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Περίληψη Η παρούσα εργασία εκπονήθηκε στο πλαίσιο του μεταπτυχιακού προγράμματος «Γλωσσολογική θεωρία και έρευνα» του τμήματος Φιλολογίας του Πανεπιστημίου Ιωαννίνων. Η εργασία μελετά τις δίπτυχες ή δισχιδείς προτάσεις στη νέα ελληνική. Η εμφάνιση και η αποδεκτότητα των δομών αυτών αμφισβητείται στη συγκεκριμένη ποικιλία. Η έρευνά μας, μέσω σώματος κειμένων και πειραματικών δοκιμασιών, φαίνεται να μην επιβεβαιώνει απόλυτα τους ισχυρισμούς της βιβλιογραφίας. 127 σ.

ResumenEn esta investigación se presentan los resultados del estudio de las funciones pragmático-discursivas desempeñadas por oraciones escindidas del tipo “lo que pasa es que” en narraciones conversacionales de experiencia personal generadas por hablantes chilenos. Se analizan 54 narraciones conversacionales con dos propósitos: clasificar las oraciones escindidas según la parte de la estructura narrativa que introducen y ofrecer una taxonomía de funciones pragmático-discursivas que desempeñan dichas construcciones. Entre las principales conclusiones se destaca que las oraciones escindidas desempeñan tres macro-funciones: focalizadora –aparentemente la más relevante para la cadena narrativa–, introductora de atenuaciones justificantes y orientadora, cada una con diferentes posibilidades de realización.

This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the encoding strategies of different types of topics and foci in (the southern variant of) German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS). The discussion will be guided by two main hypotheses: (i) the existence of a strict, universal ordering of topic and focus projections in the tradition of Rizzi (1997) and (ii) the Bodily Mapping Hypothesis (Bross & Hole 2017; Bross 2020), i. e., the hypothesis that scope is expressed in a systematic way in sign languages: the higher an operator is located in the syntactic tree, the higher the articulator expressing it will be. As this study is concerned with very high CP categories, the Bodily Mapping Hypothesis predicts that the categories under discussion will be marked with the highest possible articulators, i.e., the eyebrows. Concerning topics, base-generated frame setters (epistemic, locative, and temporal frames) and moved aboutness topics will be discussed as well as structures resembling pseudo-clefts. Concerning focus, contrastive and mirative focus as well as regular cleft sentences will be examined.

This paper aims to define the form and function of Old Japanese copular sentences containing the NP-da predicate. It is a commonly held that the Old Japanese copula was -n(i)ari, but the zero copula (-ø) was frequently used. This paper analyzes the syntactic structure “A-pa B-ø/-n(i)ari” as a small clause structure, and examines the functions of copular sentences. To this end, we organize the functions of copular sentences in Modern Japanese for comparison with the functions of copular sentences in Old Japanese. Furthermore, Old Japanese had a kakari musubi structure using a kakari particle -zo. In order to verify whether this kakari musubi structure was a copular sentence, we analyze the syntactic structure of (pseudo-) cleft sentences. After understanding the syntactic and functional property of copular sentences and (pseudo-)cleft sentences, we show that the kakari musubi structure “A-zo B” is not a copular sentence, but a cleft sentence similar to English it-clefts in which a marker -zo appears in the head of ForceP indicating a particular illocutionary force.

In this work we deal with two structures that have a very similar pragmatic function in Italian and have been claimed to have similar semanticand syntactic properties, namely clefts and left peripheral focus. Since Chomsky(1977. On wh-movement. In Peter W. Culicover, Thomas Wasow & AdrianAkmajian (eds.), Formal Syntax, 71-132. New York: Academic Press.) they have been both considered as instances of A'-movement and should therefore behave alike. Here we investigate their prosody and their syntax on the basis of three experimental studies and show that while the prosodic patterns found areindeed very similar, their syntax is less homogenous than expected if we apply general tests that have been traditionally used to distinguish A- from A'- movement. In particular, we will discuss three of these tests, namely parasitic gaps, weak crossover and anaphoric binding and show that the two constructions yield quite different results. We analyse the differences within the framework of featural relativized minimality originally proposed in Rizzi (2004. Locality and the left periphery. In Adriana Belletti (ed.), Structures and Beyond: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures 3, 223-251. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) and subsequent work. On this basis, we conclude that there is no one to one match between prosodic and syntactic properties, since we observe differences in the syntactic behaviour of the two constructions that do notsurface in the prosodic patterns. Indirectly, this study sheds new light on the interface between prosody and syntax and is a confirmation of a modular theory of the components of grammar: some specific syntacticproperties have no reflex in other components of grammar and can only be detected through purely syntactic tests.

