On the cleft construction : is it simplex or complex?

概要

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The cleft construction, as its name indicates, involves two parts, a focused part and a presupposition, each of which involves a separate predicate. In the framework of GB and previous to it, each predicate necessarily constitutes a sentence; hence, a Cleft is to be of complex clause structure. Recently, however, the clause structure has been reconsidered and the C system may involve several sub-heads, each of which may represent a certain discoursal function (cf. Rizzi (1997)). With such a C system, it is possible to analyze a Cleft to have a simple clause, involving a copulative predicate inside CP and the main predicate in IP, as proposed in Honda (2009) for English and Hiraiwa and Ishihara (2002) for Japanese. Referring to these works, I will present an analysis that is uniformly applicable to Clefts of both languages, paying respect to differences of these languages, as well.