비제한적 관계절로서의 영어 It-분열문

Lee, Jaekeun and Hong, Sungshim. 2018. English It-Clefts as non-Restrictive Relative Clauses. Studies in Generative Grammar, 28-3, 389-410. The current paper examines the English It-Cleft constructions and argues that this construction consists of a referential pronoun ‘it’ rather than an expletive ‘it’ (Hedberg 2000, Reeve 2007, 2011, 2012), and the cleft clause in it-clefts is a non-restrictive relative clauses, contra Hedberg (2000), Reeve (2011), and many others. The referential component of it-clefts is a copula construction in the form of ‘It...copula...[ FocP XP [ RC who/that...]’. The non-restrictive relative clause part, which is the cleft clause, CP, headed by a Wh-word, merged with the Head of the clefted constituent or the Focus. To that end, we show the close relationship and symmetry between cleft clauses in it-clefts and non-restrictive relative clauses. Therefore, this is a strictly derivational approach to English it-clefts, which utilizes the operational mechanism such as the Sideward Movement (Nunes and Hornstein 2005, Hornstein 2009)