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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218 Claudia Lange & Ursula Schaefer<br />
way that also could provide for <strong>the</strong> somewhat ‘unnatural’ situation of <strong>the</strong> beginning<br />
of a telephone call. Finally, in ex. (20) any ‘omitted’ relative clause that we might make<br />
up to complement <strong>the</strong> IdCC would be sheer speculation as <strong>the</strong>re is no lexical – not to<br />
speak of syntactical – support whatsoever in <strong>the</strong> linguistic context. Ex. (21), in turn,<br />
has, for one thing, both an isolated IdCC and what looks like two object ClCs, one<br />
with <strong>the</strong> object pronoun predicate (as we would expect), and one with <strong>the</strong> subject<br />
pronoun predicate. As has just been indicated: Sir Feeble and Sir Andrew cognitively<br />
move, as it were, <strong>from</strong> being <strong>the</strong> ‘object’ of reference (albeit in focus) of <strong>the</strong> person<br />
overheard to <strong>the</strong> ‘subject(-complement)’ position where <strong>the</strong> identification prevails.<br />
We have, of course, grouped our examples in <strong>the</strong> present section in such a way<br />
that <strong>the</strong> ‘omitted’ relative clause becomes increasingly harder to retrieve. At <strong>the</strong> one<br />
end of <strong>the</strong> scale we have this ‘omitted’ relative clause spelled out in <strong>the</strong> utterance immediately<br />
preceding <strong>the</strong> IdCC (ex. 16 and 17), at <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r end we have a completely<br />
‘isolated’ it is I. The latter “identifies out of nothingness”, as Hatcher has it (1948:<br />
1084). In view of this it seems increasingly hard to abide by <strong>the</strong> claim of Huddleston<br />
and Pullum (2002: 1417) that IdCCs are in fact ‘truncated it-clefts’. We would ra<strong>the</strong>r<br />
suggest that in specific situations with specific (linguistic) contexts IdCCs may be extended<br />
into it-ClCs, while in o<strong>the</strong>rs this is impossible. In historical terms this could<br />
translate into postulating that <strong>the</strong> IdCC was anterior to and <strong>the</strong>n coexistent with<br />
<strong>the</strong> it-ClC. If <strong>the</strong>re is – <strong>from</strong> some point which still needs to be specified – indeed<br />
a ‘routinized‘ form of self-identification with <strong>the</strong> formula ’tis I which <strong>the</strong>n may be<br />
extended into an it-ClC, we see ‘Emergent Grammar’ at work, in which<br />
[. . .] forms of language are [. . .] embedded in formulaic constructions that are<br />
basically prefabricated but repeated with local variations in a way that Bolinger<br />
called “syntactic diffusion,” one variation splitting off and founding a new familiy<br />
of constructions. (Hopper 1998: 195; our emphasis)<br />
With <strong>the</strong> rise of pronouns in predicate position it is/’tis I seems to have become<br />
‘formulaic’, and hence by way of a ‘splitting off ’ was able to found a ‘new family of<br />
constructions’ – <strong>the</strong> it-ClC.<br />
A side-product of <strong>the</strong> analysis of our examples in this part of our chapter<br />
might be that – o<strong>the</strong>r than in an object ClC – me in predicate position might be <strong>the</strong><br />
rule in copular constructions where <strong>the</strong> subject of <strong>the</strong> matrix clause is not empty.<br />
The two examples we have presented here are, of course, not sufficient evidence<br />
to claim this to be a rule. As we have been primarily searching our corpora for it<br />
is/it was x constructions and <strong>the</strong>ir contracted (and negated) variants, a number<br />
of copular constructions with referential this/that as subject and a pronoun in<br />
predicate position may have escaped us. We do, however, strongly surmise that<br />
referentiality/emptiness of <strong>the</strong> matrix subject may have an influence on <strong>the</strong> shape<br />
of <strong>the</strong> predicate pronoun in this early stage.