The Syntax of Emphasis — A Base Camp

This paper attempts a survey of the major emphatic constructions in English, and of the processes which derive them from a proposed bisentential source. The source for a garden-variety pseudocleft sentence like What Jeb hankers for is a smooth transition is argued to be What Jeb hankers for is he hankers for a smooth transition – the rule of Pseudocleft Formation, which is optional for some speakers, deletes the redundant struck-through elements. Whether this ellipsis has occurred or not, a rule of Copula Switch can apply to transform the post-copular constituent into the subject of the resulting sentence: He hankers for a smooth transition is what Jeb hankers for. Copula-switched or not, and deleted or not, the subjects of all such pseudoclefts can be Deictic Dislocated, freely to the left, less so to the right. The returning pronouns which emerge in the course of these operations are the demonstratives that and this. Some examples of the resultant structures are: What Jeb hankers for- [that / this] is (? he hankers for a smooth transition); *[That /This] is (** he hankers for a smooth transition) - what Jeb hankers for; He hankers for a smooth transition - [that/ > this] is what Jeb hankers for; [This / >?That] is what Jeb hankers for - he hankers for a smooth transition . Akmajian's motion to derive cleft sentences from pseudoclefts is seconded, and it is argued that Deictic Dislocation can provide some evidence for the correctness of such an analysis, in the face of apparent counterexamples to it. Thus, since What Tony regretted was [the pizza / that Mildred loved Baryshnikov] are both grammatical, we would expect both clefts to be. But: It was [the pizza / *that Mildred loved Baryshnikov] that Tony regretted. However, left-dislocating both foci yields two good clauses: [The pizza / That Mildred loved Baryshnikov] – it was that that Tony regretted. Thus we conclude that the ungrammaticality of the clefted that-clause is merely due to a violation of a surface filter.