An account of it-, there- and have-clefts as secondary specification constructions

A minority tradition in the literature has posited a broad category of specificational cleft constructions whose matrices express identification, e.g. it is (1), existence, e.g. there is (2), and possession, e.g. we’ve got (3) (e.g. Hannay 1985, Lambrecht 1988, 2001, Davidse 2000). Their complement NP specifies a value for a variable ’x’ which corresponds to the gap in the relative clause. (1) I h\ate them#pol\ice#hanging about for K\evin#, and they always come and kn\ock for me#and it was them that kicked down the w\alls# (COLT) (2) [in reaction to question if any members of the department are known] ^and there is ′′!H\erman#who is ^\also ′known# (LLC) (3) we ^haven`t got* a :m\/an#we`ve ^got a !whole de!p\artment# ^which _is in"!v\/olved in 'that# (LLC) Lambrecht (2001:471) holds that in all subtypes the matrix is semantically empty and serves, at the ”expense of semantic compositionality”, an information structure function only, i.e. the focus marking of an argument from the corresponding simple proposition. However, as illustrated by (1), not all complement NPs are focal. For it-and there-clefts, Halliday (1967:26) proposes that the relative clause forms a discontinuous nominal constituent with subjects it and - rather implausibly - there, making them very similar to pseudo-clefts. Thus, most of the authors who recognize more subtypes, still analyse them in terms of the main form-meaning mismatches posited for it-clefts, the expletive or the extraposition analysis, each of which has its problems. This paper argues that IT-, THERE- and HAVE-clefts can be accounted for more naturally as a specific type of complex sentence, whose modification and complementation relations code its abstract grammatical semantics (as envisaged in Langacker’s 1987 theory of grammar). I propose that they are secondary specification constructions, whose main features are the following: (i) Like secondary predication constructions with predicative relatives (König & Lambrecht 1998), e.g. (4), (4) I joined an outside broadcast crew. Presently, I saw Salinger who said “I’m sorry, the answer is still no”. (WB) IT-, THERE-, HAVE-clefts have matrices whose verbs subcategorize for both the NP complement and the relative clause of which the whole NP is the antecedent, allowing it to be a proper name or pronoun. (ii) But whereas in secondary predication (4), antecedent and relative clause stand in a subject – predication relation, the specific instances designated by the antecedent and the schematic entity ‘x’ designated by the relative marker stand in a specificational, or value-variable, relation in clefts. (iii) The different matrix types of the clefts assign different semantic roles to their complement, identifier of identifying be in (1), existent of existential be in (2), and possessee of have in (3). The value is hence related as identifier, existent or possessee to the variable, and from this fall out pragmatic differences such as the exhaustiveness implicature in (1) and its absence in (2-3). The secondary specification account will be shown to explain the occurrence with all subtypes of - zero-marker as subject in the cleft relative clause; - connectivity effects (cf. Lahousse 2009); - default information structure patterns marked by prosody in which the complement NP is focal; - diachronic origins consistent with the proposed analysis, particularly Old English clefts with identifying and existential matrices without it or there, which assign the roles of identifier or existent to their internal argument. References Davidse, K. 2000. A constructional approach to clefts. Linguistics 38: 1101-1131. Halliday, M.A.K. 1967. Notes on transitivity and theme in English 2. Journal of Linguistics 3: 199-244. Hannay, M. 1985. English Existentials in Functional Grammar. Dordrecht: Foris.status: publishe