This study investigated how experimental manipulation of working memory load affected children’s input information retainment. 76 children (4;5-6;4, M=65 months, SD=6.61) were participated in our experiment. We conducted sentence repetition task for cleft sentences to examine children’s input retainment and set two conditions in which mora length of nouns and verbs in stimulus sentences were controlled: high working memory load condition (high WM load: 24 morae) and low working memory load condition (low WM load: 16 morae). As a result, children who repeated stimulus sentences perfectly in low WM load condition could not repeat case-markers correctly in high WM load condition. On the other hand, children who repeated stimulus sentences perfectly in high WM load condition repeated almost all cleft sentences in low WM load condition. Thus, working memory load affected children’s performance of sentence repetition. These results suggested that case-marking errors, which had been demonstrated in various sentence comprehension tasks, would be originated in input information retainment.

En el presente trabajo se propone que las oraciones hendidas, como ocurre en realidad con todos los tipos de oraciones, presentan una doble interpretación referencial, en términos de caracterización y de identificación, ligada esta última directamente a la estructura informativa. Y se plantea que lo propio de la naturaleza gramatical de las oraciones hendidas es la dominancia de la interpretación identificadora, con una influencia recesiva de la interpretación caracterizadora. Se propone la posibilidad de establecer una escala de menor a mayor restricción del ámbito de la identificación, pero se descarta que las oraciones hendidas se caractericen funcionalmente por ubicarse en un nivel específico de dicha escala. Finalmente se plantea que, desde un punto de vista enunciativo, lo propio de estas oraciones es que cuentan con un significado procedimental que consiste en realzar la relevancia de la oración hendida como apoyo a un argumento previo.

The present study aims at investigating the prosodic realization of Italian cleft sentences, in order to provide some new cues for their still debated syntactic interpretation. A monoclausal approach to the analysis of cleft sentences (a.o. Meinunger, 1998) parallels them to left focalization constructions, while a biclausal approach (a.o. Belletti, 2008) considers them composed of a main copular clause and an embedded pseudo-relative clause. A systematic comparison between cleft sentences and left focalizations - carried out through an experimental study and an analysis of pitch accent distribution, scaling, and prosodic phrasing - leads to conclude that their prosodic realization is very similar, thus suggesting that a monoclausal analysis for cleft sentences is supported by prosodic data.

O objetivo do presente artigo é mostrar que há “efeitos de exaustividade” no uso das clivadas que diferem da “identificação por exclusão” – o efeito mais conhecido pela literatura (ATLAS; LEVINSON, 1981; HORN, 1981; KISS, 1998; WEDGWOOD; PETHŐ; CANN; 2006; BÜRING; KRIZ, 2013). Para atingir esse objetivo, apresentamos um estudo descritivo detalhado de casos, por meio do qual verificamos os efeitos contextuais de exemplos encontrados em jornais e revistas da imprensa brasileira. Utilizamos, para isso, modificadores associados pela literatura aos efeitos das clivadas sobre o “conjunto contextual de alternativas” – como “somente” e “e ninguém mais” (ATLAS; LEVINSON, 1981; HORN, 1981), “exatamente” e “precisamente” (MENUZZI; ROISENBERG, 2010a). Nossa conclusão é a de que os “efeitos de exaustividade” envolvem vários tipos de inferências acerca da estrutura do domínio de referentes do discurso e podem modificar essa estrutura de diversos modos. Esse resultado coloca sob nova perspectiva algumas das questões acerca da semântica e da pragmática das clivadas; em particular, a de saber quanto dos “efeitos de exaustividade” tem algum caráter “convencional” (como as pressuposições e as implicaturas generalizadas), e quanto é derivado por inferência pragmática particularizada. In this article, we show that cleft sentences may have “exhaustiveness effects” quite different from the “identification by exclusion” – which is the effect usually discussed by the literature (ATLAS; LEVINSON, 1981; HORN, 1981; KISS, 1998; WEDGWOOD; PETHŐ; CANN; 2006; BÜRING; KRIZ, 2013). To show this, we present a detailed study of cases in which we test the contextual effects triggered by clefts found in Brazilian magazines and newspapers. Our testing tools are modifiers that the literature associates with exhaustiveness, such as only and and nobody else (ATLAS; LEVINSON, 1981; HORN, 1981), and exactly and precisely (MENUZZI; ROISENBERG, 2010a). On the basis of such tests, we conclude that “exhaustiveness effects” involve various types of inferences about the structure of the domain of the discourse referents, and may modify such a structure in many different ways. This result, we believe, puts into a new perspective many of the questions about the semantics and the pragmatics of clefts, in particular whether “exhaustiveness effects” are conventionalized pragmatic inferences (such as a presupposition, or a generalized implicature), or particularized implicatures.

