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The structural non-integration of wh-clefts1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2015

WOJCIECH GUZ
WOJCIECH GUZ*
Affiliation:
English Department, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, [email protected]
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Abstract

Weinert & Miller (1996) suggest that English wh-clefts are a heterogeneous class in that they can have varied degrees of structural integration. Many such constructions depart structurally from the canonical wh-cleft which consists of a wh-clause, the copula and a focus constituent, and in which all the three elements are brought together into a fully integrated utterance. In the types of wh-clefts displaying looser structure, their lack of syntactic integration has so far been related to such linguistic features as (a) omission of the copula, (b) non-canonical copular complementation, e.g. independent main clauses instead of standard infinitival phrases appearing in the focus constituent, (c) lack of a clearly identifiable copular complement, (d) the focusing effect of the wh-clause extending over several clauses (Weinert & Miller 1996; Koops & Ross-Hagebaum 2008; Hopper & Thompson 2008; Callies 2012). Although the disintegrating effect of these features has been observed, the extent of the phenomenon in modern English has not been properly established and other non-integration features have not been investigated. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to use corpus data to identify and examine such non-integration features and to investigate the extent – expressed quantitatively – to which these features are found in wh-clefts with the verb do in the wh-clause. The article also points out the formulaic status of those wh-clauses which become disconnected from their focus phrases.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , November 2015 , pp. 477 - 503
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers of ELL for their most valuable comments on the first draft of this article. Thanks are also due to Piotr Pęzik for the opportunity to access the BNC audio files.

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