Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/19589514-05201001
Enrique L. Palancar, M. Vanhove
Il existe de nombreux types de constructions clivées, mais plus généralement, quand on pense aux clivées, les exemples qui viennent à l’esprit sont ceux de la construction dite « it-cleft » en anglais, comme it’s our work that is important ou la clivée en français c’est moi qui suis venu. L’anglais en présente d’autres types connus sous les termes malheureux de « pseudoclefts » et « inversed pseudo-cleft », comme par exemple what is important is our work ou our work is what is important. De fait, il y a autant de définitions des clivées que de types de clivées. La définition de Lambrecht nous semble particulièrement englobante :
有很多类型的裂隙结构，但更普遍的是，当我们想到裂隙结构时，脑海中浮现的例子是英语中所谓的“it-cleft”结构，如it ' s our work that is important或法语中的“la裂隙结构是我来的”。英语中还有其他类型的漏洞，被称为“伪漏洞”和“反向伪漏洞”，例如what is important is our work或our work is what is important。事实上，裂谷的定义和裂谷的类型一样多。兰布雷希特的定义似乎特别宽泛:
{"title":"Présentation générale","authors":"Enrique L. Palancar, M. Vanhove","doi":"10.1163/19589514-05201001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201001","url":null,"abstract":"Il existe de nombreux types de constructions clivées, mais plus généralement, quand on pense aux clivées, les exemples qui viennent à l’esprit sont ceux de la construction dite « it-cleft » en anglais, comme it’s our work that is important ou la clivée en français c’est moi qui suis venu. L’anglais en présente d’autres types connus sous les termes malheureux de « pseudoclefts » et « inversed pseudo-cleft », comme par exemple what is important is our work ou our work is what is important. De fait, il y a autant de définitions des clivées que de types de clivées. La définition de Lambrecht nous semble particulièrement englobante :","PeriodicalId":90499,"journal":{"name":"Faits de langues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43232610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/19589514-05201010
Amina Mettouchi
Prosody is often conceived of as an important but surface realization of morphosyntactic constructions that are otherwise deemed complete. This paper challenges that view of prosody as a disambiguating, highlighting or scope-marking device, and provides evidence for the inclusion of prosody as a core formal means for the coding of cleft constructions in Kabyle, in interaction with morphosyntax. The demonstration is conducted through the recursive analysis of an annotated corpus of spontaneous data, and results in a precise formal definition of Kabyle clefts constructions, whose function is shown to be the marking of narrow focus.
{"title":"From a corpus-based to a corpus-driven definition of clefts in Kabyle (Berber): Morphosyntax and prosody","authors":"Amina Mettouchi","doi":"10.1163/19589514-05201010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Prosody is often conceived of as an important but surface realization of morphosyntactic constructions that are otherwise deemed complete. This paper challenges that view of prosody as a disambiguating, highlighting or scope-marking device, and provides evidence for the inclusion of prosody as a core formal means for the coding of cleft constructions in Kabyle, in interaction with morphosyntax. The demonstration is conducted through the recursive analysis of an annotated corpus of spontaneous data, and results in a precise formal definition of Kabyle clefts constructions, whose function is shown to be the marking of narrow focus.","PeriodicalId":90499,"journal":{"name":"Faits de langues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49437169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/19589514-05201004
I. Bril, S. Skopeteas
This article outlines the strategies for expressing focus in Northern Amis (Formosan). Three types of focus constructions are examined: cleft constructions, focus markers and emphatic lengthening. Focus by clefting is subject to the well-known nominative-only constraint on extraction and relativization found in Formosan and Philippine type languages (Keenan & Comrie 1977), such that a clefted constituent must be the syntactic pivot of the verb in the relative clause containing the presupposition, and its semantic role is co-indexed by the appropriate voice marker on the verb. The other strategies of focus marking do not involve any syntactic restructuring; the focus markers determine the focus domain by their placement on the right side of the focus, while emphatic lengthening is merely a prosodic device locally marking the focused entity. The prosodic examination of these constructions reveals that narrow focus is signaled by a sharp rise, that is aligned with the onset of the stressed syllable of the focus and is optionally accompanied by postfocal de-accenting. These prosodic properties apply to all focus constructions.
