible Mental Representations of Referents (MRRs), but it can also contain brand-new MRRs. The NPC is exclusively used with brand-new MRRs. The SIFIC is used mostly with brand-new MRRs, but it can also contain accessible MRRs, in particular in positions other than the syntactic subject. The data elicitation task yielded a number of additional Dutch linguistic structures that could also be considered presentational constructions, including a construction with a perception verb used in a weak verb-like fashion and a construction with an existential sentence combined with a coordinated canonical topic-comment clause.

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Mai, Ziyin, and Xiangjun Deng. "Selective vulnerability and dominant language transfer in the acquisition of the Chinese cleft construction by heritage speakers." Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 9, no. 2 (September 25, 2017): 202–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lab.16040.mai.

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Abstract This study investigates effects of selective vulnerability and dominant language transfer in heritage grammar. Mandarin Chinese has a shì…de cleft construction, which, despite its superficial similarities with the it-cleft in English, is subject to additional conditions. Four experimental tasks elicited eighteen adult heritage speakers’ implicit knowledge of the word order and the temporal, telicity and discourse conditions associated with the Chinese cleft. The heritage speakers demonstrated target-like representation of the conditions. Meanwhile, their sensitivity to the telicity and discourse conditions is weaker than that of native speakers in Beijing, suggesting selective vulnerability in the heritage grammar. By comparing the heritage speakers with adult second language learners of Chinese, we concluded that the vulnerability of the heritage grammar in the discourse domain did not result from cross-linguistic influence from English. In different types of Chinese-English bilinguals, the dominant language affects the weaker language in different ways.

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Karolyi, J., R. P. Erickson, S. Liu, and L. Killewald. "Major effects on teratogen-induced facial clefting in mice determined by a single genetic region." Genetics 126, no. 1 (September 1, 1990): 201–5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/genetics/126.1.201.

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Abstract A major correlation has been found between the incidence of glucocorticoid-induced cleft palate and the chromosome 8 segment identified by N-acetyl transferase in mice. The resistant strain became fully susceptible while the susceptible strain became resistant when this chromosomal region, representing less than 0.7% of the genome, was transferred from one strain to the other by the construction of congenic strains. 6-Aminonicotinamide-induced cleft palate and phenytoin-induced cleft lip with or without cleft palate are also influenced by this genetic region but not as strongly. In both cases the susceptible strain became quite resistant to the teratogen-induced clefting when the N-acetyl transferase region of chromosome 8 was transferred. However, this chromosomal region does not make the resistant strain susceptible to these two teratogens.

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Zhang, Heyou. "Where do they come from?" Cognitive Linguistic Studies 1, no. 2 (December 31, 2014): 197–217. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/cogls.1.2.02zha.

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Much work has been done to explore the origin and functions of the Chinese “Shi…De” construction, but there are still some problems left unsolved. Firstly, there is no consensus on what a syntactic category the “Shi…De” construction belongs to. Second, no agreement has been reached with regard to the functions of De and Shi in the “Shi…De” construction. Third, the reason why Chinese chooses “Shi…De” to assume the function of focusing is not clear. Moreover, though previous studies have discussed the origin and the diachronic distribution of this construction, the mechanism for its generation or its genesis is left untouched. This paper discussed the Chinese “Shi…De” construction from a synchronic perspective. The findings include: (1) The Chinese “Shi…De” constructions are essentially assertive sentences which relate to the grammaticalization of Shi; (2) De as an empty word is a particle at the phrase level and a functor together with a Shi at the sentence level; (3) The “Shi…De” construction is endowed with its own semantic function; (4) The mechanism for forming Chinese cleft sentences is analogy.

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Wee, Hae-Kyung. "A Meta-linguistic Interpretation of the subject of kes-cleft construction." Language and Information 20, no. 1 (February 28, 2016): 111–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.29403/li.20.1.6.