Sluicing and Pseudosluicing are elliptical constructions that differ in Portuguese regarding the (im)possibility of preposition omission. Rodrigues et al. (2009) and Rodrigues (2016) claim that in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), and Spanish, this omission is apparent in Pseudosluicing, because the prepositional phrase occurs inside the elided cleft sentence that affects the overt wh-phrase (whP). European Portuguese (EP) shows that this apparent omission only occurs with whPs that are D-linked and the linguistic context permits the recovering of the nominal that expresses the kind of entities that are under inquire. When free relatives are involved in the cleft sentences, the omission of preposition is required, and the differences in acceptability between PE and PB are due to the narrow extension of the Preposition Drop phenomenon in EP.

In this thesis I propose an explanation for the facts of copular inversion in Spanish, Catalan, and other Romance languages, as well as in German. Copular inversion is a phenomenon found in some languages, in which, at least superficially, the copula may be found agreeing with the postverbal DP instead of the preverbal DP. At first sight it appears that the agreeing postverbal DP is the subject of the sentence, but in this work I provide evidence that this is not the case: the agreeing postverbal DP is, in fact, the complement of the copula. This yields a singular case of non-subject agreement in Spanish, Romance and the rest of copular inversion languages that is not found in the rest of the grammar of these very same languages (e.g. they do not ever show object-agreement in transitive sentences). This requires an explanation that is integrated with the rest of the grammars of the languages. I claim that coreference is the driving force behind the presence of copular inversion: in copular inversion languages, all verbs actually seek agreement with it and all those grammatical functions that are coreferential with the subject. In intransitive and transitive sentences, the only possible candidate is the subject, but in copular sentences the complement is usually coreferential with the subject. The choice of the agreeing function among the possible candidates is decided with respect to a Person-Number Hierarchy: the copula will always agree with the function that has the most marked person and number agreement features with respect to it. This requires challenging the standard view of LFG by which the lexical entries of verbs determine the person and number features of the subject: the solution requires accepting that the person and number features of the verb must be represented in a function-independent “bundle” that is unified with the right grammatical function according to syntactic well-formedness constraints in an OT setting. Additionally to explain the facts of copular inversion languages, the proposed OT-LFG hypothesis predicts why other languages do not have copular inversion. Moreover, the proposed hypothesis can easily be extended to other phenomena of non-subject agreement, e.g. Catalan cleft sentences, Icelandic non-subject agreement in “quirky case” constructions, English locative inversion and agreement phenomena in the Dargwa family of languages., En la presente tesis doctoral expongo una explicación para la inversión copulativa –presente en la mayoría de las lenguas romances como también en alemán–. Este fenómeno consiste, superficialmente, en que la cópula concuerda con el sintagma nominal posverbal en vez del preverbal. A primera vista, esto puede parecer simplemente que el sujeto se encuentra en posición posverbal, pero la evidencia que se presenta en este trabajo demuestra que ese sintagma posverbal no es el sujeto, sino el complemento del verbo. Por tanto, esta es una construcción singular en la que un verbo concuerda con un no-sujeto, con la misma morfología empleada para la concordancia con el sujeto, cosa absolutamente inusitada para la gramática de las lenguas analizadas –que carecen de cualquier tipo de concordancia verbo-objeto, por ejemplo–. Así pues, defiendo que la inversión copulativa es consecuencia del hecho de que la concordancia en estas lenguas es, en realidad, entre el verbo y alguna función gramatical que sea correferente con el sujeto, incluido el propio sujeto. Naturalmente, solo las oraciones copulativas poseen dos funciones correferentes con el sujeto –el sujeto y el complemento–, debido al significado de la cópula; en otros tipos de oraciones, la única función disponible es el sujeto, por lo cual el verbo solo puede concordar con este. La función con la cual se concuerda será aquella correferente con el sujeto cuyos rasgos de persona y número sean los más marcados según una Jerarquía de Persona y Número. Para ello, es absolutamente necesario abandonar la premisa de la Gramática Léxico-Funcional por la cual la concordancia del verbo se establece en su entrada léxica como una determinación de los rasgos de las funciones gramaticales concordantes. Aquí defiendo que los verbos simplemente determinan sus rasgos de concordancia, independientes de toda función gramatical, y que estos son unificados con los rasgos de una u otra función o funciones según restricciones formales de la gramática que, en este trabajo, se estipulan en un marco teórico inspirado en la Teoría de la Optimidad. Esto me permite explicar por qué existen lenguas como el inglés que carecen de dicha construcción e, incluso, explicar fácilmente otros fenómenos de concordancia verbal con no-sujetos en otras lenguas, como, por ejemplo, en islandés en construcciones de sujeto en caso oblicuo, en la inversión locativa presente en inglés y en general en las lenguas dargwa.

