28.958, Diss: Scottish Gaelic Clefts: Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-958. Wed Feb 22 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.958, Diss: Scottish Gaelic Clefts: Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

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Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2017 10:33:34
From: Christine Sheil [csheil at berkeley.edu]
Subject: Scottish Gaelic Clefts: Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

 
Institution: University of California, Berkeley 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2016 

Author: Christine Sheil

Dissertation Title: Scottish Gaelic Clefts: Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics 

Dissertation URL:  https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003312

Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics
                     Semantics
                     Syntax

Subject Language(s): Gaelic, Scottish (gla)


Dissertation Director(s):
Line Mikkelsen
Peter Jenks
Mairi McLaughlin

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation investigates the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of clefts
in Scottish Gaelic, and represents the first in-depth look at Scottish Gaelic
clefts.  It also examines the Propositional Cleft.   While the Propositional
Cleft is acknowledged in Scottish Gaelic grammars, a thorough description and
analysis has not been done.  The Propositional Cleft is noteworthy for the
presence of cleft morphosyntax|the copula, a pro-form, and the relative
complementizer|but the absence of a clefted constituent.  This lack of a
clefted constituent is puzzling if the Propositional Cleft is to be included
in the cleft paradigm, since it is the clefted constituent which is typically
interpreted as the focus, and the interpretation of focus is typically assumed
to be derived from the focus-background bipartite structure created by the
cleft construction.   This property of lacking a bipartite structure makes the
Propositional Cleft, at first glance, an unlikely candidate for membership in
the cleft paradigm.  Over the course of the dissertation I describe and
analyze the pragmatic effect of the Propositional Cleft, and I argue that the
Propositional Cleft is in fact a member of the cleft paradigm, but that it
instantiates a typologically rare combination of broad sized identificational
focus.  The syntactic and semantic analysis of clefts proposed here extends
straightforwardly to derive the particular meaning and structure of the
Propositional Cleft, and shows that broad focus is not incompatible with cleft
meaning.  

I argue that A-bar dependencies in Scottish Gaelic are movement based, and
propose a syntactic account of focus movement in clefts which involves the
checking of focus features in C by the movement of the focus phrase to its
specifier. This syntactic account of focus allows us to understand the absence
of movement in the Propositional Cleft, since the broad size of focus means
that the focus constituent is the complement of CP, and so can check the focus
features of C in situ.




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