초록 열기/닫기 버튼
This paper aims to examine informational status of the proposition expressed by the adnominal clause in Independent pseudo-clefts, a quasi-category of the canonical cleft used in spontaneous spoken language. Independent pseudo-clefts have such a semantic structure in which an open proposition with a variable is expressed by the adnominal clause and the value of the variable is specified by the main clause, while the cleft constituent corresponds to an independent clause by itself. An Assertive Independent pseudo-cleft is a special kind of the Independent pseudo-clefts involving an adnominal clause which conveys a pragmatic assertion rather than a presupposition. This Assertive type has the following syntactic and semantic restrictions: only i/ga but not un/nun can be attached to the kes construction, the adnominal clause should express a speaker's subjunctive thought or attitude rather than objective facts or state of affairs, and the cleft constituent is constrained to mean a reason or background of the adnominal clause. Assertive Independent pseudo-clefts cannot be replaced by the corresponding canonical clefts, and in comparison with juxtaposition or coordination of root clauses they explicitly encode the closer relationship between the two clauses therein. Their complexity and compactness in terms of information structure can be seen as violating Grice's Maxim of quantity, but the reasons why these constructions are often used without any critical communicative failure may reside in the fact that the adnominal clause expresses a speaker's thought and the following clause provides a reason or background for it.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
Independent pseudo-cleft, Assertive Independent pseudo-cleft, pragmatic presupposition, pragmatic assertion, information structure, spontaneous spoken language
