Semantic and Pragmatic Studies on Cleft Sentences

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A cleft sentence is a construction used to mark an element in a sentence as a focus. Japanese cleft sentences have the forms "A de aru no wa B da" and "A de aru no ga B da", while English cleft sentences have the "clefting" form "It is … that …." This study gave semantic and pragmatic considerations to various problems concerning (English and Japanese) cleft sentences, through the application of a new and highly effective theory on copular sentences and noun phrases. Specifically, it took notice of the contrast in acceptability between two types of sentences exemplified by "Shachoo de aru no wa aitsu da" (It is that guy who is the president.) and "?Hannin de aru no wa aitsu da" (It is that guy who is the murderer.) and pursued the internal relation between the referentiality of noun phrase A and the semantic structure of cleft sentences.