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In:Corpus Interrogation and Grammatical Patterns
Edited by Kristin Davidse, Caroline Gentens, Lobke Ghesquière and Lieven Vandelanotte
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 63] 2014
► pp. 173–205

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The case of focus

 | University of Hamburg
Published online: 14 November 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.63.13mai
This article investigates the distribution of pronoun case forms (PCFs) in it-clefts and it BE-sentences in British and American English. Its particular interest is the occurrence of subject PCFs in these two constructions. Functional and pragmatic factors exerting an influence on the distribution are identified, such as first vs. third person, singular vs plural. All these factors are operationalized and quantified in the datasets. The findings confirm the hypothesis that subject PCFs have been re-functionalised as Focus markers in the two varieties examined. As the explanation of this refunctionalization, markedness reversal is put forward.
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Cited by two other publications

Zhang, Yi & Ming Yue
2024. Case and agreement variation in contact. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 29:4 ► pp. 472 ff. DOI logo
Bevacqua, Luca & Tatjana Scheffler
2020. Form variation of pronominal it-clefts in written English. Linguistics Vanguard 6:1 DOI logo

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