Pseudoclefts

This thesis proposes syntactic and semantic analyses for the two kinds of pseudoclefts, predicational and specificational. I suggest that although the two are syntactically quite different they are similar in their semantics. Predicational pseudoclefts are analyzed as predicational copular clauses with a free relative subject and a predicative counterweight. In contrast, I adopt a deletion-based approach to specificational pseudoclefts, in which the pre-copular constituent is left-dislocated and the counterweight is a fragment of an underlying CP. Semantically, I propose that the wh-clause in predicational pseudoclefts denotes an individual, while in specificational pseudoclefts it denotes a question. The analyses of both wh-clauses involve the maximal informativity operator, MAXINF. In the former, MAXINF operates over predicates and in the latter it operates over sets of propositions. The aim of this thesis is to account for the differences between predicational and specificational pseudoclefts while also highlighting their similarities in an intuitively satisfying manner.