And that is what she did: demonstrative clefts in English writing

And that is what she did: clivadas demonstrativas na escrita em inglês

ABSTRACT

English is a language particularly rich in cleft constructions, structures used to bring particular elements in focus. The present paper offers a corpus-based account of one of the most frequent types of clefts and one which has only received occasional attention in the literature, demonstrative clefts, as in This is how it begins. By analysing data from a corpus of written American English from the genre of news magazines, this contribution intends to widen the scope of Andreea Calude’s work on the construction in spoken New Zealand English, the only author who has devoted considerable attention to demonstrative clefts as a separate construction. In terms of the discourse features of this construction, a notable difference found between that’s (or that is) clefts and this is clefts is that, whereas the former function almost exclusively as an anaphoric strategy, the latter combine both an anaphoric and a cataphoric use, and thus more than a quarter of this is clefts in the dataset point forward in the discourse. Another finding at the discourse level is that demonstrative clefts commonly occur at turning points in the body of the text, especially at the beginning and end of the paragraph, and at the end, and less frequently, beginning of the text. These textual positions are found to be related to the three main uses of the construction in discourse: demonstrative clefts having a “double” function, whereby they look both backwards (linking) and forward (developing further), a summative function, and a topic introducing function.

Keywords:
Demonstrative clefts; Reversed wh-clefts; News discourse; Englis

RESUMO

O inglês é uma língua particularmente rica em construções clivadas, estruturas usadas para focalizar determinados elementos. Este trabalho é um estudo baseado em corpus de um dos tipos mais frequentes e dos que tem recebido atenção apenas ocasional na literatura - as clivadas demonstrativas, como em This is how it begins. Com a análise de um corpus de Inglês Americano escrito, centrado no gênero notícia de revista, esta contribuição procura ampliar o escopo do trabalho de Andreea Calude sobre esta construção, realizado pela autora sobre Inglês falado da Nova Zelândia. Trata-se da única autora que dedicou atenção considerável às clivadas demonstrativas como uma construção diferenciada. No que se refere às características discursivas desta construção, foi observado nos resultados uma diferença entre as clivadas iniciadas por that’s (ou that is) e aquelas introduzidas por this is: enquanto as primeiras funcionam exclusivamente como uma estratégia anafórica, as do último tipo combinam tanto um uso anafórico quanto catafórico. Com isso, mais de um quarto das clivadas do tipo this is nos dados são prospectivos no discurso. Outro resultado do nível do discurso é que tais clivadas apareceram comumente em pontos de mudança no texto, especialmente no início e no fim do parágrafo e também no final - e, menos frequentemente - no início do texto. Tais posições textuais apareceram relacionadas aos três usos principais da construção no discurso: uma função dupla, por meio da qual se faz referência a elementos precedentes (referenciação tradicional) e de desenvolvimento futuro(prospectiva); uma função sumativa e outra, de introdução de tópico.

Palavras-Chave:
Clivadas demonstrativas; Pseudoclivadas invertidas; Discurso de notícias; Inglês

Introduction

English is a language particularly rich in cleft constructions, structures used to bring particular elements in focus, as in It was the scenery that Sarah liked in Norway or What Sarah liked in Norway was the scenery.¹ Cleft constructions have been classified into various categories and distinctions such as clefts vs pseudo-clefts, it-clefts vs wh-clefts, basic vs reversed clefts, wh-clefts by contrast to th-clefts and all-clefts, and others, can be found in the literature (cf. e.g. BIBER et al., 1999; CALUDE, 2007; COLLINS, 1991a, 1991b; DOWNING, 2015; HUDDLESTON, 1984; MARTÍNEZ CARO, 1999; QUIRK et al., 1985; WARD, BIRNER, HUDDLESTON, 2002). In general, cleft constructions are interesting instances of how different linguistic levels of analysis - the phonological, syntactic, semantic-pragmatic and discourse-pragmatic perspectives - interact in the explanation of a single phenomenon in linguistics (DELIN, 1990, p. 1, 30). And although these constructions can be seen as one type of ‘marked sentential construction’ in English (along with others such as thematic frontings, left and right dislocations, existential sentences, etc.), they should not be seen as mere stylistic variants of the simple forms (cf. e.g. MARTÍNEZ CARO, 1999).

Both it-clefts and wh-clefts organise the information in the clause into two sets of elements, allowing the writer or speaker to highlight one of the two by singling this out. Thus, cleft sentences “can make explicit the division between the given and new parts of the communication” (QUIRK et al., 1985, p. 1387). While very common in spoken English, cleft sentences are particularly convenient in writing as they unequivocally indicate the element in focus, where the presence of stress and intonation cannot disambiguate as to which element the writer wishes to present as focus. As Quirk et al. (1985, p. 1384) state, the cleft construction “provides unerring guidance to the reader in silently assigning appropriate prosody”.

This paper focuses on one particularly frequent type of cleft in English, called here the ‘demonstrative cleft’, as in Calude (2007). Demonstrative clefts are so called because they are introduced by a singular demonstrative pronoun (this or that), which is followed by the copula be and a wh-clause.² Examples include the following:

(1) a. That is where the vast majority of delays occur.³

b. ## This is how it begins.

Because of their frequency (cf. e.g. CALUDE, 2007, p. 2; HANNAY; MACKENZIE, 2017, p. 142), their individual properties and their easily recognisable type, demonstrative clefts merit a discussion of its own, rather than being analysed under the umbrella of reversed wh-clefts, as has been normally the case and argued by Calude (2007). As with other types of cleft constructions, demonstrative clefts carry implications of a semantic, pragmatic and discourse nature and occur at very specific contexts in order to achieve particular communicative goals. The present contribution is partly devoted to explore these.

The only author who has paid considerable attention to demonstrative clefts as a separate type of construction from other types of clefts is Calude - see for example Calude (2007, 2008, 2009). In her work, Calude notes (cf. CALUDE, 2007, p. 78) that, because of their high frequency and their significant differences from reversed wh-clefts, an analysis focusing on the demonstrative cleft exclusively, and separate from that of other superficially similar reversed wh-clefts, is required to account for the features and full complexibility of the construction.

However, in contrast to Calude’s analyses, which limit themselves largely to the spoken mode in the variety of New Zealand English, my main focus in this article is demonstrative clefts in written American English. In particular, the present paper offers an analysis based on examples taken from a corpus of news discourse, and specifically the genre of news magazines. A corpus of face-to-face conversations in American English will be also used to establish some comparisons between writing and speech.

The rest of the paper is organised as follows. The next section helps to define the construction by giving an account of the most important ideas on demonstrative clefts in the literature. Following that, Calude’s specific analysis of demonstrative clefts in spoken English is briefly presented with special reference to the goals of this contribution. In view of the previous research on the construction, the following section presents the goals of this contribution, together with a description of the data used and the methodology. The results of the corpus analysis are presented afterwards, organised around the three main research goals of the study. That is followed by a summary of the main ideas of the paper and some conclusions.

Defining the class of the demonstrative cleft construction

In English grammars, cleft sentences are generally classified into cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions (cf. COLLINS, 1991b; QUIRK et al. 1985) or it-clefts and wh-clefts (cf. e.g. DOWNING, 2015). One subtype of the latter type is the reversed wh-cleft, as in The beautiful scenery was what Sarah liked in Norway (cf. COLLINS, 1991a, 1991b; HERRIMAN, 2004).