{"title":"The syntax and prosody of focus in Northern Amis (Formosan)","authors":"I. Bril, S. Skopeteas","doi":"10.1163/19589514-05201004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article outlines the strategies for expressing focus in Northern Amis (Formosan). Three types of focus constructions are examined: cleft constructions, focus markers and emphatic lengthening. Focus by clefting is subject to the well-known nominative-only constraint on extraction and relativization found in Formosan and Philippine type languages (Keenan & Comrie 1977), such that a clefted constituent must be the syntactic pivot of the verb in the relative clause containing the presupposition, and its semantic role is co-indexed by the appropriate voice marker on the verb. The other strategies of focus marking do not involve any syntactic restructuring; the focus markers determine the focus domain by their placement on the right side of the focus, while emphatic lengthening is merely a prosodic device locally marking the focused entity. The prosodic examination of these constructions reveals that narrow focus is signaled by a sharp rise, that is aligned with the onset of the stressed syllable of the focus and is optionally accompanied by postfocal de-accenting. These prosodic properties apply to all focus constructions.","PeriodicalId":90499,"journal":{"name":"Faits de langues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42371219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/19589514-05201006
K. Haude
Movima (isolate, Bolivia) has two focus constructions that superficially look very similar. One is a simple clause with a noun in predicate position and a verb placed inside the argument phrase. Its pragmatically marked status stems from the inversion of the prototypical association of lexical and pragmatic categories. In the other construction, the predicative noun is additionally preceded by a free pronoun. This construction is a cleft, the pronoun and noun together constituting an equational matrix clause. The two constructions also differ in function: the simple clause with a nominal predicate is a simple predication, while the cleft is a specificational sentence.
{"title":"Clefting and nominal predication: Two focus-marking constructions in Movima","authors":"K. Haude","doi":"10.1163/19589514-05201006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Movima (isolate, Bolivia) has two focus constructions that superficially look very similar. One is a simple clause with a noun in predicate position and a verb placed inside the argument phrase. Its pragmatically marked status stems from the inversion of the prototypical association of lexical and pragmatic categories. In the other construction, the predicative noun is additionally preceded by a free pronoun. This construction is a cleft, the pronoun and noun together constituting an equational matrix clause. The two constructions also differ in function: the simple clause with a nominal predicate is a simple predication, while the cleft is a specificational sentence.","PeriodicalId":90499,"journal":{"name":"Faits de langues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41412942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/19589514-05201005
Victoria Khurshudyan, Anaïd Donabédian
Cleft constructions are one of the possible focus strategies available in Modern Armenian alongside prosody and specific syntactic constructions. Cleft constructions in Modern Armenian are biclausal constructions with a matrix clause and a relative-like clause, with an identificational clause as a matrix clause headed by a copula (in present or past), while in the relative-like clause introduced by the main subordinator, the relativized argument is coindexed with the argument of the copula. Though typologically cleft constructions are considered typical of languages with rigid word order, they are common in Modern Armenian, a language with flexible word order. It is argued that the intensity of focalization depends on the strategy used, with simple prosody marking associated with the lowest level of intensity, and preverbal position and clefts associated with intermediate and high-intensity focalization respectively. The corpus-based data show an unequal distribution of clefted pronouns as predicate clefts (impersonal with no agreement) and subject clefts (copular verb coindexed with personal pronouns as a subject) depending on the person and the polarity. The existence of cleft-like constructions in Classical Armenian and both Modern Armenian standards is argued to be evidence of diachronic continuity and a possible grammaticalization path from cleft constructions to the auxiliary movement focus strategy.