The cue-based retrieval theory (Lewis, Vasishth, & Van Dyke, 2006) predicts that interference from similar distractors should create difficulty for argument integration, however this hypothesis has only been examined in the written modality. The current study uses the Visual World Paradigm (VWP) to assess its feasibility to study retrieval interference arising from distractors present in a visual display during spoken language comprehension. The study aims to extend findings from Van Dyke & McElree (2006), which utilized a dual-task paradigm with written sentences in which they manipulated the relationship between extra-sentential distractors and the semantic retrieval cues from a verb, to the spoken modality. Results indicate that retrieval interference effects do occur in the spoken modality, manifesting immediately upon encountering the verbal retrieval cue for inaccurate trials when the distractors are present in the visual field. We also observed indicators of repair processes in trials containing semantic distractors, which were ultimately answered correctly. We conclude that the VWP is a useful tool for investigating retrieval interference effects, including both the online effects of distractors and their after-effects, when repair is initiated. This work paves the way for further studies of retrieval interference in the spoken modality, which is especially significant for examining the phenomenon in pre-reading children, non-reading adults (e.g., people with aphasia), and spoken language bilinguals.

Otsu (1994) and many other following studies argue that Japanese children can correctly comprehend some difficult sentences (e.g., scrambling sentences) only when stimulus sentences are presented with information that expresses the previous discourse. Without such information, children cannot obtain the correct interpretation. A prediction of such an approach is that children with a lower memory capacity, who therefore cannot retain information on the context, would experience difficulty with sentences that are prone to misinterpretation. In this brief article, I report experimental results that support this prediction in children's understanding of cleft sentences. 100 monolingual Japanese children participated in two experiments: a listening span test (for measuring their working memory capacity), and a picture-selection task (for investigating their comprehension of cleft sentences). Regarding the presence of contextual information, two conditions (with/without context) were treated as a between-subject variable. A test for equality of proportion revealed that the difference in the correct percentage between the 'without context' and 'with context' conditions was not statistically significant in the low memory capacity group, whereas it was significant in the mid and high memory capacity groups. This result shows that an increase in the percentage of correct answers along with the availability of contextual information is observed among children with relatively high working memory capacity, but not observed among low memory capacity children. Low capacity of working memory means little information is retained in the working memory. It is plausible to consider that for children with a low memory capacity, contextual information that is previously provided can no longer be retained in their working memory with them engaged in comprehending the cleft sentences.

