Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang

210 Claudia Lange & Ursula Schaefer
The exact syntactic status of the relative clause in the ClC is far from settled, 3 but
need not concern us here. We would like to argue that a significant proportion
of our examples does not display biclausal structure. In Lambrecht (2001), an alternative
analysis is referred to: it is is simply a focus marker preceding its focus.
A pronoun-focus subject ClC would then be ambiguous between two different
structural interpretations:
(11) a. [’tis I] [Ø am to blame]
b. [’tis] [I am to blame]
In (11a), the biclausal syntax that is generally taken as the defining characteristic
of PDE ClCs is represented. The contracted form ’tis for it is introduces the
focus phrase, the relative pronoun is omitted in the relative clause. The structure in
(11b), however, expresses a different assumption with regard to the overall structure
and the function of ’tis: “’tis” is a focus marker preceding its focus “I”, the
subject of the following clause “I am to blame”. This analysis can easily be extended
to object ClCs. In
(12) [’tis] [me she hates __]
’tis is again the focus marker, and the object pronoun me is topicalized.
Our data strongly support the second analysis. For tokens with contracted
’tis, subject ClCs with zero-relative outnumber those with a relative pronoun
(212 vs 108). 4 We would then like to suggest that the prototypical pronoun-focus
it-ClC in plays from 1600 to 1800 is of the second kind. Consider this example
from Henry VIII: 5
(13) This Candle burnes not cleere, ’tis I must snuffe it,
Then out it goes. (Shakespeare, Henry VIII, act III, sc. 2; OTA ll. 1953f.)
Taking ’tis as the focus marker for the clause is much more convincing than assuming
a biclausal structure where the relative pronoun has been omitted. Most of
3. Cf. for example Ball (1994), Gundel (1977). We also adopt the convention to use ‘relative
pronoun’, ‘relativizer’ and ‘complementizer’ interchangeably for the form introducing the second
clausal element of a cleft construction; this should not be taken as a commitment to the categorical
status of this element. For a discussion of the applicability of the terms ‘relative pronoun’ and
‘complementizer’ with respect to clefts see Tagliamonte, Smith and Lawrence (2005: 95–97).
4. The case of ‘twas (110 vs. 128 tokens) is, as noted above, clearly different and calls for a more
differentiated analysis in which we shall not engage here. We thank an anonymous referee for
pointing this necessity out to us.
5. We take the quotes from Shakespeare’s plays from the electronically searchable edition of
the 1623 Folio provided by the Oxford Text Archive (OTA).