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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The English It-Cleft: A Constructional Account and a Diachronic Investigation

The English It-Cleft: A Constructional Account and a Diachronic Investigation

Patten, Amanda

Hardcover

Series: Topics in English Linguistics, Book 79

Grammar & StyleLinguistics

ISBN10: 3110277808
ISBN13: 9783110277807
Publisher: de Gruyter Mouton
Published: Dec 13 2012
Pages: 274
Weight: 1.25
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

This book examines the structure and function of the English it-cleft configuration from within the framework of construction grammar. It defends a straightforward extraposition-from-NP analysis (on which the cleft clause is a restrictive relative, modifying the initial it) and claims that all types of it-cleft involve nominal predication. Support for this analysis comes from three main areas: (a) the central role of definiteness in the creation of specificational meaning, (b) the existence and makeup of predicational (and proverbial) it-clefts, and (c) the early, historical it-cleft data. In addition, the book contains a sizeable diachronic component, drawing data from the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English and from the International Corpus of English - Great Britain. This investigation informs and advances what is an otherwise simple account of the English it-cleft, explaining how and why the configuration has developed an assortment of peculiar, construction-specific properties over time.

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