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In:Perspectives on Linguistic Structure and Context: Studies in honor of Knud Lambrecht
Edited by Stacey Katz Bourns and Lindsy L. Myers
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 244] 2014
► pp. 199–222

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Contrasting c'est -clefts and it-clefts in discourse

Published online: 5 March 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.244.10kat
Although the French c’est-cleft and the English it-cleft appear at first glance to share similar syntactic and pragmatic properties (they are both what Lambrecht 1994 calls “argument focus” constructions), their use in discourse is not always the same. One finds a number of situations in which the c’est-cleft is required but the it-cleft is pragmatically odd. The reason for this discrepancy has to do with French prosodic restrictions that do not exist in English, thus creating a motivation for the cleft in French that is not found in English. In addition, various c’est-cleft types and c’est-cleft “lookalikes” in French correspond to different types of constructions in English, demonstrating the importance of analyzing naturally occurring discourse to determine pragmatic well-formedness.
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Cited by four other publications

Destruel, Emilie
2023. Processing pragmatic inferences in L2 French speakers. Second Language Research 39:4 ► pp. 969 ff. DOI logo
Garassino, Davide
2022. Translation as a source of pragmatic interference?. In When Data Challenges Theory [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 273], ► pp. 271 ff. DOI logo
Renans, Agata
2021. Definite descriptions of events: progressive interpretation in Ga (Kwa). Linguistics and Philosophy 44:2 ► pp. 237 ff. DOI logo
DESTRUEL, EMILIE & BRYAN DONALDSON
2017. Second language acquisition of pragmatic inferences: Evidence from the Frenchc'est-cleft. Applied Psycholinguistics 38:3 ► pp. 703 ff. DOI logo

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