1 Cleft wh-questions as biclausal structures
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Anna Cardinaletti
Abstract
The aim of the paper is to contribute to the debate on the internal structure of cleft sentences by (i) analysing the distribution of the subjunctive mood, lexical subjects, and perche ‘why’ in Italian declarative and interrogative cleft sentences and (ii) discussing a difference between simple and cleft wh-questions. While simple wh-questions with marginalized DPs (in the sense of Antinucci and Cinque 1977 and Cardinaletti 2001, 2002) are ambiguous between a subject and an object reading of those DPs, cleft wh-questions are not ambiguous: The marginalized material can only be the subject. The paper investigates the syntactic, pragmatic, and prosodic properties of cleft wh-questions and compares them to simple wh-questions, cleft declaratives, and focalizations.
Abstract
The aim of the paper is to contribute to the debate on the internal structure of cleft sentences by (i) analysing the distribution of the subjunctive mood, lexical subjects, and perche ‘why’ in Italian declarative and interrogative cleft sentences and (ii) discussing a difference between simple and cleft wh-questions. While simple wh-questions with marginalized DPs (in the sense of Antinucci and Cinque 1977 and Cardinaletti 2001, 2002) are ambiguous between a subject and an object reading of those DPs, cleft wh-questions are not ambiguous: The marginalized material can only be the subject. The paper investigates the syntactic, pragmatic, and prosodic properties of cleft wh-questions and compares them to simple wh-questions, cleft declaratives, and focalizations.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- It-clefts: State-of-the-art, and some empirical challenges 1
- 1 Cleft wh-questions as biclausal structures 11
- 2 What is it that requires or constrains clefts? (Dis)Favouring factors for clefting in Germanic and Romance 35
- 3 Subject versus object clefts: A fresh perspective on a robust asymmetry 81
- 4 Making the case for distinguishing information structure from specification in English it-clefts 105
- 5 The emergence and early development of c’est ‘it is’ clefts in French L1 135
- 6 Distributed computational models of intervention effects: A study on cleft structures in French 157
- 7 It-cleft constructions in Réunion Creole 181
- 8 (It-)clefts in Palenquero Creole and the specificational copula 217
- 9 A cartographic approach to Chinese V de O clefts 235
- Index 257
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- It-clefts: State-of-the-art, and some empirical challenges 1
- 1 Cleft wh-questions as biclausal structures 11
- 2 What is it that requires or constrains clefts? (Dis)Favouring factors for clefting in Germanic and Romance 35
- 3 Subject versus object clefts: A fresh perspective on a robust asymmetry 81
- 4 Making the case for distinguishing information structure from specification in English it-clefts 105
- 5 The emergence and early development of c’est ‘it is’ clefts in French L1 135
- 6 Distributed computational models of intervention effects: A study on cleft structures in French 157
- 7 It-cleft constructions in Réunion Creole 181
- 8 (It-)clefts in Palenquero Creole and the specificational copula 217
- 9 A cartographic approach to Chinese V de O clefts 235
- Index 257