Este trabalho discute as estratégias de relativização na língua Sakurabiat, também conhecida como Mekens. Construções relativas nessa língua utilizam uma forma não-finita do verbo, que não recebe marcação de tempo-aspecto. Essas construções são paralelas às construções de foco do objeto, as quais podem ser interpretadas como nominalizações. Orações relativas podem ter núcleo interno ou externo e têm a mesma distribuição de sintagmas nominais na língua. This paper discusses the relativizing strategies employed in Sakurabiat, also known as Mekens. Relative clauses in this language use a non-finite verb form, which does not show tense-aspect morphology. these constructions are parallel to object focus constructions, which could also be interpreted as nominalizations. relative clauses can have internal or external head, and show the same distribution of nominal phrases in the language.

Com base nas descrições funcionalistas da focalização, este artigo toma as estruturas de clivagem e pseudoclivagem do português brasileiro (PB) como a manifestação de sistemas gramaticais, e objetiva descrever os sistemas textuais que realizam os signifi cados de focalização. O estudo baseou-se numa amostra de textos extraídos do corpus CALIBRA, um corpus monolíngue do português brasileiro compilado com base numa tipologia da língua no contexto de cultura. Os textos foram analisados segundo a manifestação estrutural, as relações funcionais entre as opções sistêmicas, e o signifi cado gerado pela organização gramatical. A análise revelou dois sistemas textuais independentes responsáveis pela gramaticalização, PREDICAÇÃO para elementos oracionais e IDENTIFICAÇÃO para a oração inteira. A PREDICAÇÃO organiza significados ideacionais, interpessoais e textuais, dando proeminência à distribuição da informação. A IDENTIFICAÇÃO se constitui como uma operação de nominalização e equação, que ocorrem em ordens gramaticais diferentes. Esses resultados apontam para uma descaracterização da pseudoclivagem como uma construção única de focalização. This paper aims at systemic functional descriptions of the textual systems available in Brazilian Portuguese for grammaticalizing the meanings of focus in the clause. The study draws on a sample of texts retrieved from CALIBRA, a monolingual corpus of Brazilian Portuguese designed according to a context-based typology of texts. The texts were analyzed and annotated according to systemic functional categories. Results showed two independent systems responsible for grammaticalizing focus, PREDICATION for clause elements and IDENTIFICATION for whole clauses. PREDICATION organizes ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings distributing information as prominent or non-prominent. IDENTIFICATION is the result of a complex operation, involving choices at clause and group/word ranks, namely equation and nominalization. These fi ndings point to a multi-system grammaticalization of identifi cation focus.

This paper provides a corpus-based contrastive analysis on the use of Cleft sentences in French and Italian, based on a corpus of translated newspaper articles. The analysis of data extracted from parallel or translation corpora and comparable corpora allows the highlighting of cases of interference due to translation. For example, the number of Implicit Clefts, which are the most frequent forms of Cleft sentences in Italian (Sono stati gli oligarchi a fare da mediatori) is much lower in translated texts because that construction does not exist in French. Therefore, it is necessary to make a combined analysis of translation corpora and comparable corpora to distinguish between the possibilities offered by each language's structural conventions and the stylistic options chosen by the translator.

International audience; Ce livre est consacré à la parole du jeune adolescent sourd profond qui a grandi dans un contexte oraliste, excluant les langues des signes. Il est fondé sur des données orales transcrites, qui constituent la seconde partie de l'ouvrage. Ces données émanent d'une vingtaine de francophones et d'anglophones porteurs de prothèses et d'implants cochléaires, s'exprimant dans leur langue. L'analyse porte sur des principes relevant du langage et dont la trace est visible dans les diverses langues : la détermination, la temporalité, l'aspect, la spatialisation, la conceptualisation... Cette étude met en évidence l'existence de formes syntaxiques spécifiques, récurrentes et spontanées, communes aux locuteurs sourds, indépendamment de leur langue et du mode de réhabilitation de leur surdité. L'auteur rend compte de ces formes par des rapprochements d'ordre cognitif et linguistique avec l'absence d'audition des premiers mois. Les linguistes, les thérapeutes et l'entourage des jeunes sourds profonds trouveront dans cet ouvrage une approche exhaustive d'éléments peu décrits par ailleurs, qui pourront leur permettre d'accompagner les jeunes sourds vers de nouveaux progrès dans la parole. La lecture est rendue aisée grâce à la vulgarisation des concepts linguistiques utilisés.