In the literature on information structure and cleft constructions in particular, demonstrative clefts (as in That was what Sarah liked in Norway) are discussed under the umbrella of reversed wh-clefts, being structurally related to them. Among clefts, the demonstrative cleft construction constitutes a particularly frequent type among reversed wh- clefts and among cleft constructions in general (cf. e.g. CALUDE, 2007, p. 2; COLLINS, 1991b, p. 505). As a result, the individual properties of demonstrative clefts have not been properly accounted for as separate and distinct from those of the general group of reversed wh-clefts.

The element following the copula in a basic wh-cleft (for instance the beautiful scenery in What Sarah liked in Norway was the beautiful scenery) is often referred to in the literature as the ‘focus’ or the ‘highlighted element’ (cf. COLLINS, 1991a; see also COLLINS 1991b; HUDDLESTON, 1984) and the clause introduced by the wh-word (e.g. what Sarah liked in Norway) as the ‘presupposition’, the ‘relative clause’ (COLLINS, 1991a) or the ‘wh-cleft complement’ (CARTER; MCCARTHY, 2006). In turn, Calude (2007), specifically on demonstrative clefts, calls the former the ‘cleft constituent’ and the latter the ‘cleft clause’. In the present paper, I simply use the ‘demonstrative (element)’ to refer to that and this, preceding the copula, and the label ‘wh-clause complement’ for the cleft wh-clause following the copula. Given the anaphoric meaning (i.e. arguably, the given information status) of the demonstrative, it seems inappropriate to refer to this element as the ‘highlighted element’. In addition, as Quirk et al. (1985, p. 1384) point out, the cleft sentence in English does not of itself indicate what the appropriate prosody is; instead, it “indicates divided focus (...), and which of the two focused items is dominant (i.e. new) will depend on the context”.

As other types of wh-cleft sentences, both basic and reversed, demonstrative clefts are identifying constructions. However, in contrast to other identifying, and indeed reversed wh-clefts, demonstrative clefts are not often, or not normally, reversible, that is, cannot be turned easily into basic (non-reversed) wh-clefts (cf. BIBER et al., 1999, p. 961; HANNAY, MACKENZIE, 2017, p. 142). However, some examples seem to allow reversibility better than others, as we see in (2).

(2) a. What Sarah liked in Norway was (precisely) that.

b. What is going on in their world is this.

(vs. This is what is going on in their world. Davies’ Time corpus)

c. ?Why God gave us eyesight is this.

(vs Friends, this is why God gave us eyesight. Time corpus)

d. *And when the cheating starts is that.

(compare: ..., and that’s when the cheating starts. Time corpus)

By looking at the examples in (2), two aspects emerge. One is that the possibility of inverting the order of both examples around the copula in demonstrative clefts to create a grammatical or pragmatically adequate sentence seems to be affected by different factors: the choice of demonstrative (this vs that), the wh-word in the cleft wh-clause, the presence of other elements preceding the construction (e.g. and in 2d) or the demonstrative (e.g. precisely in 2a), and the presence of prosodic prominence in the final demonstrative (cf. What you should do is THÍS).⁴ The second is that the fact that some sentences allow reversibility better than others reflects the more or less stereotyped nature of the demonstrative cleft construction (cf. DOWNING, 2015, p. 231). And this, in turn, may be associated with the frequency of the different demonstrative clefts (thus, that’s clefts occurring more frequently than this is clefts).

It is generally agreed that in wh-clefts the wh-word most commonly found in the wh-clause complement is what (cf. e.g. BIBER et al. 1999, p. 959; DOWNING, 2015, p. 231). This tendency will be compared and contrasted with the results for demonstrative clefts in writing and speech in my dataset. In this same respect, the common assumption is held that wh-clefts with a cleft clause introduced by who are normally avoided and the alternative with the one, or a similar longer expression with a general noun, is preferred, as in The one who told me the news was Lizzy herself (*Who told me the news was Lizzy herself),⁵ as mentioned in the literature (DOWNING, 2015, p. 231; HANNAY; MACKENZIE, 2017, p. 139).

The demonstrative pronoun in demonstrative clefts, especially that, represents what Halliday and Hasan call ‘extended reference’ (1976). Thus, normally the demonstrative element does not refer to a specific, concrete, entity, but to a whole proposition, idea or story that has been mentioned, usually, in the preceding context, and whose reference may extend to more than one clause or sentence. However, there are exceptions to this observation, even with clefts having that as demonstrative, as our dataset indicates. One case in point are some cases of the demonstrative cleft referring to a dislocated element in the domain of the same sentence, where the reference is definitely not extended, as in (3a-b).

(3) a. My first reaction was,’Oh, that’s what I want to do,’ “Ridley says sarcastically. “Remaking somebody else’s movie - that’s what I want to be remembered for.” #

b. All that saffron in the soup - that’s where he’s showing weakness, I decided.

From a semantic-pragmatic perspective, as Huddleston (1984, p. 466) and others have noted, cleft constructions introduce a component of uniqueness or exclusiveness which is absent, or not necessarily present, in the non-cleft form. This applies to demonstrative clefts as well, which also carry an implicit rejection of “any other possibilities” (HANNAY; MACKENZIE, 2017, p. 143; DOWNING, 2015, p. 231). Thus compare:

(4) a. And that’s where you want to be. (Time)

b. And you want to be there.

(5) a. This is what hardworking Americans do. (Time)

b. Hardworking Americans do this.

(4a), but not necessarily (4b), implies that that is the only place where you want to be “and no other way”; likewise, (5a) implies that this is the only thing hardworking Americans do “and no other thing”, but this implication is not necessarily present in (5b).

From a discourse-pragmatic and communicative point of view, demonstrative clefts open with a reference to the preceding context, and thus these structures connect with information distribution and cohesion. Demonstrative clefts serve to provide a link with the preceding text, as stated by Hannay and Mackenzie (2017, p. 143); however, these scholars clarify, in order for the construction to be textually appropriate, its use is restricted to situations “where a specific link is the issue”, that is, that the link suggested by the construction is the only relevant one (p. 144), thus relating the construction to the meaning of implicit rejection seen above.

Because of the clear link it provides with the preceding context, the demonstrative cleft construction is a good reflection of the so-called accessibility principle (cf. e.g. HANNAY; MACKENZIE, 2017, p, 107f), whereby the accessible, or given, information is naturally found in the sentence initial position. Likewise, the construction adequately adheres to the general tendency of English for presenting the subject in the very first position of the sentence.

In their discussion of wh clefts sentences, Carter and McCarthy (2006, p. 539) argue that this-clefts generally point forward and that-clefts generally point back in the text; that is, whereas this-clefts have cataphoric reference, that-clauses are anaphoric. One of the objectives of the present contribution will be to find support for this claim in the dataset of clefts analysed.

Finally, in the account of wh-clefts in the literature, it has been suggested that this construction is particularly useful at turning points in the body of the text (HANNAY; MACKENZIE, 2017, p. 141). Since one of its functions is announcing the topic of the text to come, it may be found at the beginning of a paragraph, for instance, when the attention moves to a new subject after some other topic has been dealt with for a few paragraphs. Although the discourse features of the demonstrative cleft are different from those of the wh-cleft, this contribution also attempts to explore whether the demonstrative cleft is a textually suitable candidate for the turning points in the text, and to what extent it occurs at the boundary positions of a paragraph or entire text.

