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Chapter 5. Presentational clefts, existentials and information structure

A comparative perspective on French and Italian
  • Anne Carlier and Karen Lahousse
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Existential Constructions across Languages
This chapter is in the book Existential Constructions across Languages

Abstract

Presentational c’è / il y a clefts in Italian and French have been argued to differ from the existential and locative constructions they derive from by their syntactic, semantic and information-structural properties: they would invariably convey sentence-focus. In the present study, we argue for a unitary treatment of all c’è / il y a constructions, whose meaning is locational-existential, and whose discourse function is to present the nominal argument as non-topical. This analysis de-particularizes presentational clefts with respect to locative and existential c’è / il y a constructions and accounts for the fact that, rather than conveying invariably sentence-focus, they present the same variety of information structure articulations as the non-cleft c’è / il y a constructions.

Abstract

Presentational c’è / il y a clefts in Italian and French have been argued to differ from the existential and locative constructions they derive from by their syntactic, semantic and information-structural properties: they would invariably convey sentence-focus. In the present study, we argue for a unitary treatment of all c’è / il y a constructions, whose meaning is locational-existential, and whose discourse function is to present the nominal argument as non-topical. This analysis de-particularizes presentational clefts with respect to locative and existential c’è / il y a constructions and accounts for the fact that, rather than conveying invariably sentence-focus, they present the same variety of information structure articulations as the non-cleft c’è / il y a constructions.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Funding vii
  4. Contributors ix
  5. Chapter 1. Existential constructions 1
  6. Part I. Existence and related constructions
  7. Chapter 2. Existential predication and have-possessive constructions in the languages of the world 34
  8. Chapter 3. Impersonal existence in the weather domain 68
  9. Part II. Existence and information structure
  10. Chapter 4. Pure existentials vs. pure presentationals 102
  11. Chapter 5. Presentational clefts, existentials and information structure 139
  12. Chapter 6. On a continuum from categorical to thetic judgment 180
  13. Part III. Existence and quantification
  14. Chapter 7. The Finnish existential clause 220
  15. Chapter 8. Partition and existence 245
  16. Part IV. Existence and negation
  17. Chapter 9. Is the French verb manquer ‘lack, miss’ a negative existential predicate? 284
  18. Chapter 10. ‘To be’ and its negation in Latvian 301
  19. Chapter 11. Words also exist in a world 325
  20. Index 347
  21. Language index 352
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.76.05car

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Funding vii
  4. Contributors ix
  5. Chapter 1. Existential constructions 1
  6. Part I. Existence and related constructions
  7. Chapter 2. Existential predication and have-possessive constructions in the languages of the world 34
  8. Chapter 3. Impersonal existence in the weather domain 68
  9. Part II. Existence and information structure
  10. Chapter 4. Pure existentials vs. pure presentationals 102
  11. Chapter 5. Presentational clefts, existentials and information structure 139
  12. Chapter 6. On a continuum from categorical to thetic judgment 180
  13. Part III. Existence and quantification
  14. Chapter 7. The Finnish existential clause 220
  15. Chapter 8. Partition and existence 245
  16. Part IV. Existence and negation
  17. Chapter 9. Is the French verb manquer ‘lack, miss’ a negative existential predicate? 284
  18. Chapter 10. ‘To be’ and its negation in Latvian 301
  19. Chapter 11. Words also exist in a world 325
  20. Index 347
  21. Language index 352
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