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Mai, Ziyin, and Boping Yuan. "Uneven reassembly of tense, telicity and discourse features in L2 acquisition of the Chinese shì … de cleft construction by adult English speakers." Second Language Research 32, no. 2 (February 4, 2016): 247–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658315623323.

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This article reports an empirical study investigating L2 acquisition of the Mandarin Chinese shì … de cleft construction by adult English-speaking learners within the framework of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2009). A Sentence Completion task, an interpretation task, two Acceptability Judgement tasks, and a felicity ranking task were administered to learners with intermediate and advanced Chinese proficiency ( n = 76). The results reveal an initial mapping between the target Chinese structure and the English it-cleft construction. The relevant tense, telicity and discourse features are added in an uneven feature-by-feature manner in the subsequent feature reassembly. It is proposed that feature reassembly tasks involving cross-domain operations (e.g. from prosody to syntax) are more complicated and more difficult to accomplish than those taking place within the same linguistic domain.

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Szmidt, Monika, Maciej Górski, Maja Bendyk-Szeffer, Anna Stogiera, and Jadwiga Buczkowska-Radlińska. "An Alternative Prosthodontic Management of Maxillary Dentoalveolar Defect in a Patient With Cleft Palate and Lip: Case Report." Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Journal 56, no. 9 (May 12, 2019): 1256–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1055665619844440.

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Cleft palate/lip is a frequently occurring congenital anomaly; one in every 800 births results in such a problem. Different treatment options are available for replacing missing soft and hard tissues, including removable dental prostheses, fixed dental prostheses (FDPs), and implant prostheses. In the literature, according to different authors, there are different option standard for prosthetic treatment of cleft palate/lip. Some authors report that removable prosthesis is the choice in such cases, some of them regard conventional tooth-supported FDPs as a standard of care. In this case report, the prosthetic treatment of congenital cleft palate/lip was described. Upon the choice of the patient and patient’s agreement, the direct construction Fibre-reinforced composite (FRC) adhesive bridge with pink composite gingival epithesis was performed.

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Gardner, Lauren, Toby Gillgrass, and Mark Devlin. "The role of three-dimensional imaging in patients with cleft lip and palate." Faculty Dental Journal 4, no. 3 (July 2013): 118–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1308/204268513x13703528618960.

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Three-dimensional (3D) imaging is revolutionising patient assessment, diagnosis, management and treatment planning. Restorative dentistry is using optical scanning such as the computer aided design/computer aided manufacture systems to help with tooth preparation design and construction of fixed prosthodontics. Other specialties in dentistry are frequently employing cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) to facilitate 3D imaging. This article outlines how CBCT and 3D sterophotogrammetry have been used in the management of cleft lip and palate with reference to the cleft team based at Glasgow Dental Hospital.

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Kiyong Choi. "Kes in the Korean Cleft Construction: Kes Filling in an Empty NP." Studies in Generative Grammar 21, no. 1 (February 2011): 21–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.15860/sigg.21.1.201102.21.

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Kaneyasu, Michiko. "The family of Japanese no-wa cleft construction: A register-based analysis." Lingua 217 (January 2019): 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2018.10.002.

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Yang, Xiaolong, and Yicheng Wu. "A dynamic account of lian…dou in Chinese verb doubling cleft construction." Lingua 217 (January 2019): 24–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2018.10.007.

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Wu, Fuyun. "The influence of Chinese Focused Cleft wh-constructions on Chinese speakers’ L2 knowledge of English wh-movement." EUROSLA Yearbook 10 (August 4, 2010): 142–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eurosla.10.09wu.

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Previous studies of Mandarin speakers’ intuitions about grammatical and ungrammatical wh-movement constructions in L2 English have produced mixed results. Some studies show that such speakers neither fully accept grammatical wh-constructions, nor fully reject constructions that violate locality constraints. The present study examines the possibility that learners may be transferring the Chinese Focused Cleft wh-construction (FCW) into their English grammars, and that transfer is persistently influential. It is argued that the FCW, which produces structures superficially similar to English wh-movement questions, does not involve movement. Two experimental studies are reported. The first tests native Mandarin Chinese speakers’ intuitions about the FCW in order to provide evidence bearing on lack of movement in the FCW. The second tests the intuitions about grammatical and ungrammatical English wh-movement of advanced L2 learners of English whose L1 was Mandarin. The results support the claim that advanced Chinese learners of English interpret English wh-constructions like Chinese FCWs.