Calude’s analysis

This subsection presents a brief account of Calude’s (2007) specific analysis of demonstrative clefts with special reference to the objectives of the present contribution. Some of her claims on demonstrative clefts in the variety of spontaneous, unplanned, conversational New Zealand English will be reviewed against the data analysis from planned, written American English from the news genre presented here.

One of her starting and basic claims is the necessity for an analysis of demonstrative clefts that is separate from the reversed wh-cleft and other types of clefts (p. 78f), in accordance with the observations made earlier on in this contribution.

In the comparison between the reversed wh-cleft and the demonstrative cleft, one of the significant differences suggested by Calude (2007, p. 80) is that, whereas the former has a summative function, the latter is very low in informative content. The kind of focus that the demonstrative cleft carries is in line with what Lambrecht (2001) proposes, and explained by Calude as follows: “the new information (if any) consists in the equation between the reference point of the demonstrative pronoun and the contents of the cleft clause” (p. 80). Thus, as regards the thematic and information structure of demonstrative clefts, Calude (2007) concludes that the construction contains almost exclusively given information, and “in cases where [it] bears focal stress, this falls on the cleft constituent” (p. 75), that is, the demonstrative element.

One of the most relevant claims that Calude (2007) makes in relation to the present contribution concerns the function of demonstrative clefts in the management and organisation of discourse. Demonstrative clefts act, in the majority of cases, as signposts managing the discourse flow: “they pull the seams of the topic together and draw a line in the discourse, helping to wind down the existing topic of conversation” (p. 75). Thus, on the one hand, the construction in spontaneous spoken English is seen as a device used in the closing stages of the existing topic, and contributing to this closure. And on the other, it is used to prepare the floor for a shift in topic and to guide the audience to what is coming up (p. 80). We will return to these ideas in the discussion of the data section below to test its validity for the dataset in this study. But first, the following section presents the specific goals of this research, together with a description of the data and the methodogy.

Research goals and methodology

In view of previous research on clefts in English and the observations made in the previous section, my goals in the present study are the following:

(a) study the frequency and distribution of the different types of demonstrative clefts in English writing, comparing the results with those for speech;

(b) explore the factors determining the choice between that-clefts and this-clefts, trying to relate this choice to the anaphoric or cataphoric function of the construction;

(c) and examine their position in the text, especially at turning points, trying to discover systematic patterns within the rhetorical organisation of the text, and observing whether these positions offer interesting insights for the development of topic in the text.

In order to achieve these goals, a dataset of demonstrative clefts was collected and accordingly analysed. The data mainly consists of examples from written American English extracted from the Davies’ Time Magazine Corpus (DAVIES, 2007), using the interface also developed by Davies. The texts from this news magazine belong to the general register of news(paper) discourse (cf. VAN DIJK, 1988; SEMINO, 2009), sharing its linguistic features in providing, by and large, carefully-edited texts. Apart from feature articles (SEMINO, 2009, p. 442), typically present in news magazines, this genre also contains other text types, such as letters to the editors, short reviews or summary articles, from where the constructions are also extracted.

In the Time Magazine corpus only texts from the decade of the 2000s were chosen and in these the first 1000 occurrences of that/this is/was and that’s cleft sequences were selected and examined for the identification of demonstrative clefts.

In these, in order to delimit the scope of my study, cleft sequences introduced by demonstrative that or this which contained an expanded noun phrase rather than a wh-clause (e.g. Oh that’s the thing that you put behind it. BNC, conv)⁶ were discarded from the dataset, in spite of their high frequency of occurrence in cleft constructions in general (cf. HANNAY; MACKENZIE, 2017, p. 139). Similarly, also disregarded were clefts with negative polarity, as in (6).

(6) # According to an employee of the company that took the reservation, Airporter, based in Princeton, N.J., that is not what Das said.

Finally, examples where the verb be is not a simple form but specified by a modal verb, for instance, as in That may be what she meant were also discarded. As for the perfect have, no examples of have preceding be were found in texts from the 2000s in the Time magazine corpus with either that is or this is sequences (thus, as That/this has been wh- ...), suggesting that this is not an option for demonstrative clefts.

For the analysis of the written texts, a total of 4404 occurrences of these sequences were examined, 1000 of each of the four possible patterns (that’s, that is, this is, that was) and a lower number for the fragment this was, which yielded only 404 occurrences in the decade of the 2000s. This semi-automatic search and analysis resulted in a total of 462 instances of demonstrative clefts found (representing 10.5% of the scrutinised concordances) (see the following section). These instances of demonstrative clefts were then examined in detail in their wider context, using the Context tool provided in the interface. The data was manually tagged for the exploration of the different subtypes of demonstrative clefts and the discourse features selected.

For the purpose of establishing occasional contrasts with speech, this dataset from English writing was complemented with a selection of examples of the relevant construction in speech, from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBC; DU BOIS et al., 2000-2005). A choice of fourteen full texts (approx. 76,500 words) from the SBC were examined for demonstrative clefts, which resulted in 91 occurrences of the construction.

The qualitative analysis will thus be mainly based on the examples of writing from the news magazines texts according to the main objective of this study, to give an account of demonstrative clefts in English writing.

An analysis of demonstrative clefts in English writing

Frequency and distribution of demonstrative cleft types

The first research goal of this study seeked to explore the frequency and distribution of the various types of demonstrative clefts. The results drawn from the corpus analysis indicate that the most used demonstrative cleft in English is, by far, the construction introduced by that and followed by the present form of the copula. In writing (Time corpus), this mainly corresponds to clefts introduced by that’s (more than half of all occurrence of demonstrative clefts in writing), and those introduced by the sequence that is, as can be seen in Table 1. These two combinations together account for almost 76% of the whole dataset. Notice that the written mode of the corpus analysed does not exclude the contracted form that’s, which would be avoided in other text types in writing, but quite the opposite. Indeed the so called ‘soft news’ reports (SEMINO, 2009), which are common in weekly news magazines, certain newspapers and other news publications, contain features such as reported direct speech and the presence of interviews, which justifies the use of linguistic features of a more informal and colloquial nature and that this genre shares features with some types of spoken texts.

Constructions introduced by this is have a similar percentage to non-contracted, that is, clefts. Finally, constructions with a verb in the past tense represent just over 5% of all occurrences in the writing mode.

Table 1.
Number and types of demonstrative clefts in writing (Time)

D-cleft introduced by	Number and frequency
that’s	271 (58.66)
that is	80 (17.32)
this is	85 (18.40)
that was	23 (4.98)
this was	3 (0.65)
Total	462 (100%)

• Source: self-elaboration

The examples in (7) offer an illustration of each type of demonstrative cleft.

