Specificational pseudo-clefts in Old Japanese
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Janick Wrona
Abstract
This paper argues that Old Japanese had two different types of pseudo-cleft constructions. The first type was used to focus arguments while the second type was used to focus adjuncts. In Sections 2 and 3 I provide examples of the two types of pseudo-clefts paying particular attention to the subordinate predicate and the focused constituent. In Section 4 I will provide an analysis of the subordinate predicates in the two types of pseudo-clefts that can account for the syntactic distinction. In Section 5, I will discuss and dismiss some potential counterexamples to the generalisations I make. Finally, I will claim that the demise of the morphological form of the subordinate predicate used in one of the pseudo-cleft constructions resulted in a usage extension of the other type.
© 2006 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Abraham Ibn-Ezra's viewpoint regarding the Hebrew language and the biblical text in the context of medieval environment
- Exploring exaptation in language change
- Liturgical Hebrew in 13th-15th century Catalonia
- Nonspecific free relatives and (anti)grammaticalization in English and German
- Bed & Board: The role of alliteration in twin formulas of Middle English prose
- Aspects of punctuation in the Old English Apollonius of Tyre
- Persistence and renewal in the relative pronoun paradigm: The case of Italian
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- Thoughts on the question of Gurage: Now you see it, now you don't
- Lines on an African-Semitic language: The case of Tigrinya
- Michiko Ogura, Verbs of motion in Medieval English
