Irish Clefting and Information-Structure

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of Irish clefting couched within Lexical-Functional Grammar. In Irish, cleft sentences are formed using two syntactic permutations. First, a copula is introduced, taking the clefted phrase or word as a predicate. Second, a relative clause is formed containing the remaining material of the original sentence. This basic pattern is valid across a variety of languages. I present different approaches towards copula predication taken within Lexical-Functional Grammar and discuss my analysis of Irish copula constructions. Based on the insights from simple copula predication, I derive my analysis for Irish clefting, claiming that in principle, a parallel syntactic approach for both simple copula clauses and clefting can be assumed. The syntactic analysis of copula clefting has been implemented in a computational LFG grammar using the XLE software.Next, pragmatic aspects of clefting are discussed. Cleft sentences are not only interesting from a syntactic point of view, but also are used to separate new information from old information. In the modular architecture of Lexical Functional Grammar, additional levels of representation may be added to allow for extra-syntactic analysis. I use the projection of i(nformation)-structure to map strings in the sentence to discourse functions. Applying this type of analysis to clefting, I arrive at a more complete picture of the form and function of Irish clefts.