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Article published In: Functions of Language
Vol. 31:3 (2024) ► pp.289–326

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Everything-cleft constructions in spoken British English

A neglected construction

ORCiD logo with link | Lund University
 | University of Oslo
 | Lund University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Lund University.

Published online: 28 January 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.23014.sei
Abstract
Within the framework of Construction Grammar, this study examines constructions with a cleft form containing everything, e.g., that’s everything that’s happened, in spoken British English, using the London-Lund Corpora and the British National Corpora. We trace the development of everything-clefts in recent history and make comparisons with all-clefts since both all and everything express totality. Our aim is to determine the form-meaning properties of everything-clefts, to examine whether everything-clefts too express the smallness and exhaustiveness readings associated with all-clefts, and whether everything-clefts are also dialogically contractive. The frequency per million words of everything-clefts, however, is 3.3, which is lower than for all-clefts. Also, based on the distinction between regular predicational, reverse predicational and reverse specificational everything-clefts, we find that most everything-clefts are predicational and express quality and that only a small number of reverse specificational everything-clefts express exhaustiveness and are dialogically contractive. Moreover, an even smaller number of everything-clefts also express smallness. We argue that exhaustiveness in everything-clefts stems from a metonymic link to the boundary involved in the totality meaning of everything in analogy with reverse all-clefts. The reverse exhaustive specificational everything-clefts are similar to all-clefts and clearly deserve a place in the constructional network of English specificational cleft constructions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Quantification
    • 2.2Clefting and all-clefts
    • 2.3(Diachronic) Construction Grammar and language change
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1The frequency of occurrence of everything-clefts
    • 4.2The form-meaning properties of everything-clefts
    • 4.3Everything-clefts in the constructional network of English specificational copular constructions
    • 4.4The development of everything-clefts
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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