(7) a. That’s / That is cleft

“He made tens of millions of dollars racing and tens of millions more running Dale Earnhardt Inc., but even at 49, a man of considerable responsibilities and with nothing left to prove, he would never take his foot off the gas. That is why they loved him. #

Ironhead, the Intimidator, Earnhardt: he had massive, irresistible appeal. He brought fans into the sport who wouldn’t know NASCAR from NASA.

b. This is cleft

## MONEY DOES GROW ON TREES # “This is what the valley has been waiting for! This is what the valley has been waiting for!” # The old lady at the table in the center of the room is shouting like a high school cheerleader. It’s April 1998, and George W. Bush is standing in front of a huge plate-glass window that frames much of Silicon Valley.

c. That was cleft

By last April, as the scandal over pedophile priests escalated, Law, the most powerful of the American prelates and a favorite of the Vatican’s, had come to symbolize the reckless indifference of Roman Catholic Church officials. That was when he first traveled unannounced to Rome to offer his resignation to Pope John Paul II, who quietly refused to accept it.⁷

d. This was cleft

# The rapid change surprised Russians and astonished the rest of the world. U.S. officials had heard hints of an early transfer of power, but the idea seemed improbable. Yeltsin, they felt, was determined to stay. This was partly why the top officials - even as they bade Yeltsin goodbye - were struggling for a consensus on Putin, who has risen from deputy mayor of St. Petersburg to President in less than four years. Some administration officials thumbnail him as a “ smooth cop “ - a man tough enough to clean up Russia but charming enough to keep ties to the West. Other analysts, however, particularly at the Pentagon, are worried about Putin’s disregard for democratic practices and his reliance on a war in Chechnya to boost his popularity ratings.

In speech (SBC), as can be expected, the predominance of that’s clefts is even more important than in writing, this type of cleft alone representing almost 87% of the examples, as can be observed in Table 2. Table 2 also shows that in speech, no instances of the this was cleft were found.

Table 2.
Number and types of demonstrative clefts in speech (SBC)

D-cleft introduced by	Number and frequency
that’s	79 (86.81)
this is	8 (8.79)
that was	4 (4.40)
this was	-
Total	91 (100%)

• Source: self-elaboration

The examples in (8) illustrate the types in speech.⁸

(8) a. That’s cleft

I said if you invite them up there for a party,

.. (H) they’re gonna assume,

that they are staying with you,

right?

... She goes <VOX no they’re not.

nya= VOX>.

And I said,

well that’s what they’re gonna think.

.. And I said,

if you invite them,

you’ll also have to invite ~Liza and ~Antonio.

You want them staying at the house too? (SBC006)

b. This is cleft

(H) They’re taking the risk,

.. of having their horse ... get lame,

but,

(H) .. It really never happens,

cause we have our s- instructor right there,

telling us,

this is what you do. (SBC001)

c. that was cleft

ALINA: she goes,

when can I see you.

.. Or- -

So [Mo=m] said,

LENORE: [(Hx)=]

ALINA: well my next free day’s like October fourth.

So that was when,

LENORE: @[@@@@@@]

ALINA: [they set up two months in advance to have] lunch. (SBC006)

An important issue in the frequency distribution of clefts is the type of wh-word found in the wh-clause complement. Table 3 shows the results for this variable in the four main types of the construction in writing, that is, demonstratives with a what-, why-, where- and how-clause complement. Demonstrative clefts in writing mainly have a cleft clause introduced with what, in around half of the occurrences, confirming the tendency in this respect for other wh-clefts, as mentioned above (and cf. BIBER et al. 1999, p. 959). Demonstrative clefts with a why word in the wh-clause follow, with almost 20% of all tokens analysed in writing. Interestingly, when is used in half of the examples of clefts in the past with that, as in example (7c) above. This cleft type seems to be particularly well-suited for the narrations in the past, where the temporal sequencing often marks the development of the story.

Another finding worth mentioning is that who introducing the cleft clause does occur but in exceptionally low numbers. One of the two examples found is the following:

(9) # “There are some people who say he seems syrupy. But that’s who he is,” says New York Yankees adviser Reggie Jackson, who has known Rodriguez since the young player was a 17- year-old Miami phenom who was already an expert networker.

This agrees with the assumption mentioned above about the avoidance of who-clefts in favour of an alternative with an expanded noun phrase of the type of the one or the person. Notice that in example (9) the interrogative, focal character of who favours its occurrence over its expanded noun phrase counterpart, the one for instance: see *But that’s the one he is.

Table 3.
Type of wh-word in the cleft clause of demonstrative clefts in writing (Time)

Wh-word	that’s/that is cleft	this is cleft	that was cleft	this was cleft	Total (%)
what	183	44	3	-	230 (49.78)
why	74	15	-	1	90 (19.48)
where	34	15	3	1	53 (11.47)
how	35	11	5	-	51 (11.04)
when	23	-	12	1	36 (7.79)
who	2	-	-	-	2 (0.43)
Total	351	85	23	3	462 (100%)

• Source: self-elaboration

Table 4 provides a parallel picture of the choice of the wh-word for demonstrative clefts in speech. The numbers are similar to those for writing for the that’s/that is cleft, but they show much less variation in choice for the this is cleft and the that was cleft. This is due partly to the predominance of the that’s/that is cleft, as we saw above, and the resulting low numbers in the other two types of cleft.

Table 4.
Type of wh-word in the cleft clause of demonstrative clefts in speech (SBC)

Wh-word	that’s/that is cleft	this is cleft	that was cleft	Total (%)
what	43	8	2	53 (58.24)
why	19	-	-	19 (20.88)
how	9	-	-	9 (9.89)
when	3	-	2	5 (5.49)
where	4	-	-	4 (4.40)
who	1	-	-	1 (1.10)
Total	79	8	4	91 (100%)

• Source: self-elaboration

A reduced number of truncated demonstrative clefts are present in the dataset, both in writing and in speech. In these, the construction only consists of the demonstrative, the copula and the wh-word, omitting the rest of the complement clause. In the dataset, these are all that’s clefts - five examples in total - combining with why, except for one example with who. Interestingly, notice that the truncated with what is impossible in English, since this element may not complete the construction: cf. *that’s what. For an example of a truncated cleft from the dataset, see (10).

(10) British medical authorities warn that measles could become epidemic if rates of three-in-one MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) shots continue to fall. # In reality, the antivaccine activists demonstrate both medical illiteracy and an appalling ignorance of history. What happened to the quarantine notices that were once routinely posted on houses afflicted by measles, mumps or whooping cough? Or the long rows of iron lungs filled with polio victims unable to breathe on their own? Why do the words diphtheria and scarlet fever draw only blank stares from today’s kids? Because of vaccinations, that ‘s why. #

The function of truncated demonstrative cleft constructions becomes more clear by comparing them to translation equivalents in other languages. Both in Spanish and Dutch, for instance, the sequence that’s why can be easily correlated with a single discourse connective: por eso, in Spanish, and daarom in Dutch (close to the meaning of stressed therefore in English). This would contribute to the claim that these truncated clefts are stereotyped, grammaticalised, chunks with a clear pragmatic-discourse function. The truncated that’s why cleft, in addition, finishes the paragraph in (10), suggesting its function as presenter of a final argument in a series of several of these.

Anaphoric and cataphoric uses of demonstrative clefts

The second research question of this study was related to the factors determining the choice between the demonstrative element this or that. As we saw above, Carter and McCarthy (2006, p. 539) argue on the cataphoric-anaphoric function of this-clefts by contrast to that-clefts. The results of the data analysis in this study confirm that that’s / that is clefts overwhelmingly point backwards, that is, the demonstrative has a predominant anaphoric reference where the demonstrative element refers to the preceding context (in more than 97% of these examples), with only very few cases of the construction having a cataphoric function (2.5%). For an illustrative extract containing a that demonstrative cleft (that is-cleft here) with anaphoric reference, see (11).

