Open AccessSpecificerende il y a-clefts (er is-clefts)
Author(s) -
Lena Karssenberg
Publication year - 1970
Publication title -
handelingen
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2736-2140
pISSN - 0774-3254
DOI - 10.21825/kzm.v70i0.17819
Subject(s) - semantics (computer science) , sister , linguistics , combinatorics , medicine , mathematics , computer science , philosophy , programming language , sociology , anthropology
In this paper, I investigate French il y a-clefts ('there is-clefts’) that are semantically specificational(e.g. ‘Are there vegetarians in your family?’ — Oui, il y a ma soeur qui estvégétarienne “Yes, there’s my sister who’s a vegetarian”). I show on the basis of a qualitativecorpus analysis in three different registers of French that this type of cleft is lessuniform than previously assumed in terms of its semantics, discourse functions and informationstructure properties.