(Pseudo)cleft constructions in old Romanian Cover Image

(Pseudo)cleft constructions in old Romanian
(Pseudo)cleft constructions in old Romanian

Author(s): Mihaela Gheorghe
Subject(s): Theoretical Linguistics
Published by: Editura Universităţii »Alexandru Ioan Cuza« din Iaşi
Keywords: cleft sentences;pseudo-cleft sentences;relative clauses;old Romanian;

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the syntactic and semantic features of cleft sentences in Old Romanian (OR) as compared to Modern Romanian (MR). The clefting strategy in MR can only produce pseudo-cleft constructions (identifying structures with free relative clauses headed by ce, or relative clauses with an antecedent; the focalized constituent follows the relative clause and the copula; the reversed pattern is also possible: the focalized constituent is placed before the copula and the relative clause). The analysis of an OR corpus showed that cleft constructions were quite frequent, but the patterns were more diverse than in MR: besides cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions, OR also employed hybrid constructions, that amalgamate the features of the prototypical clefts.

  • Issue Year: 2017
  • Issue No: 6
  • Page Range: 1-10
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: English