The French c'est-cleft : function and frequency

Shirley Carter-Thomas (1, 2)

1 IMT-BS - LSH - Département Langues et Sciences Humaines
2 Lattice - Lattice - Langues, Textes, Traitements informatiques, Cognition - UMR 8094

This article will examine the French c'est-cleft, a marked word order construction that can be considered as the formal equivalent of the English it-cleft. The French c'est-cleft is considerably more frequent than the English it-cleft, being widespread both in spoken language and writing. I discuss some of the formal language-specific conditions that contribute to the greater use of the c'est-cleft in French.

Mots clés: Thematic structure; Information structure; C'est-cleft; It-cleft; Declefting

Domaines: Linguistique

Shirley Carter-Thomas. The French c'est-cleft : function and frequency. David Banks; Simon Eason; Janet Ormrod. La linguistique systémique fonctionnelle et la langue française, L'Harmattan, pp.127-157, 2009, 978-2-296-09278-5. ⟨halshs-00276942⟩