Discourse functions of th-clefts in English

Abstract

This paper investigates a variant of the ‘wh’-cleft construction in English illustrated by sentences such as ‘The thing that he loved most of all in the whole world was the sea’, the so called ‘th’-cleft. Following Collins (1991), such construction is considered a type of pseudo-cleft construction because of its formal and functional similarity with the ‘canonical’ pseudo-cleft with a fused relative clause introduced by a ‘wh’-interrogative. The main aim of this study is to examine th-cleft constructions in Modern English, focusing on their main discourse and informational functions.