• Language and Information
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.21-45
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• 2006

Connectivity effects have been central issues in dealing with specificational pseudoclefts. While syntactic approaches motivate their analysis in order to explain connectivity effects in terms of a connected clause, these accounts have numerous problems including a wide range of anti-connectivity effects that constitute crucial counterevidence. On the other hand, semantic accounts of connectivity effects treat BV and BT connectivity by independent interpretive mechanisms providing a more fundamental explanation for connectivity effects. Yet existing semantic accounts have limitations in explaining syntactic properties and syntactic connectivity effects in SPCs, and in accounting for BV anti-connectivity effects in English. Focusing on BV connectivity, this paper explores how the relevant (anti-)connectivity facts can be accounted for by an analysis that provides both an elaborate syntactic analysis of SPCs and a semantic mechanism for bound anaphora. Based on Yoo's (2005) non-deletion based, question-answer pair analysis of SPCs, this paper shows that a functional question analysis of a specificational subject, when combined with a theory of operator scope and a non-configurational condition on bound anaphora, can explain various BV (anti-)connectivity patterns in SPCs and related constructions.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.141-150
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• 2003

• Language and Information
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.103-122
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• 2014

In a so-called cleft (or, pseudocleft), the kes-phrase seems to refer to a person, even though kes is generally incompatible with human beings. In this paper, I claim that in a cleft, the kes-phrase can refer to a concept, and that a concept of human beings is not a person. I give some pieces of evidence for this claim. In a cleft, the kes-phrase cannot be pluralized only when it is supposed to denote a human being. Moreover, in such a case, the NP before the copula cannot be interpreted as the meaning of a predicate. Furthermore, in a cleft two kes-phrases are not conjoined with (k)wa only when they seem to denote human beings. All the observations can be explained by the claim that the kes-phrase denotes a concept in such cases. A concept cannot be used as a predicate, pluralized, or conjoined to refer to objects that are subsumed under a concept. When the kes-phrase denotes a concept, the cleft sentence is an identity statement.