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TOMASELLO, MICHAEL. "The Return of Constructions." Journal of Child Language 25, no. 2 (June 1998): 431–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000998003493.

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Review essay on: Goldberg, A. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. University of Chicago Press (1995). Pp. xi+265.The cornerstone of traditional descriptive grammars is the construction: a recurrent pattern of linguistic elements that serves some well-defined communicative function. Prototypical constructions are sentence-level patterns such as, in English: the imperative, the ditransitive, the passive, the resultative, the yes–no question, and the cleft (each of which may have some subtypes). Also included in some theorists' definition of construction are components of sentences such as the prepositional phrase, the noun phrase, or the genitive noun phrase. Traditional constructions may have some specific words or morphemes associated with them (e.g. by in the full passive, 's in the genitive), but these are generally closed-class morphemes. Almost by definition, traditional constructions are relatively abstract patterns that apply across whole classes of open-class morphemes.One of the defining features of modern-day generative grammar is the absence of constructions. Chomsky (1981) hypothesized that grammatical structure comprises two primary levels: the level of principles and parameters, which is much more abstract than constructions and includes everything from the subjacency constraint to the empty category principle, and the level of the lexicon, which includes all of the concrete morphemes and words of a particular language. In this view, constructions represent a ‘middle level’ of analysis that is, in effect, an epiphenomenon resulting from the interaction of the two primary levels. One outcome of this theoretical move has been that generative linguists concerned with construction-level phenomena have had to fill the generative lexicon with ever richer types of linguistic information, especially for verbs (e.g. Bresnan, 1982; Jackendoff, 1990; Levin, 1995; Pinker, 1989).

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Yong-Tcheol Hong. "A Base-generation Analysis of the Focused Phrase in the "kes" Cleft Construction." Studies in Generative Grammar 25, no. 1 (February 2015): 159–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.15860/sigg.25.1.201502.159.

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Jung, In-Jung. "The Semantic/Pragmatic Functions of Cleft Construction ‘SV的O’ in Mandarin Chinese." Journal of Chinese Language and Literature 125 (December 31, 2020): 203–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.25021/jcll.2020.12.125.203.

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Oktavianti, Ikmi Nur. "REALISASI PEMENTINGAN INFORMASI PADA KALIMAT DALAM BAHASA INGGRIS." Adabiyyāt: Jurnal Bahasa dan Sastra 13, no. 2 (December 31, 2014): 206. http://dx.doi.org/10.14421/ajbs.2014.13203.

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To achieve the goal of using language, the speaker of a language is structuring the linguistic construction as effective as possible. Moreover, he is able to modify the linguistic construction based on the prominence of the information. By so doing, language will meet its function, serving as the tool of delivering message to the interlocutor. However, there are many ways to mark the important information, such as supra-segmental, morphological, and syntactic ways. Syntactic marking of information packaging is called syntactic choice. Thus, this paper aims at describing the ways to package important information in English as one of widely spoken languages worldwide. This study belongs to descriptive qualitative study. The data were taken from realiable sources, written or spoken by native speakers. From the analysis, it is evident that English has several ways of structuring prominent information and resulting in some noncanonical constructions, namely topicalization, dislocation, cleft, existential, and so forth.

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Faghiri, Pegah, and Pollet Samvelian. "A corpus-based description of cleft constructions in Persian." Faits de Langues 52, no. 1 (July 23, 2021): 183–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201009.