(11) Not long ago, George W. Bush decided to become, like Lyndon Johnson before him, a ranch owner. But few outside Texas have understood what a revealing decision that is. # The two men couldn’t be more different. An embroidered cushion on a couch in Johnson’s ranch house said, IT’S MY DAMN RANCH AND I CAN DO AS I PLEASE. And when Johnson was there, that is exactly what he did. He insisted that Hubert Humphrey visit the ranch, then dressed the Vice President in cowboy clothes that were way too large and made him ride a headstrong horse that left Humphrey hanging on for his life. Johnson took reporters for wild rides at high speeds in his Lincoln convertible, driving with one hand on the wheel and the other around a beer. He described the sex life of his bulls in intricate, ribald detail. He also, by his own account, spent time in the oak grove where his ancestors were buried. He would gaze down at the Pedernales River and ponder those things a rancher and a President must ponder. # Now Bush has bought a ranch. Who knows what the embroidered cushion on his couch will say. #

In (11), that in the cleft refers back to the message “I can do as I please”, mentioned in the previous sentence, referring to Johnson’s attitude in his ranch in Texas.

It must be observed, however, that the predominant anaphoric meaning of the demonstrative that in clefts does not exclude the possibility of the construction performing a function in the following discourse at the same time. Thus, for instance, the cleft that is exactly what he did in (11) serves the writer to elaborate on the message “I can do as I please” and give specific instances of that attitude by Johnson. This “double function” of the demonstrative cleft is common in both that and this clefts, except for those occurring in text final position.

An illustration of a demonstrative that cleft with a cataphoric reference is included in (12), from a text on nanotechnology.

(12) # THE TWO SIDES OF MANUFACTURING The conventional approach is top-down: starting with large clumps of steel, wood, plastic, masonry and shaping them into the forms you want. Nanotechnology is, by contrast, bottom-up: stacking individual atoms into useful shapes. We know that the bottom-up approach is possible because that’s what biology does, assembling proteins from individual atoms and molecules, putting them together to form cells and layering cells upon cells to form large, complex objects such as sperm whales and giant Sequoia trees. #

Whereas this cleft refers to the context following the cleft (“what biology does”), this example also shows the double function of clefts mentioned before as it can be argued that that has, strictly speaking, an anaphoric reference (the bottom-up approach).

With respect to this is clefts, a detailed look at the 85 instances of this is clefts in the Time Corpus in their wider context reveals that in more than a quarter of examples (over 27%) the referent of this points forward, while in the rest of this is clefts (over 66.5%), the majority of tokens, the reference is anaphoric. This means that the analysis of the data does not confirm the tendency for this type of demonstrative cleft to point forward, that is, be predominantly cataphoric. In spite of this obvious observation, when we compare that is / that’s clefts with this is clefts with respect to the anaphoric/cataphoric distinction, by comparison, we are much more likely to find this is clefts used with a cataphoric reference than findind that is / that’s clefts with that same type of reference.

A good illustration of a this is cleft construction with a cataphoric reference is (13), from the section People of the Time news magazine and describing the first days of Tracy Chapman as a singer, and where the demonstrative cleft is used as the very first sentence of the news item, in what is the only occurrence of this is cleft at the very beginning of text in my dataset.

(13) ## This is how it begins. She’s a sophomore at Tufts University in Massachusetts. It’s Thanksgiving. It is cold and it is snowing and she is stranded in the Boston area for the holidays with no money and nothing to do. A friend suggests that she play in the street for change. “Ahhh, I don’t know, “ Tracy Chapman says. But soon she is standing in Harvard Square, in the falling snow, her guitar in her hand, her guitar case at her feet. She sings old blues songs and songs she learned in her enthnomusicology classes and some original compositions. “Poor people gonna rise up/And get their share,” she sings. “Poor people gonna rise up/ And take what’s theirs.” # She makes $30, give or take a nickel. She buys herself and her friend a Thanksgiving-break meal: Chinese food. #

The function of demonstrative clefts in the rhetorical organisation of the text

A final research question addressed the issue of the possible correlation between the position of the demonstrative cleft in the corresponding text and its rhetorical function. Thus, how is the position of the demonstrative cleft in the text related to the rhetorical function of the demonstrative cleft, if at all? More specifically, my aim here is to explore whether demonstrative clefts tend to occur at turning points of the text, that is, initial or final positions of text or paragraph, and what implications these positions have for the rhetorical function of the construction.

The results of the position of the main types of demonstrative clefts with respect to the boundaries in the text are presented in Table 5.

Table 5.
Position of main types of demonstrative clefts in the text (Time)

	that’s cleft	that is cleft	this is cleft	Total
end of paragraph	50 (18.5)	19 (23.8)	22 (25.9)	91 (20.9)
beginning of paragraph	50 (18.5)	24 (30)	29 (34.1)	103 (23.6)
end of text	19 (7)	13 (16.3)	5 (5.9)	37 (8.5)
beginning of text	17 (6.3)	4 (5)	1 (1.2)	22 (5)
Total D-clefts*	271 (100)	80 (100)	85 (100)	436 (100)

• Source: self-elaboration

The main ideas underlying these results can be summarised as follows:

(a) An important number of the main types of demonstrative clefts occur in the boundaries of discourse segments, especially at the beginning or end of paragraphs, with frequencies around 23% of all instances.

(b) Per type of demonstrative cleft, this is clefts, especially, but also that is clefts, offer higher numbers in these boundary positions than that’s clefts.

(c) Taking specific boundary position into consideration, the beginning of the paragraph is where most demonstrative clefts occur, followed by end of paragraph.

(d) With respect to the ‘entire text’ as discourse unit, it is worth noting that that is clefts are used in the final position of text in more than 16% of all cases, standing out with respect to the other two types of clefts.

(e) In general, this is clefts are not commonly found in the boundaries of an entire text, neither at the beginning nor the end.

In relation to their boundary positions in the text and paragraph, the data analysis has revealed a number of functions associated with demonstrative clefts. Firstly, it is when demonstrative clefts occur at the beginning of paragraph that they more clearly perform a linking function, which operates across paragraphs. This is combined with the meaning of “it being the specific or relevant link at issue in the present situation” mentioned above, and serves the writer to put special attention to the element presented in the cleft - the link - that will be further developed in the rest of the paragraph. The effect is for the text to bring a turning point in the argument or narration. Example (14) can illustrate this, where a that’s cleft is used to initiate the relevant paragraph.

(14) # Still, by publishing the results at such an early stage - and, perhaps more important, by ballyhooing them in the popular press - the company may have shot itself in the foot. The blast of publicity may win ACT bragging rights and pull in much needed investment to fuel the company’s research. But if the hoopla triggers a harsh anticloning backlash, it might dash whatever hopes ACT had of actually saving lives. #

And that’s really what this kind of cloning is about. “Our intention is not to clone human beings,” insists ACT medical director Dr. Robert Lanza. Instead, the company’s goal is to make embryonic stem cells, the so-called starter cells that can turn into any sort of body tissue, from brain to bone to blood. In theory, stem cells might be used to treat any disease in which cell death is a factor: diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, paralysis, stroke and more.

In this extract, where the writer is explaining a scientific study involving cloning, the demonstrative cleft in paragraph initial position is used by the writer to move the discussion forward by pointing to the reader the relevance of the real purpose of this study, mentioned in the previous paragraph, and using the rest of the paragraph to develop and further explain that purpose. The meaning is reminding the reader of the aspect already mentioned in the previous context and singling this out from the previous discussion, in a new paragraph where it can be given the appropriate importance in relation to the topic at hand.