The analysis of Cleft Sentences has been, so far, mainly made based on the structure of information found in English discourse. However, there are inconsistencies in that approach that become problematic when it is used to explain the semantic or pragmatic structure of Cleft Sentences. In this thesis, we propose that Cleft Sentences should be treated within the framework of Relevance Theory. This theory emphasizes the inferential processes of speakers and hearers in the production of Cleft Sentences. It is within this framework that we can solve some of the above-mentioned problems that occur with the information structure approach.

This paper shows that the opposition between stage-level and individual- level predications is instrumental in understanding the functioning of two different types of focus constructions in Chinese. In my view, the lian...уе/dou construction is not contrastive, while the shi... de construction is. Both constructions are sensitive to the semantics of the VPs with which they co-occur. When negative lian ...ye/dou verb copying constructions are used, they do not accept stative predications. When shi. ..de cleaves on a time adverbial, the VP which follows it must be a stage-level predicate., Cette recherche montre que l'opposition entre prédication transitoire et prédication caractéristique opère en construction avec deux types d'opérateurs de focus en chinois. Il s'agit d'une part, des constructions lian. ..ye/dou 'même', dont nous montrons que ce ne sont pas des topiques contrastifs et, d'autre part, des clivées marquées par shi 'être', qui sont contrastives. Ces deux constructions sont sensibles à la sémantique des groupes verbaux avec lesquelles elles entrent en cooccurrence. Les constructions lian. ..ye/dou à copie verbale négative n'admettent pas une prédication stative/caractéristique. Lorsque shi. ..de focalise un adverbe temporel, le groupe verbal doit renvoyer à une prédication transitoire., Paris Marie-Claude. Focus operators and types of predication in Mandarin. In: Cahiers de linguistique - Asie orientale, vol. 27 2, 1998. pp. 139-159.

The aim of the thesis "Structures with thematization and rhematization in Spanish journalistic texts" is to show how Spanish and Czech language achieve the thematization and rhematization of utterences. The theoretical part deals with some different theories of the word-order which are supported by Czech, Spanish and even world-recognized linguists. In the thesis there are mentioned theoretic approaches of Daneš, Mathesius, Sgalla and Firbase who in their work deal with the present-day sentence structure and thematical sequences and the thoery of Hernado Cuadrado and Fernández Soriano which talks about the dislocation to the left. The second, the practical, part is focused on the frequency of occurrence of the cleft sentences using which both languages achieve the thematization and rhematization and also on the comparison of the chosen issues on the basis of the Czech and Spanish journalistic articles.

This paper is intended to demonstrate that the recurrent use of the marked syntactic structure called a cleft sentence in the novel Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) has certain communicative implications because it is a structure appropriate to express feelings and to highlight information in climactic situations within this novel.The analysis of cleft sentences in context will point out that they allow the writer to be conscious that he is assuring or denying something in a firm way and that they are also important structures for the textual organization of discourse.The linguistic framework of this paper is Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), a linguistic school that establishes a clear link between lexico-grammatical choices in the text and the relevant contextual factors surrounding it. Systemic linguistics explores how linguistic choices are related to the meanings that are being expressed.

International audience; Les diverses problématiques liées à la prédication sont bien représentées dans les articles de ce volume, lequel se subdivise en trois parties. La première partie est centrée sur la problématique de la définition, des caractéristiques de la prédication et de ses limites. La deuxième partie de ce volume regroupe des études sur différents types de prédication - prédication verbale, conversions, prédication nominale, prédication de propriété ou d'événement, caractéristiques des nexus - et divers phénomènes de modification et de modalisation de la prédication - par la prosodie, la gestuelle, l'emphase, l'agencement ou l'enchâssement syntaxique. La troisième partie traite de la problématique du dédoublement.