{"title":"Cleft constructions and focus strategies in Modern Armenian","authors":"Victoria Khurshudyan, Anaïd Donabédian","doi":"10.1163/19589514-05201005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Cleft constructions are one of the possible focus strategies available in Modern Armenian alongside prosody and specific syntactic constructions. Cleft constructions in Modern Armenian are biclausal constructions with a matrix clause and a relative-like clause, with an identificational clause as a matrix clause headed by a copula (in present or past), while in the relative-like clause introduced by the main subordinator, the relativized argument is coindexed with the argument of the copula. Though typologically cleft constructions are considered typical of languages with rigid word order, they are common in Modern Armenian, a language with flexible word order. It is argued that the intensity of focalization depends on the strategy used, with simple prosody marking associated with the lowest level of intensity, and preverbal position and clefts associated with intermediate and high-intensity focalization respectively. The corpus-based data show an unequal distribution of clefted pronouns as predicate clefts (impersonal with no agreement) and subject clefts (copular verb coindexed with personal pronouns as a subject) depending on the person and the polarity. The existence of cleft-like constructions in Classical Armenian and both Modern Armenian standards is argued to be evidence of diachronic continuity and a possible grammaticalization path from cleft constructions to the auxiliary movement focus strategy.","PeriodicalId":90499,"journal":{"name":"Faits de langues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44545036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/19589514-05201003
Katharina Hartmann
This paper argues that the Chadic languages Bura, South Marghi, Hausa, and Guruntum show different stages of the assumed grammaticalization path from bi-clausal cleft structures to mono-clausal constructions for the expression of term focus. This development is characterized by several syntactic and semantic changes, i.e. the reinterpretation of the cleft copula into a focus marker, the loss of the exhaustive inference typically associated with clefts, as well as the loss of syntactic indicators of embedded structures. Based on a microvariational comparison of the four languages, the paper hypothesizes that clefts are diachronically abandoned in favour of mono-clausal focus structures.
{"title":"The grammaticalization of term focus structures in Chadic languages: A case of microvariation","authors":"Katharina Hartmann","doi":"10.1163/19589514-05201003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper argues that the Chadic languages Bura, South Marghi, Hausa, and Guruntum show different stages of the assumed grammaticalization path from bi-clausal cleft structures to mono-clausal constructions for the expression of term focus. This development is characterized by several syntactic and semantic changes, i.e. the reinterpretation of the cleft copula into a focus marker, the loss of the exhaustive inference typically associated with clefts, as well as the loss of syntactic indicators of embedded structures. Based on a microvariational comparison of the four languages, the paper hypothesizes that clefts are diachronically abandoned in favour of mono-clausal focus structures.","PeriodicalId":90499,"journal":{"name":"Faits de langues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44025354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/19589514-05201009
Pegah Faghiri, P. Samvelian
This paper presents a corpus-based description of cleft constructions in Persian showing that they display more diversity and complexity than currently described in the literature. Previous studies have only focused on constructions that echo one of the three main classes of clefts (IT-clefts, pseudoclefts and reversed pseudoclefts), and generally use Persian data in parallel to their English counterparts in order to contribute to the ongoing theoretical debates on the analysis of clefts. In order to achieve a more accurate picture of Persian clefts, we annotated and studied cleft and cleft-like sentences in a sample of about 550 relative clauses extracted from a journalistic corpus. Our study revealed new categories of cleft constructions that have not been reported previously; in particular, the lexically headed pseudoclefts whose usage is straightforwardly linked to the abundance of noun-verb light verb constructions in Persian. Moreover, we take issue with some claims made in prior work on the nature of the demonstrative in Persian IT-clefts based on empirical arguments.