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Abstract This paper presents a corpus-based description of cleft constructions in Persian showing that they display more diversity and complexity than currently described in the literature. Previous studies have only focused on constructions that echo one of the three main classes of clefts (IT-clefts, pseudoclefts and reversed pseudoclefts), and generally use Persian data in parallel to their English counterparts in order to contribute to the ongoing theoretical debates on the analysis of clefts. In order to achieve a more accurate picture of Persian clefts, we annotated and studied cleft and cleft-like sentences in a sample of about 550 relative clauses extracted from a journalistic corpus. Our study revealed new categories of cleft constructions that have not been reported previously; in particular, the lexically headed pseudoclefts whose usage is straightforwardly linked to the abundance of noun-verb light verb constructions in Persian. Moreover, we take issue with some claims made in prior work on the nature of the demonstrative in Persian IT-clefts based on empirical arguments.

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LaPolla, Randy J., and Chenglong Huang. "The Copula and Existential Verbs in Qiang." Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics 2, no. 1 (January 24, 2007): 233–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2405478x-90000032.

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This paper discusses the copula and existential verb constructions in Qiang, a Tibeto-Burman language of northern Sichuan, China. There is only one copula verb in Qiang, which can be used in equational, identificational, attributive, naming, and cleft constructions, as well as one type of possessive construction. There are five existential verbs in Qiang, the use of which depends on the semantics of the referent being predicated as existing and its location. The existential verbs have a number of the characteristics of adjective-like stative verbs, and can be modified by adverbs of degree, but they cannot directly modify nouns. Also, the meaning of reduplication of existential verbs is different from that of adjective-like stative verbs: reduplication of existential verbs results in transitivization, while reduplication of adjective-like stative verbs results in emphasis of degree.

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Khurshudyan, Victoria, and Anaïd Donabédian. "Cleft constructions and focus strategies in Modern Armenian." Faits de Langues 52, no. 1 (July 23, 2021): 89–116. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201005.

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Abstract Cleft constructions are one of the possible focus strategies available in Modern Armenian alongside prosody and specific syntactic constructions. Cleft constructions in Modern Armenian are biclausal constructions with a matrix clause and a relative-like clause, with an identificational clause as a matrix clause headed by a copula (in present or past), while in the relative-like clause introduced by the main subordinator, the relativized argument is coindexed with the argument of the copula. Though typologically cleft constructions are considered typical of languages with rigid word order, they are common in Modern Armenian, a language with flexible word order. It is argued that the intensity of focalization depends on the strategy used, with simple prosody marking associated with the lowest level of intensity, and preverbal position and clefts associated with intermediate and high-intensity focalization respectively. The corpus-based data show an unequal distribution of clefted pronouns as predicate clefts (impersonal with no agreement) and subject clefts (copular verb coindexed with personal pronouns as a subject) depending on the person and the polarity. The existence of cleft-like constructions in Classical Armenian and both Modern Armenian standards is argued to be evidence of diachronic continuity and a possible grammaticalization path from cleft constructions to the auxiliary movement focus strategy.

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van der Wal, Jenneke, and Jacky Maniacky. "How ‘person’ got into focus: Grammaticalization of clefts in Lingala and Kikongo areas." Linguistics 53, no. 1 (January 1, 2015): 1–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ling-2014-0033.

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AbstractIn several Bantu languages in the regions where Kikongo and Lingala are spoken, we encounter sentences where the word ‘person’ can appear after the subject of a canonical SVO sentence, resulting in a focused interpretation of the subject. Synchronically, we analyze this as a monoclausal focus construction with moto ‘person’ as a focus marker. Diachronically, we argue, the construction derives from a biclausal cleft, where moto functioned as the head noun of the relative clause. This is a crosslinguistically rare but plausible development. The different languages studied in this paper show variation in the properties indicative of the status of the ‘moto construction’, which reflects the different stages of grammaticalization. Finally, we show how contact-induced grammaticalization is a likely factor in the development of moto as a focus marker.

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Journal articles on the topic 'Cleft construction'

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