Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
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Cleft and identificational constructions 209<br />
were calques of <strong>the</strong> French tonic forms of <strong>the</strong> pronouns. This is ruled out for <strong>the</strong><br />
simple reason that <strong>the</strong> object pronouns in subject complement position creep in at<br />
a time when <strong>the</strong> direct language contact between English and French was long over<br />
(cf. Ball 1991: 280 & Visser 1963: 244), and it would be highly unlikely to assume that<br />
parodies of French on stage could have a bearing on <strong>the</strong> English pronoun system.<br />
Generally, in all <strong>the</strong> me-variants under consideration (except where negation<br />
is involved), object ClCs outnumber IdCCs, for example:<br />
(9) For him you tremble, and ’tis me you fear.<br />
(Abel Boyer, Achilles (1700); ChHEDD)<br />
Now, explaining me in object ClCs is not a difficult task: <strong>the</strong> object pronoun me is<br />
topicalized to clause-initial position for emphasis:<br />
(10) [‘tis] mei you fear __i The majority of it is me-tokens in <strong>the</strong> database is <strong>the</strong>n accounted for: <strong>the</strong>y occur<br />
in object ClCs and are <strong>the</strong>refore determined by <strong>the</strong> syntactic context. Unlike PDE,<br />
where pronoun variation in ClCs is a matter of style (formal vs. informal), <strong>the</strong><br />
decisive factor in EModE is <strong>the</strong> syntactic context alone (subject vs. object ClC).<br />
With <strong>the</strong> fur<strong>the</strong>r development of <strong>the</strong> ClC, it is I came to be used in formal styles<br />
for object ClCs as well.<br />
We will return to identificational it is me below. The next section will be concerned<br />
with some general observations on <strong>the</strong> structure of <strong>the</strong> ClCs in our data.<br />
2. The structure of EModE pronoun-focus it-ClCs<br />
As said above, <strong>the</strong> prescriptive excitement over it is I/me is not matched by a<br />
similar abundance of studies tracing <strong>the</strong> origin of <strong>the</strong> construction, and nei<strong>the</strong>r<br />
has <strong>the</strong> recent interest in focus, information structure and ClCs (cf. Smits 1989,<br />
Lambrecht 1994, 2001; Bosch & van der Sandt 1999; Kiss 1999, Rebushi & Tuller<br />
1999) been extended to <strong>the</strong> development of ClCs in <strong>the</strong> history of English. Our<br />
data seem to suggest that, at least in <strong>the</strong> speech-based register ‘plays’ up to 1800,<br />
<strong>the</strong> structure of <strong>the</strong> ClC has yet to emerge.<br />
The defining property of ClCs is that <strong>the</strong>y “express a simple proposition via<br />
biclausal syntax”, as Lambrecht (2001: 466) put it. More precisely,<br />
A CLEFT CONSTRUCTION (CC) is a complex sentence structure consisting<br />
of a matrix clause headed by a copula and a relative or relative-like clause whose<br />
relativized argument is coindexed with <strong>the</strong> predicative argument of <strong>the</strong> copula.<br />
Taken toge<strong>the</strong>r, <strong>the</strong> matrix and <strong>the</strong> relative express a logically simple proposition,<br />
which can also be expressed in <strong>the</strong> form of a single clause without a change in<br />
truth conditions. (Lambrecht 2001: 467)