{"title":"A corpus-based description of cleft constructions in Persian","authors":"Pegah Faghiri, P. Samvelian","doi":"10.1163/19589514-05201009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper presents a corpus-based description of cleft constructions in Persian showing that they display more diversity and complexity than currently described in the literature. Previous studies have only focused on constructions that echo one of the three main classes of clefts (IT-clefts, pseudoclefts and reversed pseudoclefts), and generally use Persian data in parallel to their English counterparts in order to contribute to the ongoing theoretical debates on the analysis of clefts. In order to achieve a more accurate picture of Persian clefts, we annotated and studied cleft and cleft-like sentences in a sample of about 550 relative clauses extracted from a journalistic corpus. Our study revealed new categories of cleft constructions that have not been reported previously; in particular, the lexically headed pseudoclefts whose usage is straightforwardly linked to the abundance of noun-verb light verb constructions in Persian. Moreover, we take issue with some claims made in prior work on the nature of the demonstrative in Persian IT-clefts based on empirical arguments.","PeriodicalId":90499,"journal":{"name":"Faits de langues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43880938","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/19589514-05201011
A. Latrouite
English exhibits a large number of cleft constructions. Out of these constructions, the English it-cleft construction, which may express more than one information-structural packaging (Declerck 1988), is often taken to translate syntactically rather different constructions in other languages. In this paper, I will explore the morphosyntactic make-up and functional range of a construction in Tagalog that is often equated with, or translated by, but vastly more frequent, than the English it-cleft in our corpus. In a first step, the notion of cleft construction will be reviewed and critically investigated with respect to how appropriate it is for a language like Tagalog. In a second step, the discourse function of the ang-inversion construction in contrast to the English cleft constructions is explored on the basis of examples taken from the Tagalog version of the trilogy The Hunger Games Trilogy (Collins, 2008-2010; translated into Tagalog by Janis de los Reyes, 2012). A crucial goal is to gain a better understanding of those cases, in which the Tagalog ang-construction is used, but the English cleft construction is ruled out or at least dispreferred.
英语中有大量的裂缝结构。在这些结构中，英语的it-cleft结构可以表达不止一种信息结构包装(Declerck 1988)，通常用于翻译其他语言中不同的句法结构。在本文中，我将探讨他加禄语中一个构筑物的形态句法构成和功能范围，这个构筑物通常与我们语料库中的英语it-cleft等同或翻译，但使用频率要高得多。在第一步中，将对裂缝结构的概念进行审查和批判性调查，以确定它对像他加禄语这样的语言是否合适。第二步，以《饥饿游戏三部曲》(the Hunger Games trilogy)的塔加禄语版本为例，探讨ang-倒转结构相对于英语裂式结构的话语功能(Collins, 2008-2010;由Janis de los Reyes翻译成塔加洛语，2012年)。一个关键的目标是更好地理解这些情况，在这些情况下，使用了他加禄语的“ang”结构，但英语的“cleft”结构被排除在外，或者至少不受欢迎。
{"title":"Specification predication: Unexpectedness and cleft constructions in Tagalog","authors":"A. Latrouite","doi":"10.1163/19589514-05201011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000English exhibits a large number of cleft constructions. Out of these constructions, the English it-cleft construction, which may express more than one information-structural packaging (Declerck 1988), is often taken to translate syntactically rather different constructions in other languages. In this paper, I will explore the morphosyntactic make-up and functional range of a construction in Tagalog that is often equated with, or translated by, but vastly more frequent, than the English it-cleft in our corpus. In a first step, the notion of cleft construction will be reviewed and critically investigated with respect to how appropriate it is for a language like Tagalog. In a second step, the discourse function of the ang-inversion construction in contrast to the English cleft constructions is explored on the basis of examples taken from the Tagalog version of the trilogy The Hunger Games Trilogy (Collins, 2008-2010; translated into Tagalog by Janis de los Reyes, 2012). A crucial goal is to gain a better understanding of those cases, in which the Tagalog ang-construction is used, but the English cleft construction is ruled out or at least dispreferred.","PeriodicalId":90499,"journal":{"name":"Faits de langues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45589287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/19589514-05201002
Denis Creissels
Identificational clefts dissociate the assertion of the exclusive identification of a participant in an event from the rest of the information about the event. In all languages, this can be achieved by combining equative predication and participant nominalization, but in the evolution of languages, the routinization of such a construction as the usual way of expressing participant focalization may result in its grammaticalization as a specific type of construction. After proposing to reformulate the usual distinction between ‘pseudo-clefts’ and ‘clefts’ as a distinction between ‘plain clefts’ and ‘grammaticalized clefts’, this article discusses successively the relationship between cleft constructions and the notion of subordination, the changes that may convert plain clefts into grammaticalized clefts, the emergence of focus markers from cleft constructions, semantic aspects of the evolution of clefts, and the trend towards monoclausality in the evolution of clefts.
