Cleft/Focus Example

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 18 Aug 2003, Catherine Rudin/HU/AC/WSC wrote:
> This IS a great example!   Sure looks like a cleft to me.   And it's
> especially nice to have a sentence with the cleft/focus -e after a noun --
> I think the ones in your paper were just about all on demonstratives or
> verbs/clauses.

Yes, though that may have been an artifact of looking for e(')-e ... I was
looking particularly at the postverbal examples in an attempt to determine
the relationship of =e to the proximate/obviative system.  I will have to
cast my net wider, given the clefting analysis.  It's a learning process.

> I wonder what the syntax of this looks like... can -e attach to any
> type of constituent?

Well, so far, lots of demonstratives, a certain number of verbs, and one
noun.  Also, commonly to personal pronouns, as in wi=e'=bdhiN 'it is I'.

And, perhaps relevant, there are a few postverbal particles, essentially
modal, e.g., (e=)iN=the 'perhaps', (e=)t[]e'must', and and so on, that
seem to have two versions - one which attaches to the verb, one with
attached to e= following the verb.  I've never been able to decide why
that happened.  In the cast of 'must' (or maybe it's 'ought'?) the problem
is partly determining whether it is =tte or =the.

> Does it make an adjoined phrase of some kind?

Yes, as far as I can tell.  I believe that's the essence of a cleft, and I
am arguing that this is a cleft and not just an "in-place" mark of focus.

Of course, if you're dealing with an SOV language and most clauses are SV
or OV, it's hard to move the extracted and adjoined phrase far.  However,
sometimes in the examples I gave at the meeting the extraction is
postposed, and I think the adverbial examples involved fronting, too,
though over the years - ignoring syntactic processes like focus - I've
gotten into the comfortable rut of assuming that adverbs can pretty much
occur where they like without it needing any particular comment on my
part.

About the only thing in this line - odd placement of adverbs - that I've
noticed previously is that some adverbs seem to insert themselves between
the verb and the plural/proximate marking.

JEK