ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 is devoted to descriptive and comparative analyses of clefts and their related structures in both English and Chinese. The first part of this chapter presents a discussion on what counts as the cleft construction, listing some of the defining features of clefts in Indo-European languages. It then distinguishes between prototypical and non-prototypical clefts and between clefts and their related structures, and provides a comparison with reference to their syntax, semantics, and discourse functions. The second part of this chapter reviews the syntax and semantics of shi … de cleft and seven types of related structures in Mandarin and outlines the remaining questions to be addressed in the following discussion.
