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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2016

LENA KARSSENBERG
LENA KARSSENBERG*
Affiliation:
KU Leuven
*
Address for correspondence: KU Leuven - Department of Linguistics, Blijde-inkomststraat 21, 3000 Leuven, Belgium e-mail: lena.karssenberg@kuleuven.be
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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.

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Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , November 2017 , pp. 405 - 430
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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