Skip to main content

Lund University Publications

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Clefts in contrast : a contrastive study of it clefts and wh clefts in English and Swedish texts and translations*

Johansson, Mats LU (2001) In Linguistics 39(3). p.547-582
Abstract
This paper presents corpus-elicited contrastive data relevant to the interand intralanguage study of cleft constructions. It is shown that even in closely related languages like English and Swedish, the frequency and distribution of different types of cleft constructions vary greatly. Previous approaches to the study of clefts in English have attempted to derive distributional differences between types of clefts from their syntactic, semantic, or informational properties, or from processing constraints. However, these analyses do not easily carry over to the contrastive data presented here. In particular, attempts to account for the distribution of different types cleft in English in terms of independent factors cannot account for the... (More)
This paper presents corpus-elicited contrastive data relevant to the interand intralanguage study of cleft constructions. It is shown that even in closely related languages like English and Swedish, the frequency and distribution of different types of cleft constructions vary greatly. Previous approaches to the study of clefts in English have attempted to derive distributional differences between types of clefts from their syntactic, semantic, or informational properties, or from processing constraints. However, these analyses do not easily carry over to the contrastive data presented here. In particular, attempts to account for the distribution of different types cleft in English in terms of independent factors cannot account for the correspondences found in translated texts. The aims of this paper are (a) to present a methodology for establishing differences between languages based on the study of authentic texts, (b) to show that closely related languages like English and Swedish d (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Sentences (Grammar), English language, Swedish language, Translations
in
Linguistics
volume
39
issue
3
pages
547 - 582
publisher
De Gruyter
external identifiers
  • scopus:0038976471
ISSN
1613-396X
DOI
10.1515/ling.2001.023
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
925daa3e-be6d-4dbd-8cf4-9126820db73a
alternative location
http://ludwig.lub.lu.se/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.ludwig.lub.lu.se/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=8939621&site=eds-live&scope=site
date added to LUP
2016-10-01 08:48:37
date last changed
2022-07-25 18:07:58
@article{925daa3e-be6d-4dbd-8cf4-9126820db73a,
  abstract     = {{This paper presents corpus-elicited contrastive data relevant to the interand intralanguage study of cleft constructions. It is shown that even in closely related languages like English and Swedish, the frequency and distribution of different types of cleft constructions vary greatly. Previous approaches to the study of clefts in English have attempted to derive distributional differences between types of clefts from their syntactic, semantic, or informational properties, or from processing constraints. However, these analyses do not easily carry over to the contrastive data presented here. In particular, attempts to account for the distribution of different types cleft in English in terms of independent factors cannot account for the correspondences found in translated texts. The aims of this paper are (a) to present a methodology for establishing differences between languages based on the study of authentic texts, (b) to show that closely related languages like English and Swedish d}},
  author       = {{Johansson, Mats}},
  issn         = {{1613-396X}},
  keywords     = {{Sentences (Grammar); English language; Swedish language; Translations}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{3}},
  pages        = {{547--582}},
  publisher    = {{De Gruyter}},
  series       = {{Linguistics}},
  title        = {{Clefts in contrast : a contrastive study of it clefts and wh clefts in English and Swedish texts and translations*}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ling.2001.023}},
  doi          = {{10.1515/ling.2001.023}},
  volume       = {{39}},
  year         = {{2001}},
}