TY - JOUR AU - Verbuk, Anna PY - 2019/08/19 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Russian Predicate Clefts: Tensions Between Semantics and Pragmatics JF - Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung JA - SuB VL - 10 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - 10.18148/sub/2006.v10i2.740 UR - https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/740 SP - 389-404 AB - <p>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.</p> ER -