French il y a clefts, existential sentences and the Focus-Marking Hypothesis

@article{Karssenberg2016FrenchIY,
  title={French il y a clefts, existential sentences and the Focus-Marking Hypothesis},
  author={Lena Karssenberg},
  journal={Journal of French Language Studies},
  year={2016},
  volume={27},
  pages={405 - 430}
}
  • Lena Karssenberg
  • Published 3 November 2016
  • Linguistics
  • Journal of French Language Studies
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… 
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17 Citations
Background Citations
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17 Citations

The information structure of French il y a clefts and c’est clefts: A corpus-based analysis
Abstract This article investigates the distributional and information structural (IS) properties of il y a ‘there is’ clefts in comparison with c’est ‘it is’ clefts in French. Il y a clefts, which…
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