The Syntax of It-clefts and the Left Periphery of the Clause

This paper compares two cartographic analyses of English it-clefts: Belletti’s embedded analysis is a cartographic reinterpretation of existing analyses. It assimilates the syntax of clefts to that of relative clauses. The matrix analysis, first proposed by Meinunger 1996 and fully explored in Frascarelli and Ramaglia (in press) assimilates the syntax of it-clefts with that of focus movement and question formation. The matrix analysis, though attractive, faces a number of problems of implementation that are not faced by the embedded approach.