Secondly, demonstrative clefts can have a summative function, summarising a series of ideas or part of a narration that has come in the previous context. This has been found in demonstrative clefts occurring at the end of paragraphs or end of the entire text. In this final position, the demonstrative cleft construction, as an “encapsulated topic strategy”, is used to bring the argument or narration in the text, or part of the text, to a particularly effective conclusion. To illustrate this summative function with a special effect, see the extract in (15) on swimming in the Olympics celebrated in Sydney, with one of the few instances of a this is cleft in text final position.

(15) Australia is home to 166 of the 370 species of shark in the world, but only four types are carnivorous. The last time a shark killed a swimmer in the harbor was 1963, and local marine scientists say the water will be too cold for sharks during the Games. This month’s tests, however, while the weather is still warm, are another story. Organizers aren’t taking any chances. Noises tend to scare off sharks, so inflatable boats with outboard motors may cruise the course during the race. McCormack says sharks tend to attack swimmers who are not sticking with the pack. Perhaps this is why Australia dominates both men’s and women’s events in this sport. ## - By Leora Moldofsky/Sydney

Another illustration of the same function can be found in the extract in (16), a letter to the editor of the news magazine which is here reproduced in its complete form. It is an interesting example for having a double use of the demonstrative cleft construction, one after the other and found at the very end of the text. This reiteration reinforces the special stylistic effect that the writer wants to give to the end of his letter.

(16) ## Can We Stop the Next Attack?

# Thank you for your superb cover story “Can We Stop the Next Attack?” NATION, March 11. We can - if law-enforcement officials reinstate some of the proactive measures imposed immediately after Sept. 11, such as permanently closing the air corridors above nuclear power plants. On my first post- Sept. 11 flight from the New York City area, I was checked by security three times. On my most recent plane trip from the city, I breezed right through. How easily we forget. That’s what the terrorists want us to do. And that’s why your cover story was right on target. - PAUL FEINER Greenburgh, N.Y.

Thirdly, demonstrative clefts which appear towards the beginning of the text tend to have a topic introducing function. In my dataset it is that’s clefts that more often occupy this position. Consider the extracts in (17-19) illustrating this function and the discussion that follows.

(17) ## It’s hard to imagine a more hellish crime than a man’s murdering his young wife and their unborn son. But that’s what California law-enforcement authorities believe Scott Peterson did. On Christmas Eve, his wife Laci, a mother-to-be with an infectious smile, disappeared from their home in Modesto. Last Monday, California police announced that the decomposed bodies of a petite woman and full-term male fetus had washed up on a shoreline some 90 miles northwest. Four days later, officials identified the victims as Laci and her child and arrested Scott for their murder.” The waiting this week has been horrific, “said Kim Petersen, a spokeswoman for the dead woman’s family. “ I don’t know if relief is the right word. They have answers. “ No doubt they also have painful questions. What happened? What darkness lurked beneath the happy surface of Laci and Scott’s marriage? # Laci Peterson, a substitute schoolteacher, was 27 years old and eight months pregnant when she disappeared

(18) ## It’s one thing to host a TV special filled with outtakes from your old CBS comedy series and knock’ em dead in the ratings. It’s quite another to try a new career as a playwright. But that’s what Carol Burnett has done. She and daughter Carrie Hamilton (who died of lung cancer in January) collaborated on Hollywood Arms, a play based on Burnett’s memoir, One More Time. Hamilton worked nearly till the end; she was viewing actors’ audition tapes until just weeks before her death. But Mom had to finish alone.

(19) ## What do you do when you’ve scaled the heights of fashion, designing some of the most talked-about collections on runways from Paris to Milan, and you’ve reinvented such iconic brands as Chanel and Fendi? Well, you come and conquer America, of course. And that’s what Karl Lagerfeld, probably the most respected name in fashion, plans to do this week when he hits New York City with his latest venture: a namesake collection for men and women that will be priced far below the four-figure price tags of Chanel. #

These clefts occur after an introductory observation (one or two sentences, usually, cf. [17-19]), in the form of a framing setting, and serve to introduce an entity, usually human, or idea into the scene of the discourse. This is the main topic of the story in the text or part of text and will be further developed in the following context; for instance, Karl Lagerfeld in (19) or what Scott Peterson did in (17), which will be elaborated in the subsequent context. In this textual position the construction provides an effective way to narrow down the attention of the reader to this main topic or new subject, by arousing the reader’s interest in what is going to follow (cf. HANNAY; MACKENZIE, 2017, p. 141, who provide the observation on the basic wh-cleft).

We know that the thematic structure of demonstrative clefts is not always distributed into the pattern ‘given subject + be + new wh-clause’; one type of demonstrative cleft where this is indeed the case, however, is precisely in the context of topic introduction. By contrast, an example where the wh-clause in the demonstrative cleft does not introduce new information is given in (20).

(20) “Most people don’t view their residence as a capital asset, but that’s exactly what it is,” says Andrew Pincus, a tax lawyer at the accounting firm M.R. Weiser in Edison, N.J.

Rather than introducing new information, the construction in (20) has a confirming effect, with a contrary to expectation meaning and a focus on the polarity (cf. MARTÍNEZ CARO 1999 on ‘confirmation focus’). And this includes demonstrative clefts with a purely formulaic effect, such as that’s what it is or That’s what happens, doesn’t it?

Further structural features of demonstrative clefts

The analysis of the dataset has revealed a number of structural features commonly co-occurring with the construction in the dataset, which will be discussed in the present subsection. These features are relevant because they can be naturally related to the meanings and discourse strategies of the construction described above, and because they reinforce these meanings and strategies in view of the research goals presented in this contribution.

Reported speech

In the texts from the news magazine Time demonstrative clefts often appear inside the domain of reported direct speech. These clefts tend to perform a summative function, and their position is accordingly also often at the end of the quote. The that is and that’s clefts in the extracts in (21) and (22) illustrate this use.

(21) # Kok is now working to cut production costs for biomedical systems, flat-panel displays and silicon wafers. For Philips, the challenge is to put organic light-emitting diodes on plastic, so that flat-panel displays can be used for new applications such as reusable paper-thin electronic newspapers. “ No one has yet come up with a way to do this in high volume at low cost, but for Ron this is an invitation to the party, because that is what he does,” says Dave Hadani, the Hong Kong-based manager of Philips’ emerging display-technologies business. #

(22 Bush has had his own problems with the PDB. Last year, an expert he was consulting on Iraq complained that the CIA spent too much time providing updates for the PDB on relatively obscure matters. Bush’s response: “So that’s why those bastards keep telling me about Mozambique.” The new approach is getting some good reviews.

Connective and stance adjuncts

A very frequent feature of demonstrative clefts in English writing is the introduction of the construction by a connective adjunct or discourse marker, representing 41.5% of instances of demonstrative clefts in the main three types. Thus, many of the examples given in the present paper contain connectives and discourse markers preceding the cleft construction. Table 6 shows the frequency and distribution of these elements across these three types of demonstrative clefts, that’s, that is, and this is clefts.

