2016/11/03 by Lena Karssenberg · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation #Linguistics and Discourse Analysis #Phonetics and Phonology Research
paper · doi:10.1017/s0959269516000296
openalex publication_date 2016/11/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
ABSTRACT This article presents the results of a corpus analysis of the information structure properties of il y a clefts (e.g. Il y a Claude qui chante ‘There is Claude who is singing’ / ‘Claude is singing’). I will show that il y a clefts and existential sentences introduced by il y a can express the same three information structure articulations. Furthermore, it will be argued that il y a clefts and existential sentences function as focus markers, and that this hypothesis is further supported by psycholinguistic findings concerning constructions related to il y a .