Study Of Cleft Construction In English From Focus Perspective

Cleft construction is a specific structure for emphasizing in English. It iscomposed of two parts and each part has their own verbs. English cleft constructionsare classified into two types: it-clefts and wh-clefts. The latter is also usually calledpseudo-clefts. A lot of researches have been done of this language phenomenon fromvarious perspectives through the ages. However, these studies always incline toanalyze the syntactic features and pragmatic functions of clefts.This thesis tries to discuss this specific structure from focus perspective so as toachieve a deeper understanding of the nature of cleft construction. The study mainlyproposes three questions to be addressed:(1) What are the constraints on the focusing parts of cleft sentences, and what arethe logical representations of cleft sentences that take different elements as the focusparts?(2) What is the nature of the exhaustiveness effect of English cleft construction?(3) As expressions of identificational focus, what are the differences betweenEnglish cleft sentences and the typical identificational focus structure: only-sentences?As to these questions, this study firstly summarizes the constraints on theconstituents that enter into the focus position in cleft constructions, and works out thelogical representations of several typical cleft sentences under the framework ofalternative semantic theory. Then the study analyzes previous views on the nature ofexhaustiveness effect of cleft construction; points out their defects respectively, andcomes up with a new solution. That is: the exhaustiveness effect of English clefts isindeed caused by presupposition, but this presupposition is a conditional one. At last,through comparative analysis, this study shows that though both cleft construction sand only-sentences are representations of contrast focus, they represent a lot ofdifferences in the nature of their exhaustiveness meaning and focus projection. Thereason why we choose cleft constructions to express focus is because cleft constructionallows us to highlight an element without causing any ambiguity.This study has provided a more comprehensive explanation of English cleftconstruction from semantic view, which does a lot of help for us to get the reason whycleft constructions are generated and why they are widely-used.