Table 6.
Connectives (and discourse markers) introducing the most important demonstrative clefts in writing (Time)

Connective	that is cleft	that’s cleft	this is cleft	Total (%)
and	15	84	6	105 (58.01)
but	6	40	-	46 (25.41)
so	-	11	1	12 (6.63)
yet	4	1	-	5 (2.76)
or at least	-	5	-	5 (2.76)
now	-	3	-	3 (1.66)
yeah	-	2	-	2 (1.10)
other (oh, well, and so)	-	3	-	3 (1.66)
Total cases with connectives	25	149	7	181 (100%)

• Source: self-elaboration

As can be seen in Table 6, it is that’s clefts, in much greater numbers (in as much as 55% of all instances of that’s clefts) than the other two types of demonstrative clefts considered (that is and this is clefts), that are used in combination with connectives (or connective adjuncts; cf. DOWNING, 2015, p. 65f) and discourse markers, which introduce the construction. Not only is the number of tokens of these sentence modifiers higher in that’s clefts but also higher is the variation in the choice of these elements, whereas that is and this is clefts only combine with three or two types of these elements, respectively. Observing this tendency of that’s clefts to attract connectives and other discourse markers, it seems plausible to suggest that the more stereotyped or grammaticalised type of demonstrative construction, the more the construction is introduced by these connecting and discourse marker elements.

Other types of adjuncts (in the sense of DOWNING, 2015, p. 65f) introducing that’s clefts, in addition to connectives and discourse markers, are stance adjuncts (or ‘disjuncts’ in QUIRK et al.’s terms, 1985, p. 612f), which occur in over 9% of all three main types of demonstrative clefts, again that’s, that is and this is clefts. If connective adjuncts and discourse markers serve to indicate a textual relation between the sentence containing the cleft construction and the previous context, stance adjuncts provide an attitudinal comment on the content of the demonstrative cleft. As before, stance adjuncts occur in greater numbers and in a wider variation of types in that’s clefts (roughly 13%) with respect to this is clefts (in less than 5% of tokens) and, especially, that is clefts (in only one example of this type), and so, a correlation could be also claimed between the more grammaticalised type of demonstrative cleft, that’s clefts, and the attraction of these stance comments. The type of stance adjuncts that most frequently precede that’s clefts are maybe, at least and perhaps. All in all, adding both types of elements mentioned, we see that that’s clefts are very predominantly (in more than 65% of cases) introduced by these sentence modifiers, be it connective adjuncts, discourse markers or stance adjuncts.

Focusing adverbs

A third type of linguistic strategy accompanying the demonstrative cleft in my dataset is the use of focusing adverbs whose exact position in the construction is between the copula and the wh-clause, that is, introducing the latter. In contrast to the previous strategy - the presence of a connective or stance adjunct - here that’s clefts do not outstand as attracting these elements more than the other two frequent types of clefts, but we see similar numbers in the three types, that’s, that is, and this is clefts, if only a little higher in that is clefts. In the written dataset the strategy is used over 9.5% in the three main types of clefts. Here the use of the adverb exactly is very prominent (in over half of the examples), followed by precisely (19%), and less frequently really and just (7% each). These focusing adverbs are especially suitable with clefts given the implication of uniqueness or exclusiveness that these sentences have. In addition, they serve to narrow down the reader’s attention to the point at issue (HANNAY; MACKENZIE, 2017, p. 137). Some of the examples above show these elements, and some others are given in (23).

(23) a. # “Most people don’t view their residence as a capital asset, but that’s exactly what it is”, says Andrew Pincus, a tax lawyer at the accounting firm M.R. Weiser in Edison, N.J. He doesn’t endorse frequent moves.

b. # Can America, as noble as it may feel, afford to become the welfare state of the world? Unless we respond quickly to some very tough issues regarding our immigration policies, this is precisely what the future holds. ROD WATKINS Manteca, Calif. #

c. # But The Beatles Anthology, a coffee table-size volume of text and photos, is the big one. The saga of the group is told primarily in the alternating voices of McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr. Their magical mystery tour is related in straight-ahead chronological order: Lennon growing up on Penny Lane (yes, that’s really where he lived for a time); John and Paul meeting as teens and later hooking up with Harrison and then Starr; the early days of the band in Hamburg, Germany; and the making of each one of their albums.

As has been claimed for it-clefts, these optional elements are subject to the constraint that only one occurrence of each kind is possible (BIBER et al., 1999, p. 959; WARD, BIRNER, HUDDLESTON, 2002, p. 1416; GÓMEZ-GONZÁLEZ, GONZÁLEZ-GARCÍA, 2005, p. 162).

Summary and concluding remarks

The present paper has offered a corpus-based account of demonstrative clefts in English writing. The results presented derive from the analysis of a dataset extracted from the Davies’ Time Magazine Corpus (consisting of 462 tokens of the construction), and complemented with a smaller dataset from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (91 tokens from speech), for establishing occasional contrasts with the writing.

The following observations summarise the main points made in the present contribution:

(a) As regards the frequency of the construction, that clefts clearly outnumber this clefts in both writing and speech, especially that’s clefts. The cleft with contracted that’s is widely used in writing (more than 58%), and more so in speech (nearly 87%), as was expected. In writing, this reflects a more colloquial style of this genre of news magazines than in other written genres. Further, in writing the cleft construction types with that is and this is are used in a similar proportion, whereas in speech the option with that is is excluded completely. Examples of the construction with a copula in the past (that was / this was) are hardly used in writing or speech.

In terms of the frequency distribution of clefts for the wh-word introducing the wh-clause complement, what-clauses are predominant in both writing and speech (50% and 58%, respectively), followed by why (in around 20% of cases, in both modes). A difference found here between writing and speech was the much lower degree of variation in the choice of the wh-word in speech as opposed to writing. Finally, a small number of truncated clefts (e.g. and that’s why) were found, both in writing and speech.

(b) That is and that’s clefts show a very clear preference for being anaphoric in writing, that is they overwhelmingly point backwards. By contrast to that clefts (that is / that’s) that only very infrequently point forward, this is clefts were found to have a cataphoric reference in quite a good proportion of the dataset, more than a quarter of the tokens, the rest pointing backwards as that clefts.

(c) A third part of the corpus analysis considered the occurrence of demonstrative clefts at different points of the text, to try to arrive at generalisations about the rhetorical functions of the construction in the organisation of the text. The results show that demonstrative clefts frequently occur (in 58% of the dataset) at turning points of the text, the most common of which are the beginning, especially, and end of the paragraph (23.6 and 20.9%, respectively), above all this is and that is clefts, and less frequently (8.5%) at the end of the text, especially that is clefts.

Demonstrative clefts at the beginning of the paragraph clearly perform a linking function, but at the same time show an orientation towards the following context. Their effect is to bring a turning point in the argument or narration, by linking with an idea or entity previously presented. In this “double function”, they look backwards (linking) and forward (developing further). Demonstrative clefts at the end of paragraphs were found to have a summative function. Finally, the instances of the construction occurring near the beginning of the text, after a brief introductory setting, perform a topic introductory function.

(d) Further, the data analysis indicated three structural features combining with demonstrative clefts, which can be seen to enhance their meanings and functions. One is the fairly common occurrence of the construction in the context of reported direct speech, with demonstrative clefts having a summative function. The other two features are two linguistic elements wich are also often found in the construction, namely, connective and stance adjuncts, on the one hand, and focusing adverbs, on the other. The former enhance the linking function of demonstrative clefts, the latter their focal nature and their meaning of exclusiveness.

