DISCOURSE FUNCTIONS OF IT-CLEFTS IN ENGLISH CONVERSATION

In this corpus-based paper, an analysis is presented of so-called IT-clefts, i.e. utterances of the type It is beans that John likes, in conversational English discourse. It is shown that IT-clefts are not a functionally homogeneous category, but can be classified into at least three distinct functional types, according to the way they package information. Following Geluykens (1988a), these types can be labelled Irrecoverable-Filler-IT-clefts, Contrastive-Filler-IT-clefts, and Irrecoverable-Proposition-IT-clefts, respectively. The functional differences between these types are reflected in their structural characteristics, e.g. in their prosodic behaviour. The paper also argues that IT-clefts may serve other discourse purposes still, and that further empirical research is needed to determine the pragmatic functions of clefts.