“It is while SleepIng that I can clearly see”: An Approach to Cleft Sentences in Catalan Authors Noèlia Sánchez Candela Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Keywords: Periphery, Complementizer, Clefts, Pseudo-clefts, It-sentences, Wh-senten- ces, Focus Abstract The aim of this paper is to provide an approach to cleft and pseudocleft sentences in Catalan. These structures are present not only in Romance and Germanic languages (where they have received special attention by linguists) but also in several world languages that are typologically very different; however, they always present formal and functional properties which largely overlap. Despite the productivity of clefts and pseudoclefts in Catalan, we have no comprehensive case study that gives an account of their pragmatic, semantic, syntactic or prosodic properties; we only have occasional references (which may be more or less extensive) in papers which cover other areas of study and, therefore, have other goals. For this reason, the article I present aims to be a first approach to these structures. Firstly, I briefly describe the pragmatic and semantic properties of clefts and pseudoclefts, as well as their main syntactic features. Next, I present my proposal of designation and classification, defending the need to differentiate clearly between clefts on the one hand and pseudoclefts on the other. Finally, I outline a proposal of theoretical analysis. Downloads Download data is not yet available. Downloads PDF (Català) Issue No. 23 (2013) Section Studies and Editions License L&L: Llengua & Literatura is published under the Creative Commons licence system in the “Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives 3.0 Spain” license scheme, the complete text of which is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.ca. Therefore, the public at large is authorised to reproduce, distribute and share its content as long as the author and publisher are acknowledge and it is not used for commercial use or derivative works.This means that when an author submits their work for publication, they are explicitly agreeing to forfeit their editing and publishing rights.L&L provides free and immediate access to its contents (with the versions of the articles submitted that have been positively evaluated and, if needed, amended) through its URL (http://revistes.iec.cat/index.php/LLiL) before they are published on paper, based on the principle that making research available to citizens free of charge fosters the global exchange of knowledge.
