1st Edition

Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Constructions in English

By William Branford Copyright 1991
    246 Pages
    by Routledge

    250 Pages
    by Routledge

    First published in 1991, this book examines the communicative properties of ‘cleft’ and ‘pseudo-cleft’ constructions in contemporary English. The book argues that these properties cannot be ignored in any attempt to provide an adequate grammatical description of the constructions. Furthermore, they provide a source of explanations for the patterns of stylistic variation displayed by clefts and pseudo-clefts. The book reports findings from a corpus-based study of clefts and pseudo-clefts in modern British English.

    List of tables and figures

    List of abbreviations and symbols

    Acknowledgements

    1. Approaches to the study of cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions

    2. The database

    3. Defining the class

    4. Formal properties

    5. Communicative meanings

    6. Communicative meanings in the corpus

    7. Clefts, pseudo-clefts and register variation

    8. Conclusion

    Notes

    Bibliography

    Index

    Biography

    Collins, Peter