The present paper has shown that demonstrative clefts are a frequent and easily recognisable type of construction in English, which merits a study of its own and separate from the so-called reversed wh-cleft, in the domain of which it has been normally investigated. In addition, in the literature on cleft constructions, demonstrative clefts have only received occasional attention, and indeed usually much less than other more prototypical types of clefts, such as it-clefts, basic wh-clefts, and reversed wh-clefts, and in spite of the higher frequency of demonstrative clefts.

Demonstrative clefts are interesting as clear manifestations of reoccurring discourse functions in language, which reflect the way speakers and writers conceptualise information and interact with each other through language. Thus, functions such as topic introduction, linking, summarising, and attracting the reader’s attention and interest to a specific point or idea have been all found associated to the uses of demonstrative clefts in naturally-occurring English discourse. Particularly interesting, in my opinion, are the frequent instances of this construction at turning points in the body of the text, in the boundaries of paragraphs or the entire text, with a special connection to these functions.

There are several aspects of the demonstrative cleft construction which the limited scope of the present paper has not allowed to explore. For instance, a more complete and comprehensive treatment of the construction would require a study of the construction comparing different genres and text types in the written ad spoken modes. Another interesting avenue of research is to investigate the potential higher frequency of demonstrative clefts in shorter texts, with respect to longer articles in news magazines. It seems that the summative, and encapsulating or ‘condensed’ nature of the demonstrative cleft is a good candidate for these shorter extracts where the news writer is compelled to say a lot in a rather limited amount of words. A third aspect worth exploring is related to the formulaic and stereotyped nature of the construction, where the introducing sequence that is or this is, but especially that’s, can be seen as a mere, lexically-empty introductory sequence. Thus, it would be worth studying the extent to which the construction is used like that across different text types.

REFERENCES

• BIBER, Douglas; JOHANSSON, Stig; LEECH, Geoffrey; CONRAD, Susan; FINEGAN, Edward. Longman grammar of spoken and written English London: Longman, 1999.
• CALUDE, Andreea S. Demonstrative clefts in spoken English 2007. Thesis (PhD Linguistics) - University of Auckland, Auckland, 2007.
• CALUDE, Andreea S. Demonstrative clefts and double cleft constructions in spontaneous spoken English. Studuia Linguistica, v. 62, n. 1, p. 78-118, 2008.
• CALUDE, Andreea S. Formulaic tendencies of demonstrative cleftsin spoken English. In: CORRIGAN, Roberta; MORAVCSIK, Edith A.; OUALI, Hamid; WHEATLEY, Kathleen (ed.). Formulaic language Distribution and historical change Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009. v. 1, p. 55-76.
• CARTER, Ronald; McCARTHY, Michael. Cambridge grammar of English: A comprehensive guide: spoken and written english grammar and usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• COLLINS, Peter. Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions: a thematic and informational interpretation. Linguistics, v. 29, n. 3, p. 481-519, 1991a.
• COLLINS, Peter. Cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions in english London and New York: Routledge, 1991b.
• DAVIES, Mark. Time Magazine Corpus (based on the Time Archive): 100 Million Words, 1923-2006. 2007. Available from: http://www.english-corpora.org/time/
  » http://www.english-corpora.org/time/
• DELIN, Judy. Accounting for cleft constructions in discourse: a multi-layered approach. Human Communication Research Centre (HCRC) Publications 1990.
• DOWNING, Angela. English grammar: A university course. 3rd ed. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015.
• DU BOIS, John W.; WALLACE, Chafe; MEYER, Charles; THOMPSON, Sandra A.; ENGLEBRETSON, Robert; MARTEY, Nii. Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English, Parts 1-4 Philadelphia: Linguistic Data Consortium, 2000-2005.
• GÓMEZ-GONZÁLEZ, M. Ángeles; GONZÁLEZ-GARCÍA, Francisco. On clefting in English and Spanish. In: BUTLER, Christopher S.; GÓMEZ-GONZÁLEZ, M. Ángeles; DOVAL-SUÁREZ, Susana M. The dynamics of language use: Functional and contrastive perspectives. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005. p. 155-196.
• HALLIDAY, Michael; HASAN, Ruqaiya. Cohesion in English London: Longman , 1976.
• HANNAY, Mike; MACKENZIE, J. Lachlan. Effective writing in English: A sourcebook. 3rd rev. ed. Bussum: Coutinho, 2017.
• HERRIMAN, Jennifer. Identifying relations: the semantic functions of wh-clefts in English. Text, v. 24, n. 4, p. 447-469, 2004.
• HUDDLESTON, Rodney. Introduction to the Grammar of English Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 1984.
• LAMBRECHT, Knud. A framework for the analysis of cleft constructions. Linguistics, v. 39, n. 3, p. 463-516, 2001.
• MARTÍNEZ CARO, Elena. Th-clefts in English: form and function. In: GIBERT MACEDA, Teresa; ALBA JUEZ, Laura (eds.). Estudios de filología inglesa: Homenaje a la Dra. Asunción Alba Pelayo. Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones de la UNED, 2008. p. 239-255.
• MARTÍNEZ CARO, Elena. Gramática del discurso: Foco y énfasis en inglés y en español. Barcelona: Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias (PPU), 1999.
• QUIRK, Randolph; GREENBAUM, Sidney; LEECH, Geoffrey N.; SVARTVIK, Jan. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language London: Longman , 1985.
• SEMINO, Elena. Language in newspapers. In: CULPEPER, Jonathan; KATAMBA, Francis; KERSWILL, Paul; WODAK, Ruth; MCENERY, Tony (eds.). English language: Description, variation and context. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. p. 439-453.
• VAN DIJK, Teun. News análisis: Case studies of international and national news in the press. Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1988
• WARD, Gregory; BIRNER, Tony; HUDDLESTON, Rodney. Information Packaging. In: HUDDLESTON, Rodney; PULLUM, Geoffrey K. (eds.). The Cambridge grammar of the English language Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 2002. p. 1363-1447.

Notes

• ¹
  These are (adapted) examples from Herriman (2004, p. 447).
• ²
  The label used by Hannay and Mackenzie (2017) for the same construction is th-wh construction (cf. p. 142, f.).
• ³
  All mentioned examples are from Davies’ Time magazine corpus, unless otherwise specified. In the examples, # is used for paragraph beginning or end, and ## for indicating beginning or end of text. For the sake of clarity, in the examples of demonstrative clefts with a wider context, the cleft construction is underlined.
• ⁴
  This example is from Downing (2015, p. 232).
• ⁵
  These are Downing’s examples (DOWNING, 2015, p. 231).
• ⁶
  This example, taken from Martínez Caro (2008), is an illustration of the so called th (reversed) cleft construction, one of the three subclasses of pseudoclefts distinguished by Collins (1991a), together with wh clefts and all clefts (as in All that Sarah liked in Norway was the beautiful scenery).
• ⁷
  Even when part of the same constitent, the non-restrictive in this and the following example are left out, for the sake of simplicity.
• ⁸
  In these examples from the SBC the following transcription symbols are used: speech overlap: [...]; intonation contours: , . ? (continuing, final or appeal); pauses (different lengths): . .. ... ; lengthening of vowel or consonant: = ; laughter: @ ; inhalation: (H).

Notes

• ⁹
  The abbreviation ‘D-cleft’ is occasionally used in this paper to maximise space, as in tables.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  19 May 2023
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  10 Feb 2022
• Accepted
  25 Feb 2022