<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>Dear all,</p>
<p>many thanks to Denis, Patrick, Kofi, Geoffrey, Timur, Eline,
Irina, David, Kees and Minella for very helpful data and
references. They will all be duly taken into account. Just a brief
comment on David's contribution:</p>
<p>Most publications on the subject coincide in the analysis of
cleft-constructions as involving some kind of nominalization of
the extra-focal portion of an underlying (or, more neutrally, a
paradigmatically related) simpler clause. Zhan & Sun 2013 even
advocate it for Mandarin constructions like the following: <br>
</p>
<table class="bsp">
<colgroup><col style="width:3.0em"><col></colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr class="orig">
<td class="E" name="shi3">E3.</td>
<td>a.</td>
<td>Shì</td>
<td>wǒ</td>
<td>míngtiān</td>
<td>yào</td>
<td>mǎi</td>
<td>nèi-běn</td>
<td>shū.</td>
</tr>
<tr class="imt">
<td colspan="2" rowspan="2" class="lg">Mand</td>
<td>COP</td>
<td>I</td>
<td>tomorrow</td>
<td>want</td>
<td>buy</td>
<td>that-CL.volume</td>
<td>book</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="7" class="translat">It is that I want to buy that
book tomorrow. /<br>
It is me that wants to buy that book tomorrow.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="bsp">
<colgroup><col style="width:3.0em"><col></colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr class="orig">
<td> </td>
<td>b.</td>
<td>Wǒ</td>
<td>shì</td>
<td>míngtiān</td>
<td>yào</td>
<td>mǎi</td>
<td>nèi-běn</td>
<td>shū.</td>
</tr>
<tr class="imt">
<td colspan="2" rowspan="2"> </td>
<td>I</td>
<td>COP</td>
<td>tomorrow</td>
<td>want</td>
<td>buy</td>
<td>that-CL.volume</td>
<td>book</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="7" class="translat">It is tomorrow that I want to
buy that book.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="bsp">
<colgroup><col style="width:3.0em"><col></colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr class="orig">
<td> </td>
<td>c.</td>
<td>Wǒ</td>
<td>míngtiān</td>
<td>shì</td>
<td>yào</td>
<td>mǎi</td>
<td>nèi-běn</td>
<td>shū.</td>
</tr>
<tr class="imt">
<td colspan="2" rowspan="2"> </td>
<td>I</td>
<td>tomorrow</td>
<td>COP</td>
<td>want</td>
<td>buy</td>
<td>that-CL.volume</td>
<td>book</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="6" class="translat">I tomorrow want to buy that
book.</td>
<td>(Huang (1982: 372)</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>where it does not immediately impose itself, to say the least.</p>
<p>Anyway, such a syntactic analysis seems perfectly compatible with
a functional analysis in terms of a focus construction. If you
convert a simple clause into one where part of the former is
nominalized, you to this with a communicative goal in mind. Which
may precisely be focusing [in other contexts, it may be
topicalization]. And on the other hand, as Denis argues in the
article he made available, if the construction is grammaticalized,
then it may end up as an (almost) simple clause which only
contains a remnant of the underlying complexity; and if this
remnant is insufficient to analyze the construction as a complex
sentence, it may just have the function of a focus marker. Or more
generally, a "thematic structure articulator" [my neologism], in
case the communicative function was not focusing, but just
subdivision of the clause into topic and comment.<br>
</p>
Huang, Cheng-Teh James 1982, ‘Move wh in a language without wh
movement’. <i>The Linguistic Review</i> 1: 369–416.<br>
Zhan, Fangqiong & Sun, Chaofen 2013, ‘A copula analysis of <i>shì</i>
in the Chinese cleft construction’. <i>Language and Linguistics</i>
14(4): 755-789. <br>
<p></p>
-- <br>
<div class="moz-signature">
<p style="font-size:90%">Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann<br>
Rudolfstr. 4<br>
99092 Erfurt<br>
<span style="font-variant:small-caps">Deutschland</span></p>
<table style="font-size:80%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Tel.:</td>
<td>+49/361/2113417</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>E-Post:</td>
<td><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated
moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="mailto:christianw_lehmann@arcor.de">christianw_lehmann@arcor.de</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Web:</td>
<td><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.christianlehmann.eu">https://www.christianlehmann.eu</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</body>
</html>