ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to determine the class of cleft and pseudocleft constructions, and to develop criteria for handling problematical cases in the corpus.
3.1 THE CLASS OF PSEUDO-CLEFTS
One of the difficulties confronted by anyone engaged in the description of pseudo-clefts is that of delimiting the class of constructions in question. Sometimes writers acknowledge a failure to address the problem adequately and elect to concentrate upon what is admitted to be merely a subset of the class. This decision is defended as a necessary limitation on the scope of the study being undertaken, or as one not bearing upon the nature of the problems under examination (see, for example, Halvorsen 1978:3; Higgins 1979:2). Nevertheless it is important to address the question lest analyses based on partial sets of data should lead to a limited understanding of the nature and functions of the pseudo-cleft construction. I shall argue that the class of pseudo-clefts in English comprises three subclasses: wh-clefts, th-clefts, and all-clefts.
