Russian Predicate Clefts: Tensions Between Semantics and Pragmatics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2006.v10i2.740Abstract
Russian predicate cleft constructions have the surprising property of being associated with adversative clauses of the opposite polarity. I argue that clefts are associated with adversative clauses because they have the semantics of S-Topics in Büring’s (1997, 2000) sense of the term. It is shown that the polarity of the adversative clause is obligatorily opposed to that of the cleft because the use of a cleft gives rise to a relevance-based pragmatic scale. The ordering principle according to which these scales are organized is relevance to the question-under-discussion.Downloads
Published
2019-08-19
How to Cite
Verbuk, A. (2019). Russian Predicate Clefts: Tensions Between Semantics and Pragmatics. Proceedings of Sinn Und Bedeutung, 10(2), 389–404. https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2006.v10i2.740
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