The main purpose of this paper is to present a lexicalist analysis of the it-cleft construction in the framework of HPSG. Based on the observations on the data in section 2, we find evidence that the cleft that-clause is not an adjunct modifying the preceding phrase but a complement, and suggest a new complementizer thatCLEFT for the cleft construction, which is not a relative pronoun (relativizer) and which is different from the existing complementizer that. In this work, we attempt to capture the properties of the construction in terms of the lexical property of the verb beCLEFT. With the lexical entry for beCLEFT and the theoretical tools in HPSG sketched in section 3, we provide uniform analyses of various it-cleft constructions, without any theoretical stipulations in section 4.
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Data and basic facts
3. UDCs in HPSG
4. A lexicalist analysis
5. Conclusion
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