{"title":"Remarks on the grammaticalization of identificational clefts","authors":"Denis Creissels","doi":"10.1163/19589514-05201002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201002","url":null,"abstract":"Identificational clefts dissociate the assertion of the exclusive identification of a participant in an event from the rest of the information about the event. In all languages, this can be achieved by combining equative predication and participant nominalization, but in the evolution of languages, the routinization of such a construction as the usual way of expressing participant focalization may result in its grammaticalization as a specific type of construction. After proposing to reformulate the usual distinction between ‘pseudo-clefts’ and ‘clefts’ as a distinction between ‘plain clefts’ and ‘grammaticalized clefts’, this article discusses successively the relationship between cleft constructions and the notion of subordination, the changes that may convert plain clefts into grammaticalized clefts, the emergence of focus markers from cleft constructions, semantic aspects of the evolution of clefts, and the trend towards monoclausality in the evolution of clefts.","PeriodicalId":90499,"journal":{"name":"Faits de langues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"64469950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/19589514-05201008
B. Caron
This paper is a corpus-based study of the various forms and uses of clefts in Naija, the largest West-African English lexifier pidgincreole, spoken in Nigeria and its diaspora as a second language by close to 100 million speakers. The data on which this paper is based is taken from the 500,000 word ANR-NaijaSynCor corpus, consisting of 300 samples of spontaneous speech, recorded in 2017 in 13 different locations in Nigeria, from 330 different speakers of both sexes, of various ages, education levels, and geographic origins. The quantitative data is taken from a sub-section of 9,621 sentences (almost 150,000 tokens) that constitute a syntactic treebank mirroring the social and geographic sampling of the full corpus. Clefts, pseudo-clefts and reverse pseudo- clefts are examined. Four types of clefts are described: wey-clefts, bare clefts, double clefts and zero-copula clefts. The properties of those clefting patterns are represented using a UD-type annotation scheme named SUD for Surface-Syntactic Universal Dependencies. The quantitative analysis of the data and comparison with former descriptions of the language underline the massive domination of bare clefts, and the emergence, among these various patterns, of a relative pronoun nãĩ “who/which” used only with cleft constructions, while the relativiser wey is being abandoned and specialises as relative clause operator.
{"title":"Clefts in Naija, a Nigerian pidgincreole","authors":"B. Caron","doi":"10.1163/19589514-05201008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05201008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper is a corpus-based study of the various forms and uses of clefts in Naija, the largest West-African English lexifier pidgincreole, spoken in Nigeria and its diaspora as a second language by close to 100 million speakers. The data on which this paper is based is taken from the 500,000 word ANR-NaijaSynCor corpus, consisting of 300 samples of spontaneous speech, recorded in 2017 in 13 different locations in Nigeria, from 330 different speakers of both sexes, of various ages, education levels, and geographic origins. The quantitative data is taken from a sub-section of 9,621 sentences (almost 150,000 tokens) that constitute a syntactic treebank mirroring the social and geographic sampling of the full corpus. Clefts, pseudo-clefts and reverse pseudo- clefts are examined. Four types of clefts are described: wey-clefts, bare clefts, double clefts and zero-copula clefts. The properties of those clefting patterns are represented using a UD-type annotation scheme named SUD for Surface-Syntactic Universal Dependencies. The quantitative analysis of the data and comparison with former descriptions of the language underline the massive domination of bare clefts, and the emergence, among these various patterns, of a relative pronoun nãĩ “who/which” used only with cleft constructions, while the relativiser wey is being abandoned and specialises as relative clause operator.","PeriodicalId":90499,"journal":{"name":"Faits de langues","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48218151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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